Making it Easier to Build a Digital Agency

Our mission is to make it easier to build a successful digital agency. This starts with strategy. We help owners decide what to do, whom to do it for, and how to do more of it with less friction.

About Promethean

I’m Nick. I run Promethean. A boutique consultancy that helps digital agencies grow more reliably with higher margins and simpler operations.

Since 2015, I’ve been helping digital firms better understand their industry and chart more effective paths to success.

Prior to co-founding Promethean, I worked as an equity analyst at a Wall St. firm where I covered the enterprise software and semiconductor industries. Before that, I spent a bit of time in corporate finance.

When I’m not in the office, you can find me backpacking around the Midwest or making fancy firewood in my woodshop.

Sometimes, you’ll find me sharing what I’ve learned on stage.

 

What’s with the name?

Heinrich Füger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

We borrowed our name from Greek mythology.

Prometheus was a titan. He was best buds with Zeus and was the one who created humanity from clay. An argument erupted when he began to care for his creation. He saw that they could be greater than they were, but Zeus wasn’t having it. Prometheus finally defied Zeus. He stole the knowledge of fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. When Zeus found out, he was furious. While he condemned Prometheus to eternal torture for this betrayal, humanity embraced this new knowledge and thrived.

The power of shared knowledge clicked. We saw the impact of this firsthand. So we had “Promethean,” but what about the “Research?”

My background is heavily research-based. From my time working in a lab, through corporate finance, through being an equity analyst, everything included research work. When I started working with digital agencies, quality research in the space didn’t exist. Too much advice was being given with little or no actual data to back it up. I saw this as an opportunity to change that. This was a fantastic market that could benefit immensely from high-quality research covering the topics owners cared about most.

With that, Promethean Research was born.

Some thoughts on your industry

After surveying, interviewing, and researching over 45k digital agencies, I’m still surprised by how unique each firm I interact with is. At its core, this is a people business, and no two groups of people are the same. With that said, there are some key recurring themes I’ve noticed over the years.

There are a ton of firms in this space, and more are coming in each day. The barriers to entry are nonexistent, and the margins are high. This causes a lot of noise for your prospects to sift through. Most of the successful firms we see are astonishingly well-positioned.

All shops fall along a spectrum of sophistication. Some are still learning the basics, while others are firing on all cylinders. Regardless of a shop’s growth goals, moving to the more sophisticated side of this spectrum tends to lead to better results.

Most digital shop owners come from tech, design, or marketing, which means they’re essentially learning the business and management side while on the job. Couple that with the opaqueness of best practices, and there’s a ton of potential for unnecessary frustration. Removing this friction is a key part of what I focus on.

Working with us

A typical engagement

Depending on the consulting package, projects normally last between 1 week and 2-3 months. They’ll consist of due diligence (surveys, interviews, document and metric reviews, etc.), focused collaborative strategy meetings, research, implementation plans, and implementation guidance.

Our research-first approach

It all starts here. We perform the most comprehensive research on the digital services industry in the world.

Our advice comes from our research on how digital firms succeed, all the way to what’s happening on the global stage. This breadth of scope lets us uncover things others can’t.

Our advice encompasses insights from:

  • Curated secondary macro research
  • Broad-based industry and sector research
  • Proprietary industry research on the digital service industry
  • Individual client firm research
  • Individual stakeholder interviews and surveys

Who we work with

Types of companies

  • Digital marketing agencies
  • Web development firms
  • Software development shops
  • Digital design firms

The ideal size

We work best with shops in the 15-150 employee range. We’ll sometimes work outside of this range, depending on the circumstances, but it’s rare.

Location

While we’ve worked with clients across four continents and our research covers shops from over 100 countries, our current geographic focus is in the United States and Canada. All our engagements are delivered remotely.

Point of contact

For any project we accept, we work directly with the firm’s leadership team. This is often the owner and a few key direct reports.

Stakeholder goals

While the exact goals may vary, we work best with teams interested in growing at a sustainable pace. Significant growth rates aren’t uncommon, but they can be unreliable. We prefer to build reliable growth engines clients can depend on.