How It All Started (and Almost Didn’t)

I didn’t plan on building a company. Not seriously.

I had a solid gig, a Creative Director role lined up, and all the “right next steps” laid out. But something in me knew it was time. Not time to climb — time to build.

So I jumped.

I registered Nexubis on May 23rd, 2023. I dropped the public announcement a few weeks before. And then, ironically enough, my previous employer became my first client. Full-circle moment. First retainer signed. A bit of runway secured. Game on.

The Early Days: Hustle, Hide, Repeat

In the beginning, Nexubis was a white-label Webflow agency. We were behind-the-scenes muscle for other agencies — shipping fast, staying invisible, and collecting invoice payments like good little freelancers.

It paid the bills. But it killed the soul a little.

We weren’t allowed to show the work. No portfolio. No proof. No brand equity.

It felt like ghostwriting a bestseller… and not getting your name on the cover.

The Network That Built the Business

I leaned hard on relationships I’d built in past roles — ex-HODs, marketers, board members. They threw us bones, then real projects, then long-term retainers.

That’s when momentum started showing up. Real brands. Real credit. We were building something — not just billing hours.

We picked up another retainer shortly after. Then a few side gigs. Then the first taste of “we should probably hire someone” panic.

So we did. We hired.

Our first full-time team member joined in Jan 2024. We were still mostly white-label at that point, with a few direct clients in the mix. But I knew this wasn’t sustainable. We needed retainers, relationships, and stability — not just gigs that ended when someone’s roadmap shifted.

Then, things clicked.

The First Big Break (That Didn’t Come From an Ad Campaign)

We got introduced to a company that would become one of our biggest retainers to date. Not through marketing. Not through paid ads. Through a referral — the oldest, most underrated growth hack of all time.

We delivered, fast and clean, and suddenly, we had breathing room. That opened the door to hiring again. People I’d always wanted to work with. People who got the vision. People who raised the bar.

We brought in a proper Ops Manager. No more soloing the admin, chasing invoices, juggling projects, and running Slack all at once. (Kind of wild it took me this long to hand over internal responsibilities — but hey, trust issues die slow.)

And just like that, we weren’t just “a Webflow agency” anymore. We were Nexubis.

The Shift

Here’s the thing: white-label work paid the bills, but it was never ours.

It didn’t build the brand. It didn’t grow our credibility. And when one job ended, there was no guarantee another was coming. So I made the call — less white-label, more partnerships. Less one-off, more retainer. Less ghost work, more real brand-building.

And that meant expanding what we could offer.

Clients started asking for 3D visuals, motion, animation. We were outsourcing it — expensive, slow, inconsistent. So we brought it in-house. And it changed everything.

With that, we started standing out. We became the agency that could do more — cleaner, faster, better. That reputation snowballed. We landed bigger clients, bigger brands, and — eventually — a few big names I’d once dreamed of working with.

Lessons (Some Expensive)

Not everything was a win.

I once hired a marketing company to help us scale. Big retainer, slick pitch, zero results. Three months, down the drain. Expensive lesson: not everyone who says they can help you grow actually can. That’s when I realized — the best growth? It came from doing great work and getting referred.

Simple. Old-school. Still undefeated.

The Numbers

By the end of 2024:

• We’d added 4 team members
  
• Pulled in over R2.2 million in revenue
  
• Landed 4 major retainers
  
• Built systems that didn’t rely on chaos and caffeine
  
• Started getting referrals faster than we could say yes
  
  

2025 kicked off with two more hires — a hybrid designer/dev and our first intern — and then another growth spurt. New clients, new markets, new systems. It was clear we needed someone focused just on scale. So we brought in a COO to help lead the next phase.

And now?

We’ve had the best two months in Nexubis history.
We’re running lean, shipping fast, and saying no to the wrong stuff.
We’re focused — not just on building cool things, but building the right things with the right people.

Final Thought

Nexubis didn’t start with a deck. Or a seed round. Or a 10-year roadmap.

It started with a “f*ck it, let’s build” moment.

And that’s what this series — Founders Diary — is here to document.
Not the highlight reel. Not the investor pitch.
The real stories. The messy ones. The wins, the failures, and the calls that either made us… or almost broke us.

More to come.