For founder-led B2B companies, past product-market fit

We build you a customer acquisition system that signs 5 to 10 new clients in 180 days, and you own it forever. Or you don't pay.

Done for you, end to end. Your first campaign is live in 45 days, and you own the whole model forever, the data, the system, the playbooks, even if we never speak again. It starts with a short, low-risk paid sprint, so you never bet a serious budget on someone you've met twice.
You own every asset, from day one, walk whenever
If we don't think it can work for you, we turn the work down
Two new builds a quarter, each one built by hand
Growth by Design™ · a model, running
Buying signal fired
A target account just entered a buying window
Message written
About their situation, not a template
AI qualified and prepped
Research, pre-call brief, follow-up handled
Qualified call booked, warm
On your calendar, weeks before anyone searches
Runs every week, whether or not you're in the building.
You own all of it
Every asset, on your balance sheet
Two builds a quarter
Each one built by hand
Ten years building B2B growth inside BTSantander · one operator who writes the strategy and ships the code
Watch this before you scroll

There's a name for what you just read. You haven't heard it before.

Everyone who lands on this page asks the same question: "so, are you an agency?" No. The two minutes below explain what this actually is, and why a guarantee that hard is even possible.

Most companies accumulate customer acquisition.
We design it.

That sentence is the whole company. The rest of this page unpacks it: the problem nobody named, the practice we call Growth by Design™, the method behind it, and the model it installs in your business. The guarantee at the top only makes sense once you've seen how the machine works.

01The enemy

Most companies don't have an acquisition strategy. They have accumulated activities.

Be honest about how your growth stack got here. It wasn't designed in one sitting. It was collected, one purchase at a time, each solving whatever hurt that quarter.

2019A CRMto store the pipeline
2020A content agencyto be visible
2021An SDRto do the outbound
2022Automation toolsto save time
2023AI toolsbecause AI
2024Another agencyto fix the last one
2025More softwarestill no system
Seven purchases. Seven different problems. Not one line connecting them.
The month you can't predict
One month you're turning work away, the next the calendar's empty, and you can't tell which is coming until it's here.
Nothing compounds
Outbound, LinkedIn, an agency. Each did a little. None built on the last. You start from zero every quarter.
The referral ceiling
Your best channel is word of mouth. It's also the one channel you can't turn up when you need pipeline.
Marketing that vanished
You paid for impressions, clicks and a tidy report. What you needed was signed contracts. Those never showed up.
Not in enough rooms
You win most deals you're in. The problem isn't your close rate. It's that you're not in front of enough of the right buyers.
The founder bottleneck
Every new client traces back to you. Your call, your contact, your name. The week you get buried, growth stops.

None of this is a talent problem. Each of those purchases was reasonable on the day you made it. The problem is that nobody ever designed them to work together, so they don't, and the growth they produce is exactly as random as the pile it came from.

This pattern has a name: Accumulated Growth.
And it has a ceiling. You're sitting under it now.
What we believe
Customer acquisition shouldn't depend on people.
It should be built into the business.
02What the old way costs

The old way isn't neutral. It sends you a bill every quarter.

The pile doesn't just underperform. It charges you four ways, and the invoice never shows up anywhere you can see it.

Every new hire starts from zero
The knowledge of how you acquire customers lives in people's heads, not in the business. So every departure is a reset, and every arrival is a six-month ramp back to where you already were.
AI makes it worse, not better
Bolt AI onto a pile of disconnected activities and you get the same mess, running faster. AI without design isn't transformation. It's one more accumulated activity, with a better demo.
Growth hangs on individuals
The founder's network, the agency's process, the one good SDR. Any of them stops, and growth stops with them, because the company itself was never taught how to acquire customers.
The forecast is a guess
You can't predict a system you never designed. So the number you give the board is hope with a spreadsheet under it, and you know it the moment you say it out loud.

And the quietest cost of all: the deals you never saw.

Every deal moves through phases long before anyone hits your website. The old way only shows up in the last two.

Week 0
The problem appears
Something breaks, a board asks a question, a competitor moves. They haven't searched yet.
Week 2
It gets talked about
Casual conversations, a team meeting. Still not on your site. But the problem now has shape.
Week 4
They ask someone
A peer, an advisor. This is when referrals get made, usually to someone who isn't you.
Week 6 · late
They look publicly
Now they search, read reviews, shortlist. The decision is largely shaped. You're in late comparison at best.
Week 8+ · too late
They pick
The deal closes. Often elsewhere, with a name that simply got there first.

If you weren't in the conversation by week 4, you're usually not in it at all. A designed model puts you there at week 0, when the problem first appears and nobody else is talking to them yet.

03The other way

Growth by Design™.

Growth by Design™ noun
What happens when customer acquisition stops depending on people and starts belonging to the business.
In practice: one connected acquisition model, designed into the company itself, instead of disconnected activities collected around it.

You've already read the belief this rests on. Here's the thesis underneath it: companies don't struggle to grow for lack of tactics. They struggle because everything that matters about acquisition, who to reach, when, what to say, lives inside individuals: the founder's instincts, the agency's process, one rep's relationships. Individuals leave, burn out, get busy. Growth wobbles with them.

Growth by Design™ moves that knowledge out of people and into the company. It gets written down, wired into systems, and owned outright, so it survives any departure and compounds instead of resetting. Said the way founders say it: the business knows how to acquire customers.

Accumulated GrowthGrowth by Design™
Tools and tactics bought one at a timeOne model, designed as one
Acquisition lives in individualsThe business knows how to acquire customers
Every new hire starts from zeroThe next hire inherits a running machine
Knowledge leaves with peopleKnowledge stays in the system
Rented from an agency, month to monthOwned, on your balance sheet
The forecast is a guessThe forecast is arithmetic
The principles of Growth by Design™

Six things we hold to be true.

01
Customer acquisition shouldn't depend on people.
02
Design before channels.
03
Understand buying before selling.
04
AI follows strategy.
05
Every engagement leaves an asset.
06
The business owns the model.

Every model we build answers to these six. No exceptions, no client-shaped bending.

04The method

TRACE™. How Growth by Design™ gets built.

Growth by Design™ is the philosophy. TRACE™ is how it gets built. Every movement has a method behind it, the way Lean had the Toyota Production System, and this one has TRACE™: five steps, in order, no skipping. It's the intellectual property behind every model we build, and it starts somewhere unusual, with how your buyers decide, not with what campaign to run.

T
Trace
How your buyers really decide. Interviews, their own words, why they buy and why they walk.
R
Reveal
The signals that show a company is about to need you. Funding, hiring, a new exec, a competitor slip.
A
Architect
The model. The offer, the message and the plays, designed around exactly what we found.
C
Connect
AI and people. The machine does the repetitive work. Your team does what only people can.
E
Embed
The whole thing, inside your business, on your data, in your tools. Owned by you.

The idea underneath it: buyers move on a clock. At any moment only a small slice of your market is ready, so the game is catching a company inside a buying window, the short stretch where a problem has just turned real, and reaching them first with something useful instead of a pitch. A signal fires. The system scores the company, writes a message about their actual situation, and runs the sequence across email, LinkedIn and a call. You get a warm, booked conversation, and every reply, call and win feeds back in, so the next one lands better.

Everyone else asks "what campaign should we run?" That question is how activities accumulate. TRACE asks "how do your buyers decide?", then designs the answer into your business.

05What gets installed

After 90 days, your business knows how to acquire customers. Here's why.

Read that sentence again, because no founder ever gets to say it. Not "you get new tools". Not "your team gets busier". The company itself, not any one person in it, knows how to bring in customers. That's the transformation Growth by Design™ installs, and it rests on six specific things the business will know.

Your business knows who buys
Which companies are worth reaching, ranked and scored, with the person who owns the problem named in each.
It knows when they buy
The live signals that show a problem just turned real, watched around the clock, so you arrive at week 0.
It knows why they buy
In your buyers' own words, from real interviews with clients you won and clients you lost. Not guesses.
It knows what to say
The offer and the hooks that strangers actually reply to, proven against real replies before being called finished.
It knows what AI owns
The qualification, the research, the pre-call briefs, the follow-up. The grind, done in minutes, never dropped.
It knows what people own
The calls, the judgement, the relationships, the close. The parts only humans do well, and nothing else.

That knowledge doesn't sit in anyone's head, including ours. If your best person resigned tomorrow, the business would still know all of it, because it lives in eight assets, built one by one inside your own tools, then handed over:

Buyer Decision Map
How your market decides, from interviews with won and lost clients, plus a teardown of 10 to 20 competitors. The end of guessing what to say.
Buying Signal Engine
10 to 15 live triggers watching your market round the clock, and a scored list of who to reach. It taps you on the shoulder the day a company starts needing you.
Messaging Architecture
An offer strangers reply to, a library of 50 to 100 tested hooks, and a specific angle for every prospect. Proven on real replies.
Content Library
Case studies, video interviews and content in your voice, built as sales weapons, not decoration. Your reputation, visible to strangers.
Outreach Machine
Sending infrastructure with deliverability defence, give-first assets, and sequences across email, LinkedIn and phone. Runs every week, with or without you.
AI Workforce
Digital staff that qualify every lead in minutes, brief you before every call, draft the proposal, and chase every follow-up. Nothing slips.
CRM Automation
A CRM that works the pipeline instead of storing it: AI qualification, deal tracking, cold-to-hot retargeting. No interested buyer goes quiet unnoticed.
Playbooks + Dashboard
The scripts, the objection maps, the training, and one dashboard showing which plays are paying. The manual for the machine. It survives any departure.

Not eight tools bolted together. That would just be the old way with better branding. This is Growth by Design™: one model, designed as one. Here it is, block by block. Click any block to open it.

06One play, start to finish

How the model turns a stranger into a booked call.

Enough philosophy. Here's one play from a designed model, the way it actually runs.

Funding round
announced
Pull the new
Head of Sales
Send a teardown
of their gap
They reply
(it's useful)
AI qualifies
+ preps
Booked call,
warm

A company in your market raises a round. The system catches it the day it's announced, pulls the new head of sales they just hired, and reaches out, not with a pitch, but with a short teardown of where a fresh growth budget usually leaks. They reply, because it's genuinely useful. The AI qualifies them, preps your call, and books it. You show up to a warm conversation, weeks before an RFP exists. That's one play. We design the handful that fit your market.

07The offer

One small step, then one big build. In that order, on purpose.

You shouldn't bet a serious budget on someone you've met twice. So the door in is deliberately small, and every rung of the ladder carries its own guarantee.

Start here
Step 1 · 45 days
The Trace + Reveal Sprint
The first two steps of TRACE, done for real: buyer interviews, live buying signals wired into your tools, a scored target list, and your first campaign live to real accounts. You judge the replies yourself. The price waits at the bottom of this page, deliberately small.
First campaign live in 45 days, or every penny back. You keep the assets either way.
Step 2 · 90 days
The full build
If the sprint's evidence says build, we design and install the whole model: all eight assets, connected, documented, inside your tools. Scoped to your business on the call, as a one-off, not a retainer. The 180-day clock starts the day the build does.
5 to 10 new clients in 180 days, or you don't pay for the build.
Step 3 · forever
You own it
Everything runs on your data, in your tools, documented for your team. Run it yourselves, hand it to your first growth hire, or have us operate and sharpen it on an optional monthly you can stop at any time. Nothing goes dark because an invoice stopped.
Yours forever, even if we never speak again.

What the 90 days look like

Weeks 1 to 6
Trace + Reveal
Already done in the sprint, and already working. The build starts from a live campaign and real replies, not a kickoff workshop.
Weeks 6 to 10
Architect
The messaging architecture, the plays, the content library and the AI workforce take shape around exactly what the sprint found.
Weeks 10 to 13
Connect + Embed
AI and people connected, the whole model embedded in your tools and handed over documented, on a cadence you can count on.
To day 180
It signs clients
The model runs, sharpens itself on real results, and does the job it was designed for: 5 to 10 new clients by day 180, or you don't pay.

On the build price: it's scoped on the call, not printed here, because the honest figure depends on what you already have: your data, your CRM, your content, your team. What we'll say plainly: it's a fraction of the first growth hire you were about to make, done in 90 days instead of six months of ramp, and it produces an asset that stays if a person leaves.

On running costs: the tools the model runs on are billed to you directly, usually a few hundred pounds a month. You own the config and every asset, so you're never locked in.

08In writing, no small print

The Straight Deal.

The promise from the top of this page, spelled out, with the conditions that make it a real promise instead of a sales trick. Read all of it. It's short on purpose.

The Straight Deal
MDB Growth Capital · guaranteed in plain English
1
5 to 10 new clients in 180 days, or you don't pay for the build.
That's the whole promise. In the 180 days after the build starts, the system signs you between 5 and 15 new clients. If you hold up your side, spelled out below, and we still miss the number, the build costs you nothing. You keep everything we made anyway.
2
The sprint carries its own guarantee: live in 45 days, or the £5,000 back.
Your first campaign goes live within 45 days of starting the sprint, real messages to real target accounts, or you get the full £5,000 back. No debate, no partial credit, no "but the discovery took longer". And you keep every asset we made either way.
3
If we don't believe it can work, we won't take your money.
Before you spend a penny, we tell you straight whether a real channel can be built for your market and your deal size. If we don't think it can, we turn the build down and point you somewhere better. A guarantee this hard only survives if we're honest at the door.
We only guarantee it if
  • You have a proven offer and a real close rate. We build the pipeline; the offer has to hold its end.
  • Your deal size is worth having. The maths has to work, and we check it with you on the first call.
  • You can actually take on 5 to 10 new clients. A guarantee you couldn't deliver against helps neither of us.
Your side of the deal
  • You respond to the leads the system hands you within a day. Buying windows don't wait, and neither should you.
  • You show up to the calls we book. We put warm, prepped buyers on your calendar. The chair has to be filled.
  • You follow up the opportunities. Proposals sent, next steps taken. The AI chases everything; the final yes still needs you.
Jean Mundabi FalaFounder, MDB Growth Capital
Hold up your end and we miss the number anyway, you don't pay for the build. Every build is done by the person whose name is on this page, and that's who's accountable if any of the above slips.
09Proof, the honest version

No wall of logos. Here's why, and what you get instead.

We could do what every new firm does: pad this section with borrowed logos, vague "300% pipeline" claims and stock-photo testimonials. That would be the old way, and it would make everything above it a lie. So here's what's actually true, and verifiable:

Built in the open
Teardowns and live builds, on camera. You can watch the standard of work before you hire it, which is more than a logo wall ever told anyone.
Incentives as proof
The fee sits behind the client number. If we're wrong about your model, we don't get paid. Read the Straight Deal above and ask which agency signs that.
Proof by sprint
45 days, your market, real replies you judge yourself, guaranteed live or refunded. Evidence from your own buyers beats a testimonial from someone else's.

When the first Growth by Design™ builds complete their 180 days, their numbers go on this page with names attached. Until then, nothing borrowed, nothing invented.

Jean Mundabi Fala
Founder, MDB Growth Capital
  • Ten years running B2B marketing inside BT and Santander
  • Writes the strategy and ships the code that runs it
  • Builds in the open: teardowns and live builds, on camera
  • Two new builds a quarter, each one built by hand
10Who's behind this

A marketer who builds. That's the whole trick.

For ten years I ran B2B marketing inside two of the UK's biggest companies, BT and Santander. Regulated, slow, ten people signing off on a subject line, and real money on every call. That's where you learn what actually moves a number.

Then I did what most marketers never do. I learned to build. Not slides about AI, the working systems: the prospecting, the qualification, the content, the voice agents, the follow-up. I design the strategy and I ship the code that runs it, inside your tools.

That combination is why Growth by Design™ can exist as a service at all: the marketer's read on why buyers move, and the builder's ability to wire it into working systems, done by the same pair of hands. My fee sits behind the client number, and a short paid sprint proves it before you commit to anything bigger.

Thirty minutes. We'll tell you straight if this can work for you.

Book a call
No deck, no hard sell. If it's not a fit, you'll leave with a straight answer and nothing lost.
11The cost of waiting

Doing nothing is also a decision. It just has worse terms.

This isn't urgency theatre, it's arithmetic. The sprint takes 45 days, guaranteed. The build is guaranteed against a client number. Waiting costs a quarter, every quarter, with no guarantee attached and no refund available.

The forecast stays a guess
Another quarter of telling the board a number you can't stand behind. That anxiety never shows on a cost sheet, which is exactly why it's so easy to keep paying it.
The deals keep going to whoever got there first
The accounts you should win enter buying windows every week. Someone reaches them at week 0. Right now it isn't you, and those deals close without you ever knowing they existed.
The compounding hasn't started
A designed model gets sharper and cheaper every quarter it runs. An accumulated pile doesn't. Every quarter you wait is compounding you never get back.

The build takes 90 days. The waiting has no end date, and it's the more expensive option of the two.

12Who we partner with

We take on a few. Here's the fit.

We're selective on purpose. We'd rather design growth for a handful of companies properly than churn through thirty. If it's not a fit, we'll tell you on the first call and point you somewhere better.

This is for you if

  • You're a founder-led B2B company, past product-market fit, with deals worth having.
  • Growth still runs on your network, referrals and your own name.
  • You're about to make your first growth hire, or writing that job description now.
  • You have happy clients and real results to point to. It makes the build faster.
  • You can actually handle more business when it arrives.

This is not for you if

  • You don't have a proven offer yet, or you're pre product-market fit.
  • You want cheap leads, a portal to log into, or a magic fix.
  • You want it overnight and won't commit to the 90 days.
  • You don't have the capacity to take on new clients right now.
13The honest answers

What you're really thinking.

Is "Growth by Design" just a fancy name for outbound? Or for RevOps?+
No, and the difference matters. Outbound is a channel. RevOps tidies the pipeline you already have. Both are components, and both show up inside the model. Growth by Design™ is the layer above them: deciding who you reach, when, with what message, what AI owns and what people own, as one designed system the business itself carries. If all we built you was outbound, we'd just be adding one more accumulated activity to your pile, and this entire page would be a lie.
How can you guarantee a number of clients? Everyone says that's impossible.+
Unconditionally, you can't, which is why nobody serious does. We guarantee it conditionally, and the conditions are printed above, not buried in a contract. We only take companies with a proven offer, a real close rate and the capacity to deliver, and you hold up three things: respond to leads within a day, sit the calls we book, follow up the opportunities. Inside those conditions, 5 to 10 clients in 180 days is a designed system doing its job, not a moonshot. And if it doesn't, you don't pay for the build.
Why is the sprint paid? Shouldn't you prove yourself for free?+
The sprint is real work: buyer interviews, live signal wiring, a scored list, and a campaign shipped inside your tools. Doing that free would mean doing it thin, for lots of people at once, which is the exact templated model this page argues against. The price, at the bottom of this page and deliberately small, filters for companies that are deciding rather than browsing. And it's guaranteed: live in 45 days or every penny back, and you keep the assets regardless.
Can one person really do all of this?+
I design it and I build it myself, which is exactly why it's one operator and not a team of juniors handed a template. Ten years of B2B marketing inside BT and Santander for the strategy half, the shipped code for the build half. It's also why intake is capped at two builds a quarter: the depth is real, so the volume can't be. You'll always know what I'm doing, what the AI is doing, and what your team needs to do.
How is this different from the agency that burned me?+
The agency was the old way sold as a service: you paid up front for a black box, rented someone else's machine, and kept nothing when you stopped. Every part of this is the opposite. You start with a small guaranteed sprint, not a big cheque. The system gets designed inside your own tools, against milestones you can see. And you own everything from day one, so if we parted ways tomorrow, nothing you paid for stops working.
Why not just make the growth hire instead?+
You probably should, eventually. The question is what they walk into. A first growth hire asked to build a channel from nothing takes six months to ramp, and building a channel is a different job from running one, which is why so many first hires stall. Design the model first and the sequence flips: your hire inherits a working system, a proven message and a live pipeline, and spends their first month improving something instead of inventing it.
What does the full build actually cost?+
It's scoped on the call, as a one-off, not a monthly. The honest figure depends on what you already have: your data, your CRM, your content, how much of the machine exists in fragments already. What we'll commit to in writing here: it's a fraction of the first-year cost of the growth hire you were about to make, there's no retainer buried in it, and the whole build sits behind the guarantee, 5 to 10 new clients in 180 days or you don't pay for it. You'll have the exact number before you commit to anything beyond the sprint.
What if it just doesn't work for my business?+
Three layers protect you. First, the filter: if we don't believe a channel can work for your market, we decline the build before you spend anything. Second, the sprint guarantee: first campaign live in 45 days or the £5,000 back. Third, the build guarantee: 5 to 10 new clients in 180 days, or you don't pay for the build, provided you've held up the three things on your side. Whichever way it goes, you keep every asset. There is no version of this where you're left with nothing.
How much of my team's time does this take?+
The build is on me. What I need from you: introductions to a few of your best and lost clients for interviews in the first two weeks, access to your tools, and someone to take the qualified calls when they start landing. That's hours, not days. The whole point of the AI workforce is to remove repetitive work from your team, not add a project to their plate.
Is my market too niche for this?+
Usually it's the opposite. The narrower your market, the sharper the buyer decision map and the signals become. The genuine risk in a niche is volume: whether there are enough reachable buyers to feed a channel. That's a maths question, and we do it with you on the first call, before any money moves. If the maths says no, we tell you.
What happens after the 90 days? Am I on my own?+
You choose. Everything is documented and yours, so your team can run it. If you'd rather we keep operating and sharpening it, we do that on an optional monthly you can stop at any time. What never happens: the system going dark because an invoice stopped. It's designed into your business. That's the whole point.
Isn't outbound dead?+
Spraying strangers is dead, and the spam in your inbox is the proof. This is not that. The model reaches a small number of companies at the moment a real problem appears, with something useful rather than a pitch. Fewer messages, better timed, with a reason to reply. That works better now than ever, partly because everyone else is still spraying.
14The price, finally

The sprint is £5,000. Here's why the number waited until now.

Because the price isn't the point. The promise is. What you're buying is growth designed into your business: a system that signs 5 to 10 new clients in 180 days or costs you nothing. The £5,000 sprint is just the door in, sized so walking through it is an easy decision.

Why it's paid: because the work is real. Buyer interviews, live signal wiring, a scored list, a campaign shipped inside your tools. Free pilots attract people who are browsing. A small paid sprint attracts people who are deciding.

Why it's small: because you shouldn't bet a serious budget on someone you've met twice. If we're wrong about your channel, you find out for £5,000 and 45 days, guaranteed, not for a year and a salary.

What happens after: you'll have the map, the signals, and a live campaign with real responses to judge. Then one decision point. Walk away with everything, no hard feelings. Or, if the evidence says build, we scope the full 90-day model and the guarantee attaches to it. No auto-renewal, no creeping retainer, no lock-in dressed up as partnership.

Trace + Reveal Sprint
45 days · MDB Growth Capital
  • Buyer Decision MapInterviews with your best and lost clients. How your market decides, in its own words, on paper for the first time.
    Yours
  • Live buying signalsThe triggers that show a company entering a buying window, wired into your tools and firing from week one.
    Yours
  • Scored target listThe companies worth reaching, ranked, with the person who owns the problem named in each.
    Yours
  • First campaign, liveReal messages to real target accounts, built on the map, not on guesswork. Replies you can judge for yourself.
    Yours
  • Full documentationEverything handed over as we go. If we stop here, nothing stops working.
    Yours
Total£5,000
Live in 45 days
or £5,000 back
The next step is small on purpose

Stop accumulating. Start designing. Thirty minutes, then you decide.

On the call we look at your business and tell you honestly whether the guarantee can be offered to you. If it can't, we say so and you've lost half an hour. If it can, the sprint starts at £5,000, guaranteed live in 45 days, the build sits behind 5 to 10 new clients in 180 days or you don't pay for it, and you keep everything we design whatever you decide next.

2new builds
per quarter

Why the door is narrow: each model is designed by hand, around one company's buyers. That doesn't scale past a couple at a time without turning into the templated work this page argues against. If the first call goes well, we'll tell you honestly when the next slot opens. The sprint can usually start sooner.

Every quarter you stay on referrals is a quarter a competitor spends becoming the name your buyer hears first.

Book a 30-minute call
No deck. No hard sell. Worst case, you leave with a clear read on your own channel.