Six-figure thumbnail agency triples MRR in 6 months and lands Y Combinator as a client

Alejandro runs Thumbnails Factory, a thumbnail design agency serving creators and media companies.

$15–20K

$50K MRR

In 6 months

~3x

Growth in MRR

20+ hours

Per week, freed for Alejandro

Y Combinator

Became a client

The agency was already doing serious monthly revenue, but Alejandro could see the operating model becoming a constraint on further growth. As he put it, the business could still be managed manually at a smaller scale, but that approach wasn’t going to work at much higher volume.

01 / BEFORE

Project management and design were mixed together. The person responsible for managing production was still doing design work, which meant neither responsibility had someone’s full attention.

Turnaround also depended heavily on one senior designer, while Alejandro remained the source of creative direction for much of the incoming work. As volume increased, more of the production system depended on a handful of people.

Hiring created another constraint. The agency was recruiting mainly from the Spanish-speaking design market, which reduced the pool of people they could bring into the company.

02 / THE SOLUTION

I helped restructure the operation so project management, production and hiring responsibilities were clearer.

We rebuilt the Airtable system around how the agency actually worked and automated more of the coordination happening behind production.

Alejandro’s right-hand person moved into a mostly operational role. Through 1-to-1 training, I helped him take more ownership of project management, assignments and team coordination, so Alejandro didn’t have to stay involved in as many day-to-day decisions.

We also started getting important production knowledge out of individual people’s heads and into documented training material. That made it easier to train new designers and hire beyond the agency’s previous constraints.

This was our goal: make sure more growth didn’t automatically mean more work for Alejandro.

AT A GLANCE

CLIENT

Thumbnails Factory

WHAT THEY DO

Thumbnail design agency for creators and media companies

FOUNDER

Alejandro

SCOPE

Clearer responsibilities, a rebuilt Airtable system, automation, 1-to-1 training and documented training material

TOOLS

Airtable

TIMELINE

6 months

03 / RESULTS

THE PAIN

Operating model limiting growth

THE RESULT

~3x

MRR IN 6 MONTHS

Over the following six months, Thumbnails Factory roughly tripled its MRR and landed Y Combinator as a client.

THE PAIN

Everything runs through the founder

THE RESULT

20+ hours a week freed

FOR ALEJANDRO

At the same time, Alejandro was able to step further out of daily production and operational decisions, freeing up more than 20 hours per week.

THE PAIN

Production depends on a few people

THE RESULT

More team ownership

WITHOUT RUNNING THROUGH HIM

That gave him more time to focus on sales and growth while the team took on more responsibility without everything continuing to run through him.

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Results are specific to this client and period.

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