Unlike most agencies, We Are Off The Record’s (WAOTR) mission is to advise and train in-house growth teams to scale their business. CEO and founder Bas Prass prides his team’s “train and transfer method” because it has allowed them to work with tech startups and giant corporations from all around the world. WAOTR is based in the Netherlands, but learn more about their approach to growth, agency values, and more.
Image via We Are Off the Record
WAOTR’s unique approach to growth:
“As far as I know, we’re still the only growth bureau in Europe with our approach to growth — we help startups from within. We work with their in-house teams, which means we are literally in the same room as our clients. We want to lead by example. I don’t believe in any other approach anymore because growth has to come from within the business itself.”
“WAOTR walks the talk: they actually do growth instead of solely advising.” Rutger Planken, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Director & Founder, FoodServicehub
WAOTR’s ideal client:
“Our ideal clients are the ones that understand that growth takes time and doesn’t happen overnight. They understand that we need to touch multiple domains within their business and that growth isn’t only in the marketing or product department but in the entire culture of the company. This is also the reason we insist to work with founders and/or want involvement from C-level positions.”
Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup growth marketing agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.
Q&A with We Are Off The Record Founder & CEO Bas Prass
Yvonne Leow: How did you become a growth marketer and start working with tech startups?
Bas Prass: I started designing websites and building websites at the age of twelve and quickly figured out how to survive in the digital jungle. I learned by doing and was pretty active within online communities.
I started Off The Record in September 2016 after years of freelancing for tech startups and multinationals because I wanted to work with like-minded people. It was important for me to raise the bar, and I felt an urge to build a sustainable company instead of independently freelancing for one client to another.
From day one I was able to leverage my existing clients in the Netherlands to start building out our team one person at a time. I’m a believer in learning by doing and I’ve basically taught myself everything I know by reading a lot of books and following industry leaders.
Yvonne Leow: Describe WAOTR’s approach to growth marketing. What makes your agency unique?
Bas Prass: As far as I know, we’re still the only growth bureau in Europe with our approach to growth — we help startups from within. We work with their in-house teams, which means we are literally in the same room as our clients. We want to lead by example.
I don’t believe in any other approach anymore because growth has to come from within the business itself. It’s not something you can add-on or fix during a short period of time. Growth is developed by three main components: process, product and performance, using data as our underlying evidence.
Since growth has to come from within a startup, our legacy is what we leave behind. We are training (and recruiting) growth marketers for a startup client to take over our role within 12 months after we started.
Our entire engagement is developed to eventually step out. This is why our foundation begins by implementing our growth process and making sure we work across multiple departments. Through our train and transfer method, your startup team will be able to autonomously run an effective growth process at the end of our time together.
Yvonne Leow: What’s the most common mistake you think founders make when it comes to growth?
Bas Prass: The most common mistake is that startups scale too early. Founders often want to expand too soon, whether that’s conquering new countries or acquiring more users in one place. The underlying mistake is that they keep acquiring new users, most of the time via paid marketing channels, but their customer retention isn’t sustainable.
Most founders also fall in love with their solution and forget the problem that they’re trying to solve over time. The most common mistake in growing any business is building something people want and seeing this as an ongoing challenge instead of a stage or level to unlock.
Yvonne Leow: Does WAOTR specialize in any particular industry or focus?
Bas Prass: No, and we do that on purpose. When I was freelancing before We Are Off The Record, I worked for a variety of companies and industries. I always enjoyed the shuffle between corporate environments and fast-paced startup cultures.
When I started the agency I knew I wanted to keep that steep learning curve. We now work for startups backed by angel investors and billion-dollar brands. We tackle both B2C and B2B, though we have the most experience and knowledge in mobile apps, marketplaces, SaaS and eCommerce.
Since we’ve worked with so many different companies internally, we have a broad array of industry knowledge. That also means we can’t use the same growth tactics for each client so we have to challenge ourselves to develop new ones. Maybe in the future we’ll specialize in one particular model or industry, but I consider our current approach to be one of our strengths.
Yvonne Leow: Can you walk us through a successful growth campaign and what you learned from the experience?
Bas Prass: The most sustainable way to grow is through growth loops, which were invented by some of Silicon Valley’s growth leaders. They are small, closed systems where the input through some process generates more output, which can be reinvested in a loop.
For one of our clients, a large mobile calendar app, we developed an acquisition loop within a couple of days of our first acquisition. The customer acquisition cost (CAC) was lower than the revenue generated from that user so we were able to reinvest funds back into new customer acquisition channels and ad spend.
As a result, we generated exponential growth for their product across multiple countries. Unfortunately, while the company continuously iterated on their product, they did not improve their monetization strategy. So, we tested different new user experiences, CTA’s and buying behavior triggers to significantly improve their average revenue per user.
Yvonne Leow: What’s your process for developing a growth marketing strategy?
During an engagement, which typically lasts three to nine months, our dedicated Head of Growth joins a startup team. For one to four days a week, he/she helps make data-informed decisions towards growing their company’s user base.
They will analyze the composition of their team, identify objectives and key results (OKRs), and growth models. They’ll also lead a rapid iteration process to help product development or user research teams evaluate their company needs. Our train and transfer method results in an effective growth process that startups can run autonomously by the end of our time together.
Yvonne Leow: Who is your ideal client?
Bas Prass: Our ideal clients are the ones that understand that growth takes time and doesn’t happen overnight. They understand that we need to touch multiple domains within their business and that growth isn’t only in the marketing or product department but in the entire culture of the company. This is also the reason we insist to work with founders and/or want involvement from C-level executives.
Yvonne Leow: Since starting your agency, what has been your proudest accomplishment?
Bas Prass: I get this question a lot and the answer is never client-focused. We do truly amazing things for our clients, from training teams or achieving results they didn’t think were possible, but the thing I’m most proud of is our internal company culture and our drive to keep learning. I’ve always wanted to work with the smartest people in the industry and help them grow by matching them with the coolest clients possible.
Yvonne Leow: What can entrepreneurs expect when they collaborate with your agency?
Bas Prass: An agency that cares. We are not working for clients, but with them. We are present, physically and pick up the phone. It sounds stupid, but I see so many agencies with a focus on the short-term and not giving a f*ck.
If there’s one thing I try to tell my team every week is to over-communicate and to keep managing expectations, since these two are (almost) always the reason things go south. We write weekly recaps to every client to make sure every stakeholder is in the loop, all of our work is logged in our customized tool, and every project is mirrored by our Growth Lead to make sure we keep delivering the best quality results possible.
Yvonne Leow: How do you charge early-stage startups? What’s your rate and fee structure?
Bas Prass: We charge on a project basis, which depends on a startup’s needs and whether they require one consultant or an entire growth team with a product owner and data analyst. Our typical engagement is somewhere between $5-10K per month. We’re always on standby and we’re at their office usually twice a week to collaborate with their existing team(s).
Yvonne Leow: Should companies have different growth marketing strategies for US versus international markets? Have you observed different approaches to growth?
Bas Prass: Every product and market is different, so here you should tweak and make adjustments if needed. Our work in Europe is different than the US or Latin America, but our approach is the same. In the US, startups must grow at all costs, while in Europe, companies have always been more conservative.
The funny thing is that I see these two markets are flipping their approach. Europe is picking up America’s grow-at-all-costs mentality, while I’ve observed the trend in the US to focus on building (smaller) sustainable businesses before raising capital.
Founder Recommendations
“WAOTR has been with us for a while, they achieve the biggest goal a consultancy can reach: implementation of a totally new way of working and thinking, now 12 months later we are still holding on to this. WAOTR showed us great skills on A-Z disciplines.” – Founder in Amsterdam, Netherlands
“Build from scratch refer a friend program, without the need of our developers.” Head of Growth in Amsterdam, Netherlands
“WAOTR walks the talk: they actually DO growth instead of solely advising. The team is young, aware of latest tooling and well-connected with the latest and greatest trends in growth. The insights we gathered via the projects we run with WAOTR directly steered the direction of the business.” – Rutger Planken, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Director & Founder, FoodServicehub
“They helped us with a clear online strategy including social advertising experiments.” – Josha Jansen, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Marketing & Communications Manager, Marie-Stella-Maris
“They build a working system, together with our responsible team, where we put in ideas, rank them, specify highest-ranked ideas (goal, success rate, what if…, etc.) then execute it, learn, follow-up and so on. They challenged us continuously along the way. The goal was that we wouldn’t need them forever, they really implemented a new way of thinking (and measuring). Really happy with Off the Record. Maybe not the biggest company but sure the best in their line of work.”- Jeroen Veldman, Utrecht, Netherlands, General Manager and Founder, Bynco
“We ran a ton of acquisition experiments together with them to see which value proposition(s) and (paid) channels worked best in order to onboard, activate and retain customers. Furthermore, they implemented a growth framework and built a custom dashboard in order to support our international expansion.”Derk Roodhuyzen de Vries, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Founder & CEO, Fixico
“We are off the Record helped us grow in a phase transitioning from startup to scale up. We were facing a lack of resources during explosive growth and hiring processes. They have assembled a great team, that kept things going while we formed our commercial team. We are of the Record exists out of insightful, hands-on, great communicators and they brought us good results.”- Ruth de Jager, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Country Manager, Storytel Sweden AB
“We have hired Off The Record now for the third time and are very happy with their approach. They help with the low hanging fruit on the first day on the job and provide both strategic advice and actual output that has proven of great value for our company.” – CEO and co-founder in Amsterdam, Netherlands
“They prepped our audio startup (JUKE) within our media company to work like a startup. Sounds strange but transforming a product and marketing department within our media company demands way more than just setting up some OKR’s. With WAOTR we changed the mindset of the team and are now focusing on getting a bigger part of our organization on our growth train.” Patrick Goldsteen, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Managing Director, JUKE
“Set up the digital marketing suite and helped improve data analytics processes, product development and user research from data-driven to qualitative reviews. The team went from going on to the streets with co-founders interviewing clients to launching landing pages for product categories as the basis for campaigns and intensely challenging the team on finding product marketing fit and optimizing user journeys and marketing communication.” – Thomas Bunnik, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Co-founder & CEO, Whoppah
” Passionate people that know their way around in online marketing and go the extra mile. – Landry Aussems, Amsterdam, Netherlands, CEO, Tessa