We start here because nothing else works until this is right. You can have the best product in your category and still lose deals because nobody understood what you were selling. We've seen it happen. A lot.
So we dig in. What are your competitors actually saying? What do your buyers tell each other when you're not in the room? Where's the gap between those two things? That's where your positioning lives. Sometimes the story is close. Sometimes it needs rebuilding. Either way, when we're done, your team can explain what you do in one sentence and people actually get it.
With positioning locked, we build the system that puts it to work. Nothing matters without distribution.
SEO and AEO so your company shows up when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Google a question in your space. A content engine that keeps your founder brand running without eating your whole week. Paid campaigns where you can actually see what worked and what didn't.
All of it lives in your world, not ours. You'll see how it works because eventually you're going to be the one running it.
Your team runs it now. The positioning, the content engine, the campaigns, the tools.
We stay until your team is running it like they built it. There's no timeline pressure on this. We don't leave until they're ready and the work is right.
Agencies aren't a forever thing. We know that. So instead of pretending otherwise, we'd rather make sure you're better after we leave than before we showed up.
HI, I’M GUS
The founder of Crossword.
I’ve spent over a decade inside agencies, and I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring them. I know what hurts on both sides.
As CMO at Irys, I couldn’t find an agency I trusted with our go-to-market. So we built the engine ourselves. That engine helped Irys raise $20M and build an audience around a product that’s genuinely hard to explain. Crossword is a refined version of that system, available to others.
Gus Wolf
Founder / Creative DirectorI’ve always been a crossword person. Every answer connects to others, and you can’t force a word that doesn’t fit. That’s how we think about go-to-market. Every piece of positioning, content, and distribution has to connect. Templates don’t work here because no two grids are the same.
We solve your puzzle with you, not for you. And if we do our job right, you outgrow us. That’s the point.
I don’t want 100 clients. I want a handful of products I believe in.