To stay competitive and relevant, agility is the new currency for agencies and brands alike.
By Lufuno Makungo, Managing Director of Distrikt9, a VML supplier development partner
Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, said that he spends his weekends studying startups, as Microsoft’s size has become a disadvantage. He further highlighted that at young companies, everyone is involved in the product development, allowing young companies to make quick business decisions.
The core driver of studying startups is to unlearn habits that once made you successful in order to stay relevant. There’s something uniquely energising about startups. The early days of building a brand are full of possibilities – that rare moment when identity, ambition, and curiosity are still in motion.
We are now in an age where AI is no longer a novelty, but part of the core infrastructure of how businesses operate. For many established companies, that shift feels heavy because of legacy systems, old processes, and layers of approvals that all slow down meaningful change. Startups, on the other hand, step into this new landscape with an inherent advantage. They’re light, fast, and often born with AI already in their DNA. They don’t need to transform into AI‑driven businesses; they can simply start that way. Their brand, product, operations, and marketing can be designed from day one with AI tools in mind, instead of retrofitting them into outdated structures.
Freedom to create
Without the weight of legacy systems or strict brand guidelines, there’s a natural openness to experimentation, a willingness to try, test, and pivot quickly. I find this freedom deeply rewarding – the opportunity to shape a brand’s voice from scratch and to decide how it looks, sounds, and behaves before it’s fully defined allows for true originality.
For a creative agency, stepping into this space is an opportunity to do some of our most meaningful and inventive work. For clients, this environment translates into agile thinking and fresh creative approaches that can set them apart early on.
I’ve never been afraid to voice unconventional ideas, even when it makes others uncomfortable. My energy is always on fixing the problem instead of defending the process. I can trace this character as far back as primary school – a lifetime of getting into trouble for questioning long‑standing assumptions and asking why things are done a certain way. It’s for this reason that I’ve been involved in a few startups, and my love for startups and everything they represent is why I made the decision to join Distrikt9.
Startups approach business with curiosity and courage. They invite you to build something entirely new, to take creative risks that bring an idea to life in surprising ways. For agency teams, it’s a chance to think bigger, move faster, and create from a place of genuine inspiration. Working with emerging brands is one of the best ways to stay sharp because everything is new. Startups keep you on your toes, they demand adaptability, quick problem-solving, and a constant pulse on what’s relevant. Each collaboration becomes a creative laboratory, a place where bold concepts can be tested and refined before bringing them to larger, more established clients.
Reshaping narratives, maintaining relevance
Those early experiments often become proof of concept – demonstrations of what’s possible when creativity leads. In turn, they allow an agency to approach long-standing clients with new energy, backed by real results and practical innovation. It’s a virtuous cycle: startup clients gain the experience and craft of an agency team, while the agency gains fresh thinking and a platform to push creative boundaries. Working with startups is more than an inspiring creative challenge, but a strategic advantage for everyone involved. They remind us that the best ideas often begin at the edges: unpolished, ambitious, and fearless. And when that energy meets expertise, it can spark the kind of work that reshapes both brands and agencies from the inside out.
Leaders like Satya Nadella are openly studying startups because their speed, agility, and bias for experimentation are what large organisations need in order to stay relevant. Companies that cling to slow, legacy ways of working will watch more agile players capture the new opportunities, while those that adopt startup‑like behaviours are the ones most likely to turn disruption into lasting advantage.
Nadella’s approach offers a clear playbook that size can slow you down and that you must be willing to unlearn old habits even if they once led to success. Instead of projecting certainty, he champions a learn‑it‑all culture where curiosity, experimentation, and shared learning are rewarded over having all the old answers.
To create work that’s unordinary and meaningful, you need a genuine appetite for experimentation. This requires trading the safety of legacy systems and old processes for the uncertainty of trying, measuring, and iterating. With that mindset, experimentation stops being chaos and becomes a disciplined way to discover what truly matters for the brand, the product, and the people you serve.