The challenge: hiring the first Managing Director
Hussain Chowdhury, Director, worked directly with Anda Vlasaku, Saku Agency's founder, on the search for the agency's first Managing Director. The brief was commercially focused: Saku Agency needed someone to strengthen new business capability, expand its senior brand and marketing network and bring greater commercial rigour to pricing, margin and scope.
The role went well beyond sales, though. The successful person also needed to manage senior client relationships, create accountability within the team and introduce more process without losing the entrepreneurial pace that had helped Saku Agency grow in the first place. That combination made the search unusually specific.
Defining the brief
The core requirements included proven new business experience, a strong senior brand and marketing network and an understanding of influencer, creator or talent partnership economics. The role also called for experience managing senior client relationships beyond individual campaigns, and commercial judgement across pricing, margin and scope. On the leadership side, Saku Agency needed someone experienced in managing teams and creating accountability, able to introduce process without slowing the agency down, and comfortable operating inside a founder-led, entrepreneurial business.
The last point carried particular weight, because a candidate could look excellent on paper and still be wrong for the environment.
The market reality
The relevant senior talent pool was relatively small, and many of the strongest potential candidates had spent much of their careers inside larger agency groups or highly structured businesses. Saku Agency was smaller, still scaling and founder-led. Joining meant accepting more ambiguity, more direct accountability and more personal exposure to the growth of the business, which takes an appetite for risk that not every senior agency leader has.
Founder chemistry mattered heavily too. For a first Managing Director, experience alone was never going to be enough: Anda needed someone she could trust to help shape the next phase of the agency.
Looking beyond the obvious candidate pool
Alongside people already running creator or influencer agencies, Ultimate Asset mapped adjacent agencies where senior leaders had the commercial, cultural and client experience to transfer into Saku Agency. The question we worked from was who had the commercial judgement, network and leadership experience to help this particular agency grow, which is a wider question than who had already been MD of an influencer agency. Framing it that way widened the search considerably while keeping the quality bar high.
The search
Ultimate Asset ran the assignment as an exclusive Contingent Search. Hussain mapped and approached a tightly defined group of senior candidates, including passive leaders who were not actively looking for a move. The shortlist stayed deliberately small, because this was a senior appointment where fit counted for more than volume, and the process was highly competitive despite the limited number progressing. Andy Jephson was approached directly as part of the headhunt.
Why Andy stood out
Andy's background aligned closely with what Saku Agency needed next. His career included senior leadership at Exposure, a larger independent marketing agency focused on connecting brands with culture, where he had helped establish the agency as a strategic, multi-channel and culturally led communications partner. That mix of commercial leadership, senior brand relationships and cultural marketing experience set him apart in the wider market, and it matched the direction Saku Agency wanted to move in as well as the job title.
The appointment
Within six weeks, Saku Agency appointed Andy Jephson as Managing Director, its first MD, adding senior commercial capability alongside the founder-led leadership. Andy's remit is focused on helping Saku Agency continue its growth, expand its market presence and strengthen its commercial competitiveness. As with any recent appointment, those are the objectives of the role, not outcomes we would claim have already been achieved.
Why this search mattered
First Managing Director hires are rarely straightforward, and in a founder-led business the appointment changes more than an organisational chart. The person needs enough experience to add structure and commercial discipline, without depending so heavily on established processes that they struggle in a smaller, entrepreneurial environment. They also need the credibility to challenge the founder while building enough trust to work closely alongside them. That makes chemistry, judgement and appetite for the stage of the business as important as sector experience.
Ultimate Asset perspective
The strongest candidate for a scaling creator business will not always come from another creator agency. As emerging sectors mature, the available talent pool often gets stronger when adjacent experience is properly considered, and the skill is in knowing which experience needs to be exact and which can transfer. For Saku Agency, direct creator-economy understanding mattered, and so did broader commercial leadership, senior brand relationships, cultural credibility and experience of shaping a more strategic agency proposition. Andy brought both.