NoGood

Mostafa ElBermawy's path to founding NoGood was unconventional. After studying archaeology, he taught himself to code and built a web design studio. When clients began asking how to drive traffic to their newly built sites, Mostafa realized his true calling was in marketing—the intersection of creative communication, engineering, and data analytics. He went on to work at Microsoft (Bing team), American Express, and various VC-backed startups including Harver and Workzone, where he gained deep expertise in building growth teams from scratch and designing go-to-market strategies. As a startup advisor for accelerators and venture funds, Mostafa increasingly saw the limitations of solo consulting and recognized the untapped potential of building a full team.

NoGood launched in 2017 as a 100% remote operation, leveraging Mostafa's network of expert marketers in various disciplines. The turning point came in early 2019 when Mostafa made his first core hire and the team moved into a small WeWork office. By the end of 2019, NoGood had assembled a cross-functional squad with designers, developers, a data scientist, growth strategists, performance managers, and creative designers. The agency's competitive advantage was built on the "squad model"—putting smart marketers together with refined processes and collaborative culture to deliver results greater than the sum of their parts. When COVID-19 forced a return to remote work in 2020, the team quickly adapted.

Mostafa's early customers came from his existing professional network. The team worked obsessively on delivering exceptional results for these initial clients, focusing on quality over volume. This strategy paid off when their early success got them nominated for and selected as a Verified Expert Growth Marketing Agency on TechCrunch—a major PR win that validated their model. As clients moved to new companies, they brought NoGood with them, creating an organic flywheel of referrals and word-of-mouth growth.

The agency's primary growth lever was simply executing well: "Step one of growth marketing is always to start with a great product that delights users, so we worked hard to drive outstanding results for our early partners and let the work speak for itself, leading to many referrals." Content marketing became the secondary engine—their blog, powered by expertise from strategists and analysts at NoGood, drove organic traffic up over 630% year over year.

Mostafa also learned crucial lessons about client selectivity. Early on, they made the mistake of taking on clients without clear product-market fit, which frustrated the team. They also realized single-channel optimization projects were problematic without owning the full user journey. The solution: become ruthlessly selective. They began limiting the industries and startup stages they worked with, prioritizing fit and quality over volume. This counterintuitive move actually improved retention and margins.

On operations, the team initially tried Monday.com for project management but found adoption was poor as people defaulted to personal to-do lists. Adding Slack integration backfired with notification fatigue. The switch to Notion solved the problem—enabling task tracking, testing frameworks, budget tracking, and meeting notes consolidation in one platform.

Despite COVID-19, NoGood continued its explosive growth trajectory. The team doubled in size in 2020 and set the goal to double again in 2021, expanding their client roster in B2B SaaS, DTC, and healthcare. The agency's model of fewer, higher-quality clients yielded better margins and retention. Mostafa also started an angel investment fund focused on early-stage SaaS and DTC brands, extending his growth expertise into the investor role.