The Great Manak — the wolf cradling a single gold flame
The night is wide, the work is far, but every craft has found its star. I walk between them, moon and flame — each beast a trade, each trade a name.

Europe froze its own talent.
We ship the embers to where the fire pays.

Manaki is a creative & growth agency that forges verified European A-players and sells them into funded startups in Dubai and the US — front-end faces on location, back-end machine kept in the den.

Other agencies rent strangers and hope. We forge our own people in our own fire, and hand the client the receipt.

Talk to Erwin Meet the pack ↓
01 · The problem

The most expensive line item in hiring an A-player is not their rate. It is the yes.

CVs, reels, star ratings, interviews — all now free to fake. Checking stayed expensive. The market can't tell a great editor from a smooth talker, so the best talent leaves the platforms first, and a mis-hire on a critical creative role costs an estimated 1.5–3×est. annual comp in salary, delay and morale.

Meanwhile the spread sits on the table, untouched:

EU cost — fully loaded
€250–450/day est.
Dubai / post-seed US — perceived value
$800–1,500/day est.
← the gap is the ignition →

Cash that just landed, a clock already running, and a continent of underpriced excellence. Nobody solved the finding and trusting problem in between. We did — and the honest caveat, stated up front: rate arbitrage decays. Trust arbitrage doesn't, because verification stays expensive forever. The arbitrage is the ignition, not the engine.

See how we manufacture the yes ↓
02 · Vet by doing

Everyone else vets by reading. We vet by watching.

1

Source local.

A community insider points us to the hungry ones. A warm referral costs near zero; a cold search for the same person costs €5–15Kest. in recruiter fees or 2–3 burned months.

2

First fire on OUR wood.

The candidate edits our film, designs our funnel, shoots our shoot — paid in project fees, not salaries. If they're a B-player, we lose one internal sprint. A client discovering the same thing mid-launch loses the launch.

3

The portfolio is the exhaust.

Every internal project throws off two assets: the deliverable and a witnessed record of who made it, how fast, under what pressure. A portfolio of shipped, watched work cannot be prompted into existence the way a reel can.

4

Sell the proven, keep the machine.

By the time a client meets the Eagle, we've watched the Eagle hunt.

What we quote is not "talented people" but pre-absorbed variance: everyone on your project already failed-or-passed on our money, not yours. Yes, it's slow — weeks to prove a person versus hours to onboard a profile. Slow is the moat. Fast trust is exactly what AI just made worthless.
Meet the ones who passed ↓
03 · The pack — the cast is the org chart

Eleven animals. One machine.

Every service is fronted by a character, and the storybook is not decoration — it IS the org chart, the operating manual, and the front/back split that makes the margin. "The eagle films, the owl edits" survives a founder's third espresso retelling. A ten-department grid does not.

EVERYWHEREThe Great Manak — the wolf

The Great Manak

The Wolf · Narrator & Guide

Moon when we scope — calm, calculated. Sun when we deliver — warm, creative. He owns no department; he owns the story, the quality, and your single throat to choke.

BACK-ENDThe Orangutan — strategic data insight

The Orangutan

Strategic Data Insight

The sage. Before anyone writes a word or lifts a camera, he digs — who this market really is, what angle actually lands. The copywriter directs from what he finds.

BACK-ENDThe Kingfisher — copywriting and strategy

The Kingfisher

Copywriting = Strategy

La plume. She is not "the copywriter" — she sets the brand direction and the whole strategy. Every leg of every project runs her plan.

BACK-ENDThe Chameleon — graphic design

The Chameleon

Graphic Design

Takes the strategy and gives it skin. Whatever the brand needs to look like, he becomes — and everything he makes feeds straight into video.

BACK-END · LOCAL THREADSThe Spider — social media and community

The Spider

Social Media & Community

Weaves inside the communities — tending what ships, warming who's near. The best Spiders talk to everyone, so they double as salespeople.

BACK-ENDThe Mole — digital infrastructure

The Mole

Digital Infrastructure

Sites, sales funnels, the plumbing that connects everything. You never see him. Every handoff on your project travels through his tunnels.

FRONT-END · FLIES TO YOUThe Eagle — videographer

The Eagle

Videographer

Sent on location. Walks your floor, wears your lanyard, shoots briefed to the shot — so the expensive flown-in days are execution, never exploration.

FRONT-END · FLIES TO YOUThe Parrot — photographer

The Parrot

Photographer

The second face you meet. On location beside the Eagle, catching what the campaign will stand on for a year.

BACK-END · NIGHT SHIFTThe Owl — video editing

The Owl

Video Editing

Edits while you sleep. Dubai wakes to finished cuts — the overnight turnaround is the product, not the excuse.

BACK-END · NIGHT SHIFTThe Bat — sound engineering

The Bat

Sound Engineering

Everything you hear. Works the same night shift as the Owl, in the dark, where sound is made.

BACK-END · LOUDThe Dolphin — sales and prospecting

The Dolphin

Sales & Prospecting

Swims the oceans of people. Setters book, closers sign, always on the phone, already moving toward the next deal while the pack delivers this one.

The Eagle you meet was never the whole product.
The machine behind him never leaves the den.
See how the machine runs ↓
04 · Front of house, back of den

A headhunter finds you a person and disappears. Manaki finds the person, forges them, and never lets go of the machine behind them.

FRONT-END — THE ONES WE HAND OVER

The Eagle and the Parrot fly to Dubai, walk your floor, feel like dedicated hires. That's the handshake, and it's what a funded startup actually wants to buy: a vetted body on site, fast.

BACK-END — THE ONES WE KEEP

Owl, Bat, Chameleon, Mole, Orangutan, Kingfisher: remote pods at an EU cost base, billed inside retainers — gross margin 60–70%est. versus the 30–40% a locally-staffed agency ekes out. The front-end is the handshake; the back-end is the toll gate.

Work doesn't flow through departments; it flows through a relay, and each animal runs one leg:

Dolphin → Orangutan → Kingfisher → Chameleon → Eagle + Parrot → Owl + Bat → ship
— the Spider tending what ships, the Mole's tunnels under every handoff —

Data before opinion. Strategy before pixels. Pixels before cameras. By the time a camera rolls, the project has survived data, strategy and design — you pay for the last two legs and get the compounding of all seven. Every arrow is a named handoff between two named animals: every dropped baton has an owner, by construction.

Even the timezone is a feature: the Owl edits while Dubai sleeps, and Dubai wakes to finished cuts.

See what the forge has shipped ↓
05 · The portfolio is the exhaust

Watched work. Signed by the wolf.

Every project here was made by named animals we watched at the anvil — the deliverable and the witnessed record of who made it, how fast, under what pressure. Year one we point at our own films. Year three, at shipped client launches with named animals attached. A rival can copy this pitch in a week; nobody can copy years of witnessed deliveries at any price.

A heavy golden wax seal stamped onto an open portfolio, surrounded by witness marks confirming the work
witnessed & signed 🐺 — every delivery carries the seal

Just raised? Buy the wedge.

Investor-ready brand + site in 10 days. Fixed price, $8–25Kest., 50% upfront — small enough to be an impulse buy, sharp enough to prove the machine. Meet the Eagle in your office and the finished cut in your inbox before your competitors finish their agency shortlist.

Start in 10 days — Talk to Erwin
06 · Agency → App → More Manakis

First as hands, then as protocol.

The Manaki app says: nothing moves until someone trusts someone — and will sell certified, witnessed proof to the world. The Agency is that thesis practiced on ourselves first, manually, profitably. Every animal proven in our forge earns a record witnessed by the wolf — their first passport stamps for the world the app is building. The Agency's cash funds the app; the app's protocol multiplies what the Agency did by hand.

Same wolf. Same flame. Same law, at three scales:
a pack, then a map, then a world that can check what's real.
Discover the Manaki app →
07 · The only fully warm frame

Three doors into the den.

For A-players

Come prove it in the forge.

We pay for your first fire, we witness your work, and your record is yours for life. No CV theater — just wood, flame, and a wolf who signs what he saw.

Knock — Talk to Erwin
For funded founders

Buy the wedge.

Investor-ready brand + site in 10 days, fixed price, 50% upfront. Velocity you can trust — content shipping next week, not a discovery workshop next quarter.

Start in 10 days — Talk to Erwin
For the team

Stand at the gate.

This is the ground floor of the whole staircase. Help close the first ten, forge the first pack — the people who build the first fire are named in every fire after.

Join the pack — Talk to Erwin
When day-birds land and night-birds rise,
the work moves warm through winter skies.
Each paw, each wing, one ember's glow —
I am the path. Now watch them go.
The Great Manak doesn't recruit. He watches the forge, and signs what he saw.
The Great Manak