The problem
Markster was born from burnout
After a decade in B2B services, I'd seen the pattern too many times. Smart founders bleeding cash on "expert" agencies. Paying $5K, $10K, $25K monthly retainers. Getting beautiful strategy decks instead of actual customers. Watching failed dropshippers rebrand as "growth hackers" and charge $500 for blog posts written by offshore VAs.
Here's the ugly truth: The agency model isn't broken. It's a scam. Built to maximize billable hours and margins, not drive client revenue.
I know because I was part of it. We operated agencies ourselves. Saw how the sausage was made. The 500% markups. The junior staff doing senior work. The "6-month ramp-ups" that bought time to figure things out.
The burnout wasn't from hard work, it was from participating in a system that fundamentally doesn't serve clients.
But here's what I also learned: Marketing isn't mysterious. It's math + psychology + execution. Find the right people, say the right things, measure what matters. And execution? That's what AI does better at scale than any human team ever could.
Today, we're on a mission to democratize enterprise-grade marketing for 10,000 service businesses by 2030. Not through more hustle or guru tactics, but through solid frameworks, battle-tested strategies, and AI infrastructure that actually works.
Because every founder deserves marketing that makes money, not excuses.
- Ivan Ivanka, Founder of Markster
.jpg)
