Josh Lachkovic

I failed my first startup in 2021. It was a wine education DTC called Wine List, and at the time, it felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I grew up with no money and no safety net. Until my 30s I lived paycheck to paycheck. So when Wine List went under — we went from 6-months-till-break-even to 6-weeks-of-runway in one bad month — the fear wasn't just professional. It was existential. But one of my investors called me up afterwards and said something I'll never forget: "You've done it now. You've failed a company. And realised it doesn't f**king matter." He was right. Failing freed me. It stripped away the imposter syndrome, the identity I'd wrapped around being "a founder," and the fear that had made me avoid hard decisions when they mattered most. Before Wine List, I was first employee at Thriva, where I built the growth engine and acquired the first 100,000 customers. After Wine List, I spent two years consulting, coaching, and advising brands. I worked with 75 businesses ranging from billion-dollar exits like Hims through to first-time, pre-launch founders. I helped lots of brands scale growth through performance marketing, and kept noticing the same two things: → Growth had changed. Creative had become the single biggest lever in performance marketing. But every agency was either great at performance or great at creative. Nobody had married the two. → Every agency was staffed by agency people. Specialists, sure, but nobody who'd ever been in the weeds as a founder or operator. Nobody who knew what it felt like to watch your burn rate triple overnight and have to make decisions with imperfect data. So in 2023, I started Ballpoint: the growth agency I always wished existed when I was a founder and head of growth. We're now a team of 20. We've worked with 60+ brands. We've built paid social creative engines that started at £0 and now spend £400k per month. We've tripled CM3 for multi-million pound brands. And we've built the most incredible creative operations flywheel that at its fastest can go from idea to ad account in less than 24 hours. Half our team are creatives. Half are scientists. Left brain and right brain sat side by side. I write a weekly Substack on growth at https://read.earlystagegrowth.com. If you're a founder or operator scaling a consumer brand and want to talk growth, creative, or the messy reality of both — reach out. Go read Substack here https://read.earlystagegrowth.com/