Unusual Group Update: Six Partners In, a Seventh Coming, and the Model Taking Shape

Unusual Group officially launched at the start of October 2025.

That matters because we are early. But it also matters because the launch was not the start of the work. It was the moment we named and formalised a model we had already been building with agencies who wanted to scale properly, not just grow loudly.

This is a short update on where we are, what we’ve built so far, and why we’re being so deliberate about what comes next.

If you are on our radar or watching from the edge, thinking, “This might be for us,” this is the cleanest way to understand what Unusual is becoming.

Unusual exists because most mid-market agencies are stuck in the same loop.

They grow.
They hire.
They stack more services on top of a messy core.
They end up bigger, busier, and strangely more fragile.

That was true before AI. It is brutal now.

The industry is compressing. Delivery is changing. Talent expectations are shifting. Buyers are getting more selective about what they will pay a premium for.

So we built Unusual for the agency founders who want to win a different game.

Not just scale. Healthy scale.
Not just revenue. Strong margin.
Not just a founder-led engine. A business that can outlive the founder.

Since launching in October, we have six member agencies inside the group.

We also have a seventh coming in shortly with Only Science.

This first wave matters more than people realise. The early cohort sets the standard for what Unusual is meant to be. We are not pushing for volume. We are setting a bar.

Which brings me to the point most people miss.

Unusual is not open to everybody.

We are onboarding five to 10 high-potential agencies each year. Hand-selected. Carefully curated. We say no more than we say yes.

Not because we want to manufacture exclusivity for the sake of it.
Because the collective only works if the quality in the room stays high.

If you want a badge, we are not for you.
If you want infrastructure, operating discipline, and a repeatable path to scale and exit, we might be a good fit.

Most agencies do not join the main model on day one.

They start with sprints.

Projects, workshops, training sessions. Focused work where we can see how the agency thinks, how they execute, and what the real constraints are under the surface.

That’s how you assess fit properly.

It lets us align expectations, clarify goals, and understand whether there’s a shared direction around scale and eventual exit readiness.

You don’t build a high-performance platform by skipping the due diligence on both sides.

At the centre of Unusual is a 50-point proprietary methodology.

This is not a theory deck.
It is not general “advice”.

It’s a structured playbook built from repeated patterns across successful scale-to-exit journeys.

The reason this matters is simple.

Markets change.
Platforms change.
AI changes the mechanics of delivery.

But the fundamentals that buyers reward in agencies do not change.

They still value strong margin quality.
They still value revenue durability.
They still value leadership depth.
They still value clean data and low founder dependency.

The 50-point framework is designed to strengthen exactly those things. The unglamorous infrastructure that turns an agency into something genuinely defensible.

We are early in the formal Unusual journey. But we are not early in the work.

Over the last 12 months, including partner work that pre-dated the official October launch, we have already seen clear growth signals across agencies aligned with the model.

Altitude is up nearly 50% year on year.
Woya is up around 30%.
Friday Solved is up near 50%.
Yugen is up over 30%.

Across the group, we are seeing at least a 30%+ growth rate..

That’s not a coincidence. It’s the result of the same pattern repeating.

Clearer commercial structure.
Stronger operational discipline.
More deliberate leadership cadence.
More consistent decision-making.
Less chaos disguised as creativity.

The purpose of the model is not to chase growth at any cost. It’s to produce growth that holds up under pressure.

A collective is only as good as the working rhythm it creates.

In the weeks since launch, we’ve had teams and founders together at events, including the Friday Solved session a couple of weeks ago.

I also spent a week in London meeting our partners and spending time inside the agencies themselves.

That matters because this is not a remote commentary business. This is an operator-led platform.

Progress does not come from high-level slogans.

It comes from applied pressure in the right places.

We are still actively looking to invest in high-growth, high-performance agencies.

The keyword is performance.

We are not interested in businesses that want more momentum without more discipline. We are interested in founders who want to build something cleaner, stronger, and more buyable over time.

The kind of agencies that fit Unusual typically share a few signals:

They want scale that does not erode margin.
They want to reduce founder dependency.
They want a leadership bench that can carry weight.
They want systems that make growth easier, not harder.
They are genuinely open to building towards a higher quality version of the business, not just a bigger version of what they already have.

Unusual is not just about membership.

It’s a platform designed to solve a structural problem in the agency world.

Too many agencies plateau in the mid-market because they never build the infrastructure layer that premium valuation requires. They grow through force. Then they hit the ceiling that force creates.

We are building the opposite.

A curated collective.
A repeatable playbook.
Institutional-grade support where it matters.
And a founder-first approach that removes friction, not just adds advice.

Where to go next

If you want to explore our thinking without getting into the mechanics of partnership yet, start with the resources.

Browse the Resource Centre.
Use the frameworks to pressure test your own model.

If your agency fits the profile and you are serious about building an exit-grade machine, the right next step is simple.

Start with a sprint conversation.

Because Unusual is not about joining a group, it is about building the version of your business that the market will actually reward.