Your Marketing Team is Bleeding R2 870 000
This Quarter.
Here’s Exactly Where. And How to Stop It.
Most SA tech scale-ups stall between R20M and R200M ARR.Not because the product is wrong, but because no-one is runningenough experiments fast enough to find what actually movesthe number. We fix that.
Realexperiments.Actualresults.
Experiment Engine
One North Star.
Every channel.
Every experiment.
Tell UPLVL your growth challenge.
Eight purpose-built agents run 30 experiments across paid, organic, email, activation, retention, and referral simultaneously. What wins in one channel compounds into every other.
The Problem
Why Traditional Agencies Fail Tech Scale-Ups
We spent 20 years at the world’s best agencies. Here’s what we learned,
and why we built something better.
| Enterprise Agencies | Typical Growth Agencies | UPLVL AAARRR 2.0 |
|---|---|---|
| ✗6-month brand campaigns | ✗Only do paid ads | ✓30 experiments/Sprint across all 6 funnel stages |
| ✗R500K+ minimum retainers | ✗Copy-paste US playbooks | ✓R45K Sprint: results in 30 days |
| ✗3–5 experiments per quarter | ✗No systematic approach | ✓Ex-Ogilvy/VML/Publicis + 8 purpose-built agents |
| ✗Results measured in 'brand lift' | ✗Disappear when things get hard | ✓Revenue metrics only: no vanity stats |
| ✗Junior teams on your budget | ✗Can't handle complexity | ✓Kill losers in 14 days. Scale winners in 72h. |
| ✗Zero agility | ✗Juniors posing as seniors | ✓You own the playbook. Always. |
“We learned what works at R100M+ scale: Coca-Cola, Samsung, Heineken.
Then we asked: what if we rebuilt that systematic approach with 8 purpose-built agents, running 30 experiments per Sprint for companies that actually need to grow? That’s AAARRR 2.0. That’s UPLVL.”
The Framework
The Reason Your Growth Stalls (And How We Fix It)
Most growth efforts target one part of the funnel at a time. You fix acquisition,
but churn kills the gains. You fix retention, but awareness is thin. Each fix creates a new leak. AAARRR 2.0 runs all six stages simultaneously: 30 experiments per Sprint, scored by impact, coordinated by 8 purpose-built agents.
AAARRR 1.0 Human Era | AAARRR 2.0 Agent Era | |
|---|---|---|
| Funnel coverage | Work one stage at a time | All 6 stages run simultaneously |
| Experiments | 5–15 per month | 30 per Sprint |
| Approach | React to what happened | Predict what will happen |
| Knowledge | Lives in your team's heads | 8 agents, compound across every Sprint |
| New client start | Start from zero | From every previous experiment |
| Reporting | Monthly | Real-time signal detection |
The Compounding Effect
Your next 90 days will either compound or stall.
Our Background
Trained at the
World’s Best Agencies. Now Building for South Africa’s Best Scale-Ups.
We spent 20 years building campaigns for Coca-Cola, Samsung, Heineken, and other Fortune 500 brands at Ogilvy, Publicis, VML.
We learned what works at R100M+ scale.
Then we asked one question: what if every growth principle we proved at enterprise scale could run automatically, across your entire AAARRR funnel, every single month? The answer is 8 purpose-built agents, AAARRR 2.0,
and the UPLVL Experiment Engine.
This is what
30 experiments looks like.
8 purpose-built agents. All 6 AAARRR stages.
Running in parallel, every Sprint.
INTEL surfaces your highest-leverage opportunities
Scans competitor funnels, buying signals, and market shifts. Builds your experiment backlog before Day 1.
STRAT designs 30 experiments across all 6 AAARRR stages
Not just paid ads. Awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, referral, revenue, all running in parallel.
EXEC launches every test.
ANALYST tracks every rand.
Kill losers in 14 days. Scale winners in 72 hours. Every result logged with ROI impact and board-ready output.
The Outcome Gap
Why Tech Scale-Ups Choose UPLVL
Over Traditional Agencies
The outcome gap is real. Here’s what it costs you to do this without UPLVL.
| Traditional Agencies | UPLVL AAARRR 2.0 |
|---|---|
| ✗6-month brand campaigns | ✓30-day Sprint: first results by Week 3 |
| ✗3–5 experiments per quarter | ✓30 experiments per Sprint |
| ✗Results in Month 6–12 | ✓Signal by Week 3. Scale by Week 6. |
| ✗R500K+ minimum retainers | ✓R45K Sprint. Prove it first. |
| ✗Junior teams learning on your budget | ✓8 purpose-built agents + UPLVL strategist |
| ✗One funnel stage at a time | ✓All 6 AAARRR stages simultaneously |
| ✗Vague metrics (brand lift) | ✓Revenue, North Star Metric, experiment win rate |
| ✗Your account gets handed to a junior | ✓ANALYST monitors results. REPORT delivers every Monday. |
20 Years of Experiments
Every Lesson Now Lives in Our Agents.
What we built for Coca-Cola, Samsung, and Heineken wasn’t just campaigns. It was a pattern library of what works, what fails, and why. Every one of those lessons is now embedded in our 8-agent system.
Entertainment
Ayra Starr x Coca-Cola
40M streams, 9:1 organic-to-paid ratio
Borrowed distribution converts at 5-10x cold traffic.
FMCG
Coke x Share A Coke Is Back
A decade-defining campaign, reimagined for Gen Z
Personalisation turns a commodity into a name you want to be seen holding.
FMCG
Eskort
15% sales uplift on a commodity sausage brand
Cultural insight beat a 5x media budget. R1M paid, R5M earned.
FMCG
Med-Lemon x Bra Shakes
Broke into 18-34 without alienating core market
Authentic native content beat scripted brand ads 4:1 on sentiment lift.
FMCG
Grand-Pa x Stick Pack
New format, new buyer, new purchase occasion
Format is a growth lever. The same product in a different package unlocked an entirely new buyer.
FMCG
Ultramel x Custard Creations
Community-led referral became the highest-LTV channel
Brands that activate existing community before scaling paid acquisition compound their growth.
Free Resources
Free Growth Playbooks for SA Tech Scale-Ups
We're documenting everything we learn and giving it away for free. Every case study, every experiment result, every framework we've built, documented and shared. Because the best way to prove the system works is to show you exactly how it works.
How Yoco Built a Billion-Rand Fintech by Ignoring Every Banking Convention
While traditional banks spent decades rejecting informal traders as "unbankable", Yoco quietly built a payments empire worth over R1.5 billion by targeting precisely this abandoned market segment.
View More
The Liquid Death Playbook: How to Build a $1.4B Empire by Making Water Look Dangerous
Forget everything you know about beverage marketing. Liquid Death turned water, the world's most boring product, into a $1.4B punk rock empire.
View More
The Shopify Logistics Rebellion: 100 to 100K Orders
Most e-commerce brands think they need Amazon-level infrastructure to scale logistics. They're dead wrong. Shopify proved this by helping 4.36 million merchants process $444 billion in GMV without owning a single warehouse.
View MoreQuestions scale-up leaders ask us.
Your next 90 days will either compound or stall.
The difference is 30 experiments.
Most SA tech scale-ups are still running 1–2 experiments per month.
Sprint clients run 30. By Month 3 they’ve tested 90 hypotheses and know exactly what moves their number.
Growth Calculator
60 seconds. Your
funnel diagnosed.
- Free AI analysis of your entire AAARRR funnel
- Top 3 experiments to run this month
- Quantified opportunity (in Rands, not percentages)
- Which of our 8 agents would run each test
Free Growth Audit
4-hour agent analysis. Zero cost.
- We run 6 agents across your full funnel
- You get a 15-slide deck with your specific gaps
- Top 5 experiments we'd run in Month 1
- No obligation. No pitch. Just insight.
The Sprint: R45,000
30 experiments. 30 days. Real results.
- 30 experiments designed, scored, and launched
- All 6 AAARRR stages covered
- First results by Week 3
- Sprint fee credited to Month 1 if you continue
The Retainer: R150,000/month
30 experiments per Sprint. Every Sprint.
- 30 experiments per Sprint, every Sprint
- 8 purpose-built agents across all 6 AAARRR stages
- Winners scaled within 72 hours of confirmation
- Most clients make retainer fee back in Month 1
Or email us: hello@uplvl.tech. No pressure. No sales script. Just value.