Leadership
Who is actually behind this
Skayle was started by someone who spent years buying marketing badly and decided to learn why. This page says who runs the company, what he is accountable for, and how the work gets done.
The short version
One person, accountable, and specialists where they are needed
Skayle is founder-led. Zubair Afzal started it after years of buying marketing for businesses he owned and being disappointed by almost all of it, and he stays involved in the accounts rather than selling the work and handing it on.
Where a discipline genuinely needs a specialist — development, design, paid media buying at scale — a specialist does it. That is stated here rather than implied, because the alternative is letting a client assume a department exists and discovering later that it does not.
The person who sells you the work is the person who does it. That is only true while the company is small, and this page will change when it stops being true.
Accountability
What the founder is personally accountable for
These are not delegated. If one of them is wrong, there is one person to raise it with.
- Whether we take your work on at all, and saying so plainly when we should not
- The strategy call, and the diagnosis that comes out of it
- What is promised in a proposal, and making sure nothing in it is a claim we cannot support
- The editorial standard every page on this site is held to
- The delivery guarantee, and honouring it when we fall short of what we agreed
Questions
What people ask before booking
How many people work at Skayle?
It is founder-led, with specialists brought in for the disciplines a single person should not claim to cover — development, design, and paid media buying at scale.
That is deliberate rather than temporary. A small operation that turns down work it cannot move is more useful to a client than a large one that has payroll to cover, and the second model is why a lot of agency work gets sold to people who did not need it.
Will I deal with the person I meet on the first call?
Yes. The strategy call is with the founder, and he stays involved in the account rather than handing it to someone you have not met.
This is one of the few real advantages of a small firm, and it disappears the moment the firm grows past the point where it is true. If that changes, this page changes with it.
Why should I trust an agency this new?
Judge it on what it publishes rather than on how long it has existed. Every page on this site states what it will not promise, and the guarantee covers delivery of agreed work rather than results nobody can control.
If you want a firm with a decade of case studies, that is a reasonable thing to want and this is not it yet. What you get instead is direct access to the person accountable, and a straight answer about whether your situation is one we can actually help with.
What is the founder’s background?
Zubair Afzal studied at the University of Toronto and has founded and run businesses across several sectors. Skayle came out of buying marketing for those businesses and being disappointed by it repeatedly.
The full account is on his profile page, including why the experience of being a frustrated client shaped how this company works.
Talk to the person who would do the work
A strategy call is with the founder. If your situation is not one we can genuinely move, you will be told that on the call rather than after a proposal.
If we don't deliver the work we agreed to deliver for reasons within our control, you don't pay for the undelivered work. Read our guarantee
Last updated · Reviewed by Zubair Afzal