Over the past year, Ziken Labs has primarily focused on building: client work, internal projects, systems, and team structure. Rather than expanding quickly, 2025 was about consolidating experience and turning what we do into something more repeatable and sustainable.
During this period, Ziken also evolved as a team. Vincenzo Bellanova joined as the first official employee in Italy, becoming a key part of delivery coordination and operational continuity. Alongside this, we continued collaborating with occasional contributors, including Sara Czekaj, who supported design work for social media templates and blog content.
More recently, we began working with a new collaborator based in Egypt, marking the beginning of what could become Ziken’s first international execution layer. This collaboration may evolve into a talent hub in the MENA region, supporting both operational capacity and future expansion toward markets like the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
At the same time, Ziken continued building its own projects and brands. Over the years, we have developed initiatives such as Tungstenum, uTrending, Edropit, and more, each representing a different experiment in finance, marketing and content creation, fashion and community, or infrastructure. These projects remain early, but they reflect an important part of Ziken’s identity: building, not just delivering.
All of this is gradually shaping the next evolution of Ziken Labs.
We are beginning to think of Ziken not only as a marketing and digital studio, but as an umbrella ventures organization, where services, internal projects, and sub-brands can coexist under a shared operational system.
Part of this evolution will likely involve differentiating Ziken Labs from its service activity by introducing a dedicated marketing agency sub-brand focused purely on client delivery, while Ziken Labs increasingly becomes the container for ventures, experiments, and long-term initiatives.
At this stage, Ziken is evolving into the natural consequence of what we have been building, aligning with the underlying structure we were aiming for from the very beginning, even before it was fully explicit. And the focus remains clear: generate more revenue and evolve our organization toward a more scalable model, one that strengthens the core, expands execution capacity, and creates the conditions for ventures to grow sustainably over time.
Clients, projects, and what we learned so far
Now, a snapshot of where Ziken Labs stands today, based on what we’ve actually built and shipped so far, bringing together three angles: the types of clients we’ve supported, the recurring lessons that emerged across industries, and the proprietary projects we’ve been developing in parallel.
Clients
Our client work has spanned finance and tech ecosystems, professional services, local organizations, hospitality, and strategic partnerships. Across very different contexts, one theme stayed consistent: most growth challenges are downstream from weak digital foundations, such as unclear positioning, fragmented messaging, and websites that don’t function as real infrastructure.
Finance and tech projects
Over time, Ziken Labs has worked on several projects in finance, web3, and technology-driven environments: contexts where credibility, clarity, and execution discipline matter more than visibility alone.
Projects such as Trakx, Cyber Funded, PlasBit, and RouteMix involved supporting digital infrastructure, website positioning, product communication, and content structure aligned with complex products and technical audiences. These collaborations pushed us to think less in terms of campaigns and more in terms of operational layers: the website, the content structure, and the narrative that connects product and user.
Working in finance and tech also reinforced one of our core learnings: when products are complex, communication must become simpler, not louder.
Local businesses and community organizations
Another important part of Ziken’s work involved organizations where trust, clarity, and consistency are more important than scale.
Here, we collaborated with organizations such as Studio Carrieri (accounting firm), the Rotary Club Roma Ostia Casal Palocco (nonprofit service organization), hospitality and travel projects like Riad Nomad House, Riad Ramadan House, Dar Enouina and Trust Travel Hurghada.
These projects strengthened our ability to build a reliable digital presence in environments where communication must feel authentic and grounded in real-world relationships. Often, the goal was not growth at all costs, but coherence, aligning digital identity with the people and organizations behind the website.
B2B partnerships
Ziken’s work has also grown through collaboration with other organizations.
Partnerships with Global Brand Communication (marketing and communication agency) and NeuroTech (a technology-oriented agency) represent a different dimension of our activity, one based on shared delivery rather than direct client relationships.
In these collaborations, Ziken contributed execution capacity, systems thinking, and digital infrastructure as part of broader projects. These partnerships reinforce an important aspect of how we operate: Ziken does not grow only through direct client acquisition, but also through strategic collaboration with teams that share compatible workflows and standards.
What we did and what we learned
Over time, the work converged into a few simple lessons, the same ones that kept repeating regardless of industry.
Execution scales through systems
- Repeatable workflows beat one-off custom delivery
- Clear handoffs and ownership reduce friction and protect quality
- Coordination becomes a multiplier as projects increase
Websites are the growth foundation
- Most “marketing problems” start from a weak structure, UX, or unclear hierarchy
- Shipping fast and iterating creates more momentum than waiting for perfect launches
- Credibility-driven design matters in finance, professional services, and nonprofits
SEO is infrastructure, not only content volume
- SEO works when built as architecture (intent, clusters, internal linking), not just articles
- Embedding SEO from day one in the website build compounds over time
- The right briefs and outlines reduce waste and improve consistency
Positioning > tactics
- Many requests are symptoms of unclear positioning
- Complex products require simpler narratives, not louder messaging
- Consistency across website, content, and social is often the real differentiator
AI is leverage, not autopilot
- AI compresses research and drafting time, but judgment remains human
- Templates and checklists create consistency and speed across the team
The next system is acquisition
- The main bottleneck to solve now is building a predictable client acquisition engine
Proprietary projects and ventures
Alongside client delivery, we have continuously built our own initiatives, not as side distractions, but as a second operating track. These projects give us a space to test ideas, build internal capabilities, develop reusable systems, and explore directions that could eventually become standalone ventures. Some are core bets, others are intentionally lightweight experiments, but they all reflect the same mindset: build, document, iterate, compound.
Core ventures
Tungstenum
Tungstenum is a research and strategy design project focused on index methodologies and systematic allocation approaches. Tungstenum is where we explore frameworks, data structures, and narratives around strategy building, with a long-term vision of becoming a structured environment for designing, documenting, and distributing index strategies.
uTrending
uTrending is an influencer marketing platform built around the idea of making creators easier to find, evaluate, and activate. uTrending sits at the intersection of marketplace logic and trend intelligence, aiming to connect brands with relevant creators through more structured discovery, profiling, and selection.
Edropit
Edropit is a streetwear marketplace dedicated to Italian brands, blending commerce with editorial and community. Edropit is not only about product listings, it’s about curating brands, building taste, and shaping a recognizable identity within the Italian streetwear ecosystem. It represents our interest in community-driven platforms and consumer-facing brand building.
Exploratory projects
BesTripTips
A travel discovery concept designed to test content formats, curation systems, and lightweight distribution. It’s a space to experiment with how travel information can be packaged in a more useful and modern way, without the overhead of a full-scale travel product.
The Finzen
A financial education and content exploration initiative. The Finzen is a sandbox for testing how financial concepts, market narratives, and educational content can be communicated clearly and consistently, with a focus on structure, accessibility, and long-term compounding content assets.
What comes next: Scaling revenue, team, and our venture structure
After years of focusing on execution, systems, and learning through client work, the next phase for Ziken Labs is becoming clearer. The direction is not defined by adding more projects, but by making the core stronger and more scalable, so that future initiatives can grow on a stable foundation.
The priority for the coming period is simple: scale revenue, expand execution capacity, and evolve the organization gradually, without forcing structural changes before the underlying systems are ready.
Scaling revenue through clearer services
One of the main objectives is turning client acquisition into a more predictable process. Until now, most opportunities have emerged organically through networks, collaborations, or inbound requests. The next step is building a more structured acquisition layer.
This means clarifying and consolidating what Ziken already does best into repeatable service systems. Today, our work spans multiple disciplines, including:
- website building as digital infrastructure (UI/UX, performance, credibility)
- SEO as a long-term growth layer (content architecture, internal linking, intent-based production)
- positioning and communication clarity (messaging, narrative, structure)
- graphic design and brand assets (visual identity, social templates, campaign assets)
- social media execution (content planning, publishing workflows, community support)
- paid media and ads (Google Ads, Meta Ads, campaign structure, creative testing)
- conversion and funnel assets (landing pages, lead flows, on-site UX improvements)
- tracking and analytics (GA4, pixels, conversion tracking, reporting foundations)
- automation and AI-assisted workflows (research, production acceleration, operational leverage)
Rather than expanding the range of services, the focus is on making what we already do more repeatable, understandable, and easier to sell, with clearer packages, clearer outcomes, and a workflow that scales.
Consistency in acquisition becomes the foundation for everything else.
Expanding the team and execution capacity
Another key step is gradually expanding execution capacity without losing coordination and quality.
The team has already begun evolving:
- with Vincenzo as the first official employee in Italy
- with occasional collaborators supporting specific tasks
- and with the new collaboration in Egypt, which may become the starting point of a distributed execution model
This international collaboration is not about outsourcing, but about building a structure where:
- strategy and coordination remain centralized
- execution capacity can grow across regions
- collaboration becomes more scalable over time
If this distributed execution model, full-remote, proves sustainable, it could become the first talent hub connected to the MENA region, supporting both operations and future market exploration in countries like UAE and Saudi Arabia. Looking further ahead, a similar model could eventually extend toward South Asia, creating another layer of distributed execution capacity.
For now, the focus remains on making the first step work well.
Evolving the model without forcing it
As Ziken grows, one thing is becoming obvious: we’ve been operating as more than a marketing studio for a while. Client delivery, internal ventures, partnerships, and experimentation already coexist, the only missing part is making this structure more explicit and easier to scale.
What we are moving toward is not a sudden rebrand, but a clearer separation of functions:
- a dedicated layer focused purely on client delivery (websites, SEO systems, design, social execution, operations)
- and a broader container where ventures and long-term initiatives can evolve without being mixed into day-to-day service operations
This is less about “creating a holding” and more about reducing noise: making it easier for clients to understand what we sell, and easier internally to protect focus while we keep building.
Focus: scale the engine, then widen the scope
The short-term focus is not structural change and not expansion for the sake of it.
It’s building a stronger engine. That means:
- a more predictable acquisition system
- clearer and more repeatable service offers
- more execution capacity without losing quality
- stronger internal coordination
When this engine becomes stable, everything else becomes easier: new ventures can grow with less friction, the team can scale without chaos, and expansion into regions like MENA (and later South Asia) becomes a practical, consequential decision rather than a risky leap.
For now, the rule is simple: strengthen what compounds, before adding what increases complexity.
Fundraising: not yet
As Ziken evolves toward a structure that includes ventures alongside services, the question of fundraising naturally comes up. For now, the answer is simple: not yet.
Despite having received some early proposals and expressions of interest, this doesn’t feel like the right moment to bring external capital into the equation. At this stage, funding would likely create more distraction than acceleration. The service side of Ziken is still the primary source of revenue and learning, and our internal ventures are still in the exploration and validation phase. Building stronger execution systems, stabilizing client acquisition, and increasing operational capacity are more valuable than raising capital prematurely.
We’re also genuinely proud of what we’ve built so far through bootstrapping: growing through work, discipline, and iteration, without shortcuts. That independence shaped how we operate, the standards we keep, and the culture we’re trying to build.
Fundraising may become relevant later, especially for specific ventures that develop strong traction, clear positioning, and independent growth potential. Projects like Tungstenum, for example, could eventually reach a stage where external capital makes sense.
But today, the priority remains different: build traction, build systems, build optionality.
Capital should amplify something that already works, not compensate for what is still forming.
For Ziken Labs, this means continuing to grow organically, using services as the engine that sustains experimentation and venture development.
Closing letter from executives
To everyone who has worked with us, supported us, followed our projects, or simply watched from a distance: thank you.
Ziken Labs is still early, and we’re not pretending otherwise. But what we are building is becoming clearer each month: not a traditional marketing agency, and not yet a full venture studio, but a system designed to hold both execution and long-term building under the same roof.
2024 and 2025 were years of foundations. We delivered, learned, improved our workflows, and started shaping a team structure that can actually scale. We kept building our proprietary projects, not because they were convenient, but because that builder mindset is what defines Ziken at its core.
Now, the next phase is about strengthening the engine: more predictable acquisition, clearer service systems, more execution capacity, and a team model that compounds rather than slows down. We will keep approaching structural evolution with the same discipline we apply to product and delivery: no forced rebrands, no rushed transitions, just the next logical step once the systems are ready.
We’re also proud of what we’ve built through bootstrapping, even when outside proposals came in. Independence has shaped our standards, our pace, and the culture we want to protect.
If there’s one principle guiding us right now, it’s simple: we want to earn the right to scale. Revenue first, systems first, execution first, so that ventures can grow on solid ground, not on optimism.
Thank you for being part of this journey, in any form.
We’ll keep building, consistently, and with intent.
Fabrizio & Luca
