Make Us Proud agency merges into tech consultancy YLD
Make Us Proud, a boutique digital product design agency, has merged into London-based digital and software consultancy YLD.
Established in 2013, Make Us Proud is a London-based agency that helps clients with services including digital design, website and app development, product development and digitising the customer experience. Since inception, Make Us Proud has served large corporates such as Canon, Joyent (now part of Samsung), Microsoft and Google, while also helping startups and mid-sized businesses.
“We started with a mission to demonstrate that great products are the result of brilliant technology teams working as close to the customer as possible. “Looking back at our work, we are proud to have enabled over £300 million in investment and exits for startups, and driving digital-led innovation at our clients,” said Anthony Mann, Make Us Proud’s founder.
At two of the firm’s client engagements (open cloud specialist Joyent and customer experiences technology provider Nexmo), Make Us Proud’s teams worked alongside consultants from YLD. The joint projects demonstrated how complementary the services of the two firms can be, as they teamed up to provide clients with a broader and more integrated offering.
Speaking of the synergies, Nuno Job, who founded YLD in 2013, said: “There was a clear match in our two approaches. YLD focuses on driving cutting-edge open source technologies within companies, creating platforms and services that enable improvement and innovation. The Make Us Proud teams consistently and diligently drives great design and implementation through technology. Working in tandem, we really believe that we can orchestrate real innovation and create some fundamental changes in today’s technological landscape.”
The joining of forces will see Make Us Proud founder Anthony Mann and the firm’s seven employees join YLD, while the unit has now become the product and design arm of digital consultancy YLD. Mann has joined the partnership of YLD and been named Chief Product Officer of YLD Labs, a subsidiary YLD company that focuses on ventures. The Make Us Proud brand will gradually be phased out, with go-to-market offerings taking on the YLD brand.
For YLD, the bolt-on takes its team to nearly 100 engineers, design thinkers and technology consultants. The move is part of the firm’s growth ambition – in its latest financial year, the digital consultancy nearly doubled its revenues. YLD works for large organisations including Conde Nast, Canon, The Economist, Trainline and Thomas Cook.
Earlier this month, US private equity group Carlyle announced it is exploring exiting its stake in UK-headquartered PA Consulting Group.
