From Building an Agency to Building the Technology Behind It

I’m Carolina Monestel, founder and CEO of Carazo Creative, an independent creative and digital marketing agency I founded in 2021. My background spans brand strategy, creative, digital marketing, ecommerce, and growth, and today I lead the agency while also overseeing the development of Cora, our proprietary AI-powered SaaS platform. A large part of my work now is focused on how we can use technology to make the agency more efficient without losing the judgment, creativity, and relationships that make the work valuable.

I started Carazo Creative in 2021 much more quietly than I would launch a business today. There wasn’t a big campaign or a perfectly planned announcement. I had already built my career working across beauty, fashion, luxury, and consumer brands, so I started by letting people in my network know that I was building something of my own and was available to work directly with brands. The business started with one client, who is still with us today. From there, it grew largely through relationships, referrals, and word of mouth. One project would lead to another, or someone I had worked with would introduce me to someone else. Over time, what began as a side project developed into an agency that has now worked with more than 40 brands.

I think one misconception about running an agency is that the founder’s job is primarily creative or client-facing. In reality, as the company grows, you spend a significant amount of time thinking about operations, systems, technology, finances, hiring, and where your own time is actually most valuable. For me, one of the biggest shifts was realizing that my job wasn’t to prove that I could do everything. It was to build a company where everything didn’t require me. 4. What part of your journey were you unprepared for? What caught you off guard? I was unprepared for how easily being useful can become a bottleneck. As the agency grew, I became involved in more accounts, more decisions, and more parts of the business. The problem was that I became too useful in too many places. That forced me to think differently about how the company operated. Instead of simply asking how I could work faster, I started looking at which parts of the work actually required a person and which parts could be handled more efficiently by technology. That thinking eventually contributed to the development of Cora.

I was unprepared for how easily being useful can become a bottleneck. As the agency grew, I became involved in more accounts, more decisions, and more parts of the business. The problem was that I became too useful in too many places. That forced me to think differently about how the company operated. Instead of simply asking how I could work faster, I started looking at which parts of the work actually required a person and which parts could be handled more efficiently by technology. That thinking eventually contributed to the development of Cora.

I’m proud that the first client who trusted me when I started Carazo Creative is still a client today. The company has changed considerably since 2021, but maintaining relationships as we’ve grown means a lot to me. I’m also proud that a problem we experienced inside the agency led us to build something entirely new. Cora started as technology designed to make our own work more efficient. Seeing it develop from an internal solution into a SaaS product that can have a life beyond the agency has been one of the most exciting parts of building the company.

Don’t assume you need to have the final version of the business figured out before you begin. Carazo Creative today is not exactly the company I imagined when I started it in 2021, and I think that is a good thing. Pay attention to the problems that keep showing up as you grow. Sometimes the most interesting opportunities come from solving something you initially thought was simply an operational problem.

Building Cora has changed how I think about the future of Carazo Creative and about AI more broadly. There is a lot of pressure right now for companies to automate as much as possible, but I don’t think the companies that use AI best will necessarily be the ones that automate the most. The more useful question for us has been where technology genuinely improves the work and where human involvement is still part of what makes the work good. That distinction is becoming an increasingly important part of how we build both the agency and the technology behind it.