BUSINESS STAGE
Find the right service for each business stage.
BUSINESS MODEL
Find the right service for you per business model.
ABOUT THE TEAM

OFF THE RECORD

We are a strategic partner for fast-growing digital brands

We saw an evolvement in digital marketing over the past years, where the word 'growth' was a quick fix for all things new. In the upcoming years, startups and their founders must adapt to shift their businesses toward profitability. With investors, board members, and VC's monitoring unit economics much closer, becoming profitable per customer/order is becoming the new benchmark.

Growing your brand at all costs without a sustainable flywheel is rapidly dying and will soon become a marketing stigma. Product-led growth is a company-wide responsibility and, therefore, should be at the core of the company and be cheered for by C-level management.

The first step in this evolution is separating departments and internal business silos. A brand that wants to be a product-led business needs internal alignment around the metrics and numbers that drive sustainable growth, such as customer lifetime value, engagement, and retention.

In addition, making data-driven decisions based on user behavior is vital to product-led growth companies. Instead, everything a brand does today will become the shared responsibility of all people involved in core product-led roles, from sales & marketing to development. We foresee that 'growth' will soon be stripped down from job titles.

Growth is here to stay, but it will dissolve into digital marketing in the next few years. Because if the word growth needs to be in explicitly, what's the alternative, right?

We help startups scale and expand farther than their product-market-fit ambitions to stay ahead. Because what got you here won't get you there.

founders

Bas Prass
MD & Partner at ACE
Dusty van Steekelenburg
STRATEGY Director & Partner at ACE

Over the past 10+ years, Bas founded multiple businesses that helped Europe's hottest startups grow and coached hundreds of founders.Within the agency he's responsible for our vision, incoming business and company culture.


As employee #1, Dusty joined the bureau on the very first day. Starting as Growth consultant he grew towards partner position over the years.He's responsible for all our client engagements, product & service strategies and gives most of our workshops.

Founded in 2016

OUR STORY

How we started one of the first growth agencies in Europe, won an award from TechCrunch as one of the ten best growth agencies in the world, and eventually joined ACE, the new breed network.

September 2015
Bas Prass and Bram Kanstein started working together as two freelancers with aligned expertise (Growth & Brand Positioning) to see if they could join forces as a duo at clients.
January 2016
Bas Prass (our founder) met Dusty van Steekelenburg during the first batch of The Talent Institute, an education and learning program where Bas was the Lead Expert on Growth. Dusty was among the first (ever) students to participate in the program.
September 2016
After the program, Dusty was looking for a new adventure and told Bas that he was not entirely happy in his journey at his current employer. They met shortly after for drinks, and Bas pitched his new idea to start a bureau that would jump at the new wave regarding marketing, product, and data.

Dusty joined Off The Record on the very first day as employee number one in the role of a Growth Marketer.
January 2017
We have been working out of our first office for a few months, a church in the center of Amsterdam
June 2017
Our team has been growing, and we are officially away for the week and enjoying our first international team trip to Spain 🇪🇸
February 2018
We were growing out of our current office and moved to a new home at one of the beautiful canals in Amsterdam. With 200m2, we have plenty of space to grow the team, hold applicant interviews, and host client drinks on the rooftop.
January 2020
TechCrunch awarded our bureau the nomination as “one of the best growth marketing agencies in the world,” mainly because of our unique approach towards clients with our build-in ‘train-and-transfer’ approach.
April 2021
After many meetings, sleepless nights, and deep conversations about the future of the business, we joined ACE and sold the agency. Fortunately, the entire team stays to lead Off The Record to new heights and focuses on integrating with the other bureaus in the network.
September 2022
We started working together in the new ACE office in Amsterdam’s Houthavens, surrounded by 250+ colleagues. In our 3-floor building, with 4500m2 of room for inspiration, creativity, and knowledge spill-over, we are finally ’coming home.
Our team

Our values

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Faucibus ante velit nunc morbi pretium. Ut nullam dolor, pulvinar proin viverra ullamcorper ac, eget.

We're a distributed team taking full advantage of what the internet has to offer. 💻 🤝 🌴 ⛰️ 🌆 🥳 🏄 🚌 🗺️

😊

Humbleness > Bragging

We help clients based on our truth and expertise. If things go well, we credit others. If sh*t hits the fan, we take the blame and try harder.

🤝

People > Profit

We aren't only in business for our good or profits. We’re in business to craft meaningful relationships with whoever is in business too.

👨‍💻

Action > Talk

Ideas are cheap, execution is everything. Without some lean & mean experimentation your business is just a bunch of assumptions.

🌱

Value > Revenue

Optimising for revenue is short-sighted. Revenue is a by-product of value. We love being a part of something bigger than ourselves.

💯

Great > Good

Often small teams see each other as family. We don’t, since family is more important than work. We identify us as a sports team; always improve.

🤩

Passion > Job Description

Growth is in our DNA and we are flexible when it comes to execute stuff that matters. Therefore there's never a dull moment.

MEET THE PEOPLE BEHIND OFF THE RECORD

Contact us

Do you want to stay ahead?

We partner with ambitious brands, big and small. Our core expertise lies around marketplaces, mobile apps, eCommerce and SaaS.

Get in touch today!

We speak fluent data, but we're also very keen to have a chat about your MVP, go-to-market (GTM) strategy or scale ambitions.

Get in touch

Browse our services

We do more than we can list in this small box, but our core services are a blend between product, marketing and data.

Our services