POD 55 - Building a Lean Studio in a Bloated Industry - with Ben Hammond

In this episode, I sit down with Ben Hammond, founder of Shrink Studio, a Webflow premium partner based in London. Ben works with venture-backed B2B teams at seed, Series A, and Series B. We talk about why so much of the agency world has become bloated, what a lean studio actually looks like in practice, and how Ben structures Shrink around discovery, development, and optimization. We get into senior-only teams, sprint-based development, why frameworks are starting points and not religion, his take on MAST and component-first builds, and how he thinks about handover. We also cover his outbound process for finding venture-backed clients, how AI is changing the agency model, and where AEO fits into the work going forward.

Check out Ben:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bybenhammond/
https://www.shrink.studio/

Also mentioned:
Corey Moen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreymoen/
Alessia Sannazzaro - @ale_sannazzaro
Dan Foster - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfoster29/
Uroš Mikić - @UrosMikicFlowNinja
Episode with Nathan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4SjwOYYps8
Episode with Mason - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0XxH4ZsXH0
MAST Framework - https://www.nocodesupply.co/mast/docs
Finsweet Attributes - https://finsweet.com/attributes
PostHog - https://posthog.com/