People love an origin story. They want the neat version — the lightbulb moment, the garage startup energy, the “I knew from that moment this was going to work.” I'm going to be honest with you: ours isn't that.
Mosaic started because I was tired. Genuinely, bone-deep tired. I'd been working at agencies in Hong Kong and Singapore for about six years — good agencies, big clients, interesting work. But I was always the “diversity hire” in the room. Not literally. Nobody said that to my face. But I could feel it. I was the person they brought into pitches when the client wanted to reach “multicultural audiences.” The rest of the time, I was just... there.
The Actual Moment
There wasn't a dramatic walkout. What happened was more mundane and, honestly, more depressing. I was in a meeting where we were putting together a creator roster for a major campaign — big fashion brand, pan-Asian focus. And the creative director said, and I quote: “We need at least two brown faces in there. The client specifically asked.”
Brown faces. Like a checkbox. Like a colour swatch on a mood board.
I didn't say anything in the meeting. I should have. I went home that night and called Marcus — he was at a different agency at the time — and said something like “I think I need to start something.” And he said, “Yeah, I think so too.”
That was it. No business plan, no market research, no investor deck. Just two people who were fed up having the same conversations and getting the same non-results.
The First Six Months Were Rough
I don't talk about this much because it's a bit embarrassing. But the first version of Mosaic was not good. We positioned ourselves as a “diverse influencer agency” and immediately attracted brands who wanted to tick a box. The exact thing we were trying to get away from.
We'd get briefs that were essentially: “We need three South Asian creators for our Diwali campaign. Budget: terrible. Timeline: yesterday.” And because we needed the money, we'd take them. And the work was fine. But it wasn't what we'd set out to do. We were still the “diverse option” — just on our own headed paper now.
Marcus and I had a proper argument about it around month four. He thought we needed to take whatever work came in to survive. I thought we were building exactly the thing we'd left our old agencies to escape. We were both right, honestly. You can't be principled if you can't pay rent. But you also can't build something meaningful if you compromise on the fundamental thing from day one.
The Pivot That Saved Us
Sloane joined around month five. She'd been running talent management independently and we'd been circling each other for a while. She came in and basically said: “You're positioning this wrong. You're not a diverse agency. You're an agency that happens to deeply understand underserved communities because you're from them. Lead with the insight, not the identity.”
That reframe changed everything. We stopped saying “we can connect you with diverse creators” and started saying “we can connect you with the communities you're not reaching, and here's why you're not reaching them.” The shift was subtle but brands responded to it completely differently. Suddenly we weren't the diversity checkbox. We were the strategic partner.
Our first big campaign after the pivot was for a food delivery platform launching in London and Birmingham. They came to us because they'd tried running the same playbook they used in European markets and it flopped. We redesigned the entire creator strategy around local food culture — not “look at this app” but “this is how people actually eat here.” It did really well. That campaign is still one of our case studies.
What We Got Wrong (A Non-Exhaustive List)
Since this article is supposed to be honest, here's some things we messed up:
We undercharged for the first year. Badly. We were so grateful for the work that we didn't charge what it was worth. Marcus is still annoyed about this.
We tried to do everything ourselves. I was creative directing, project managing, doing admin, and answering emails at midnight. That's not sustainable and the work suffered. Hiring Maria to coordinate creator relationships was the best decision we made last year.
We assumed that being from these communities meant we automatically understood them all. We don't. I'm South Asian. My understanding of Caribbean creator culture is secondhand at best. We had to learn to hire people who knew things we didn't, and then actually listen to them.
We said yes to a couple of campaigns that, in hindsight, we should have walked away from. Brands that wanted the appearance of cultural sensitivity without actually committing to it. Taking those jobs earned us money but cost us credibility with some of the creators we work with. That trust is hard to rebuild.
Where We Are Now
Mosaic is two years old. We're a team of four — Sloane, Marcus, Maria, and me — operating from Hong Kong with creators across Asia, the Caribbean, and Europe. We're not a big agency and we might never be. That's okay. What we are is specific. We know exactly who we serve and why.
Some days it still feels precarious. I'd be lying if I said it didn't. But when I compare where we are now to that meeting room where someone asked for “two brown faces” — we're in a completely different universe. And the work is good. The work is really good. Not because we're diverse (God, I hate that word as a marketing adjective) but because we understand our audiences in a way that most agencies simply can't.
If you're reading this and you're thinking about starting something similar — do it. It will be harder than you think and take longer than you want. You will make every mistake I've just described and probably some new ones. But the alternative is sitting in someone else's meeting room, being someone else's checkbox. And life's too short for that.
Amani J. is the Founder and Creative Director of Mosaic Collective. This is the most honest thing she's written for the website and she's already slightly regretting it.