We now help companies from their first day

Ethikos Services now works with companies that are just starting, as well as with established ones. The offer is the one we make to every client: we build the systems a company runs on, and we run the work it would otherwise have to hire for. What changes is the moment we arrive. Instead of untangling years of quick fixes, we help a new company set things up properly from its first day.

Why the first months matter

A new company has little time, little money and no spare hands. The founders sell, invoice, answer clients, update the website and still have to build the product. Whatever gets set up in those months, usually in a hurry, tends to stay. A spreadsheet becomes the client database. A shared inbox becomes the onboarding process. A few years later, the company pays to undo it.

The opposite mistake is just as common: hiring too early. A full-time hire for admin or sales is a fixed cost that a young company may not be able to carry, for work that does not yet fill a week.

We sit between the two. The company gets systems built to grow with it, and people to run them, without taking on a team it cannot yet afford.

What we set up from day one

• A back office: clients, files, documents and tasks in one place, set up around the way the company actually works, for one company or several.
• A website and a digital identity: fast, clear and accessible, with the accounts and the domain in the company’s name from the start.
• Client onboarding: a digital intake, a CRM, standard documents and checklists, so every new client starts the same way.
• Business development: market mapping, target clients, a pipeline, proposals and follow-up.

Not every company needs all four at once. The brief decides what comes first.

What we run for you

Setting a system up is half the work. The other half is running it, every week. We run client onboarding and business development for our clients every month.

AI agents prepare the work: they draft, sort, check and remind. People decide, and a person always sends. Every agent action is logged, so the founders can see what was done, when and why.

How the work is organised

Every engagement starts with a brief: a written diagnosis of where the company stands, what is in scope, what is not, and the order of the work. Some briefs end with us saying that we are not the right fit, and why.

The work then moves in stages, and each stage ends with something the founders can check:

• Foundation: the business can be explained in three sentences that hold up to questions.
• Presence: a credible presence is online and measurable, with no known technical debt.
• Acquisition: the first qualified lead arrives through the system, not through a personal contact.
• Operations: a process that used to be manual runs on its own and can be audited.

A company can start at any stage, and each stage closes with a plain-language manual.

Paid in money, never in equity

We work for a monthly fee or for a fixed project. We do not take shares in exchange for work.

The reason is simple. A supplier paid in shares has a stake in the company’s decisions and is hard to replace. We would rather be judged on the work every month, and stay replaceable if the work falls short.

That is also why everything we build is documented and stays in the company’s name: the accounts, the domain, the data and the access. When the founders are ready to run it themselves, they take it over with the manual in hand. Until then, they can keep us running it.

Who it is for

• Founders who know what they are building and need the company around the product to work.
• New companies in Portugal, Belgium and Luxembourg that need help before a full-time hire makes sense.
• Teams leaving an incubator or closing a first funding round, with more to organise than people to organise it.

We do not give legal advice, and we do not invest in the companies we work with.