Hi! I'm George Kapernaros, I run YOCTO. You might be surprised to hear I'm not terribly interested in email marketing, or ecommerce.
What actually fuels me is people.
Specifically, what happens when you give smart, ambitious people the room to do work that challenges their brains instead of their patience.
Here's the TLDR of my story:
I grew up poor, without connections. While in the air force, I hurt my spine badly and spent a stretch unable to even walk: without career prospects, a political science degree that led nowhere, flat on my back.
The only thing I knew how to do was write. So I googled "how to make money writing," found copywriting, and started taking small freelance jobs to scrape together enough for surgery.
Then I got lucky twice...
I found a small DTC company out of Switzerland that wanted a copywriter, and one of my first projects for them scaled to €800,000 revenue. I joined full time, and over about three years that company grew from a handful of people to over a hundred (not because of me, lots of brilliant people there). I went from copywriter to head copywriter to marketing manager to marketing director.
Then I left and started freelancing. Got lucky again. I landed a project with Kilo.health (at the time the second fastest-growing company in Europe). That work went well, too. They flew me to Lithuania to run a seminar for their marketing teams, and suddenly, a lot of people wanted to work with me.
That demand is what eventually became YOCTO. But my luck kept going.
We held Klaviyo Elite Master status in 2025-2026, one of roughly 40 agencies worldwide to do so. I became a self-made millionaire. I'm part of organizations like EO and write for the Forbes Business Council. I've worked with some of the best ecommerce brands in the world, including what I'm sure is one of the fastest-growing DTC companies of all time ever.
I guess I've got a lucky charm. :)
My luck only ever showed up when I went all in.
When I refused to "half-do" it. When work made me uncomfortable and I struggled.
But the strange gift of going "all in" is that it didn't simply make me more competent. I think it also made me wiser, more empathetic, more able to see people's true, full potential.
That's why developing people is the thing I care about most now. My first hire came to me aged 18. A few years later, he's one of the best in the world at what he does.
Another of my ex strategists now advises 9-figure brands. He says 90% of where he is came from his time at YOCTO.
Even the ones who left because they couldn't stand me would tell you they walked away stronger.
So right now I'm looking for ferociously smart people to work side by side with me, accelerating YOCTO's growth.
If that's you, I'd love to talk to you.
George Kapernaros · Founder & CEO