Invest
Invest in a growing local media company positioned to capitalize on the increasing demand for digital marketing, creative production, and content-driven business growth.
Mission
We believe great businesses deserve great creative. Our mission is to help organizations communicate more effectively, operate more efficiently, and build brands that customers recognize, trust, and remember. We do this by combining strategy, technology, and creative execution under one roof. Standards are important to us.
What We Do
By bringing the following capabilities together, clients are able to save time and cost by working with a single creative partner rather than coordinating multiple vendors.
- Brand strategy and identity
- Website design and development
- Extended reality (XR)
- Custom application development
- Commercial film production
- Visual effects (VFX)
- Commercial photography
- 3D models, animation and visualization
- Interactive digital experiences
- AI-assisted production workflows
- Consulting
- Digital marketing, PPC and SEO
Philosophy
Efficiency is a competitive advantage. Our lean business model allows us to deliver work with lower overhead than many traditional agencies. A small creative team and investments in technology, automation, and AI-assisted workflows help reduce repetitive work and increase production capacity without compromising quality.
Sustainable Growth
Made In The Dark LLC is an independent creative agency headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia. Founded in 2026, the company combines over two decades of multidisciplinary experience in design, film production, web development, visual effects, artificial intelligence, and digital marketing into a single, streamlined operation.
Our approach is intentionally different. Rather than scaling through large teams and overhead, we operate with a lean structure supported by a trusted network of creative specialists when projects require additional expertise. This allows us to remain agile, responsive, and cost-effective while maintaining a consistently high standard.
Milestones
Since launching in 2026, Made In The Dark has:
- Established a purpose-built creative studio
- Acquired new equipment for video production
- Relationships with clients across multiple industries
- Developed proprietary AI production workflows
- Developed commercial SaaS products
- Developed in-house WordPress theme + plugins
Founder
Made In The Dark was founded by a multidisciplinary creative professional with more than twenty years of experience across several specialized fields including design, filmmaking, web development, visual effects, marketing, and technology.
The company was built from the ground up over a 12 month period, with passion and without external financing, reflecting a commitment to disciplined growth, practical problem-solving, and long-term value creation.
Priorities
The company's focus is sustainable, long-term growth rather than rapid expansion. Near-term priorities include:
- Expanding brand awareness
- Increasing inbound lead generation
- Investing in marketing and self-produced content
- Growing sales capacity
- Develop proprietary novel software solutions
- Acquire additional hardware
- Continuing to improve efficiency through technology
- Expanding the team where it creates measurable value
Investment Inquiries
Made In The Dark periodically considers opportunities to partner with individuals and organizations that align with the company's long-term vision.
If you would like information about the business, its growth strategy, or potential partnership opportunities, please contact us to request additional information.
Click here to download the Pitch Deck
Reach out to us
A large local market for video production and marketing services plus software solutions that scale past it
Serving Hampton Roads, Virginia with a focus on Chesapeake, Norfolk & Virginia Beach offering a wide range of creative services. Thousands of businesses to serve locally, custom software solutions and a modern CMS product that sells into the 40%+ of the web running on WordPress.
45,000+
Businesses in the Hampton Roads metro area
~17,900
Core target of right-sized† customers with 5–99 employees
~27,600
Businesses listed in the three-city core alone
† Right-sized = large enough to pay for professional work, too small to staff it in-house. Above these sit ~1,000 larger firms (100+ employees), plus heavy institutional demand from government, defense, tourism, healthcare & real estate.
Local market
~$60M/year serviceable local market from the SMB base alone. Larger firms and government / tourism / healthcare / defense buyers are upside on top.
Website Design
17,900 SMBs × ~54% hire a pro × ~$3,000/yr
≈ $29M / year
Video Production
17,900 SMBs × ~42% outsource video × ~$4,000/yr
≈ $30M / year
The ceiling
What premium web software is worth.
Framer
$2B
Valuation $50M ARR (2025), $100M target 2026 design-first CMS
Webflow
$4B
Valuation ~$213M revenue (2024) visual CMS / no-code
Wix
$2.3B
2026 revenue web + commerce platform
The channel
Aside from Themeforest, WordPress hosts plugins & themes.
WordPress
41%
Of all websites 59% of the CMS market ~38M live sites
Elementor (direct analog)
$53M
ARR 10M+ active installs a bootstrapped WP page-builder plugin
Automattic
$710M
Est. revenue $7.5B valuation WordPress.com / WooCommerce
Wider market
An insight into the broader market that our product sells into.
$38.5B
Global CMS software, 2026 ~11%/yr
$6.4B
Web-builder software, 2026 ~10%/yr
~$1.3B
WordPress plugins market
Software solutions engineered for an industry-standard CMS. No local ceiling. Build once, license everywhere.
The product
Darkside is a modern premium WordPress theme + plugin suite which includes a page builder plus custom security, SEO, marketing & maintenance plugins, with GSAP motion, WebGL shaders & three.js 3D features bundled in. It brings Webflow and Framer-caliber design to the 40%+ of the web that already runs on WordPress - sold through channels (WordPress.org, ThemeForest) where businesses already pay for themes and plugins.
Services fund the business - the theme breaks away and scales
Win the ~17,900 local businesses with video & web (~$60M/yr serviceable) → productize the toolkit the agency already builds with → license it into the WordPress economy, where a single bootstrapped plugin (Elementor) reaches $53M ARR and design-first platforms (Framer, Webflow) are valued at $2–4B. The agency de-risks and pays the bills; the software is uncapped by Hampton Roads.
A growing library of innovative products
We intend to continually improve our suite of software solutions and add new products that solve problems for businesses across multiple sectors. We have already developed several new products after working with a number of clients, which are set to be released this year.
The Darkside Suite
A premium WordPress theme and bundled plugins designed to save time and unlock the full potential of modern web development. Created by an experienced full-stack developer and digital media generalist.
WordPress Theme
Add page elements using the Darkside Page Builder, set animations and control typography, color, header, menu, footer, form styling, lightbox and shaders.
Page Builder
Add 50+ page elements, arrange content into columns and customize element settings with access to a library of WebGL transitions.
E-commerce Store
Manage products, a hosted checkout, orders and customers. Set shipping and payment methods, full integration with popular payment processors.
Security Hardening
Moves the login address, limits sign in attempts, closes user enumeration, and cleans SVG uploads to keep sites secure.
Maintenance Page
Closes the site to visitors during maintenance. You can edit the text, add a logo, set a background and show a form.
SEO Tools
Titles, descriptions, sharing cards, structured data, sitemaps, llms.txt for AI searches, individual page metrics.
301 Redirects
301 rules, a log of addresses that went nowhere, and a rule written for you when a page changes its slug.
Marketing Tools
A subscribe field for any page, one list behind it, an XML export, and an unsubscribe page for every address.
Sources & methodology
Business counts: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment & Wages via Virginia Works & FRED, 2024-2025 (Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk metro; size-class breakdown for the 5-99 band). Local market (bottom-up): customer count × adoption rate × annual spend. Web adoption - Clutch, State of Small Business Websites 2025 (54% use a professional). Web spend - WebFX 2026 pricing guides (build amortized over ~3-4 yrs + upkeep). Video adoption - Wyzowl, Video Marketing Statistics 2026 (91% use video, 42% use external creators). Video spend - Clutch & Vidico 2026 SMB project pricing, annualized. Figures rounded and deliberately conservative (SMB base only; larger firms and institutional buyers excluded). Software comps: Framer - TechCrunch, Aug 2025 (Series D, $2B, $50M ARR). Webflow - Forbes 2022 ($4B/$120M Series C), Sacra & TapTwice 2024 (~$213M revenue). Wix - Q1 2026 results. WordPress share - W3Techs, Aug 2026. Elementor / Automattic / WP Engine - GetLatka, Colorlib 2024-26 (private-company estimates). Market sizes - Grand View Research (CMS software), The Business Research Company (website builders), Verified Market Research (WordPress plugins). Private-company revenue and all market-research TAMs are estimates; treat as directional. Compiled Aug 2026.