How an anonymous designer built a $1M/year design business from scratch

Executive overview

Nick Buzz left India at 17 with no money, no connections, and a parent who told him design would never pay. After years of freelancing and a stint at Meta, he quit with two months of savings and a baby on the way.

He built a faceless brand on X, launched a design subscription agency, and scaled to $160K monthly recurring revenue — staying anonymous throughout.

Anonymity removes the social friction that stops most people from starting.

From India to Canada: building the foundation

• Taught himself design by entering ~200 logo competitions over six months before winning his first $200
• Moved to Canada at 17 with no plan; spent months unable to get replies to job applications
• A Dribbble discovery on his first day of university landed a client who stayed for 3.5 years, paying $80–90K/year
• Tuition as an international student consumed the income; he couldn't afford to go out or buy anything

Meta and the turning point

• Landed a Facebook internship, then a full-time role at Meta
• Realized corporate work meant no creative freedom — doing the same thing too long drained him
• Wife pushed him to try entrepreneurship; with a mortgage, car loans, and a baby due, he had two months of savings to make it work
• Quit Meta with no fallback plan

Building anonymous on X

• Chose anonymity to protect his personal life, avoid family pressure, and manage social anxiety as an introvert
• Tactic: quote-tweeted other designers' landing pages with a "roast" and showed what he'd improve — it built visibility without requiring self-promotion
• Launched a $9 design kit as a first product; it sold and confirmed the model worked
• Scaled through a landing page product ("Get Baked"), charging $9 → $300, hitting ~$6–7K/month peak before burning out across 12 simultaneous projects

Launching the subscription agency (Baked)

• Co-founder Alex proposed a design subscription model; Nick initially rejected it, believing the market was saturated
• Early pricing at $2–5K/month got no takers; they returned to content and roasting to build trust
• A single post about "tiny UI" brought in their first client at $4,317/month — proof that consistent, opinionated content drives inbound
• Revenue scaled fast: $24K → $48K → $94K → $110K → $120K → $160K MRR in successive months
• Team stayed lean: one full-time hire plus part-time freelancers alongside two founders

What made it work

• Controversial, high-conviction content outperforms generic portfolio posts
• Staying in one lane matters: too many projects killed focus before Baked gave him a single thing to win at
• Anonymity is a valid strategy — it removes performance anxiety and keeps the work front and centre
• Charging $4K+/month is possible from cold; price signals quality when the content builds credibility first