Mission Control: Clay’s new venture designed for AI-age start-ups

After 14 years of building Clay into a globally recognised agency trusted by Slack, Meta, Coinbase and Google, Anton Zykin and Dmitry Tsozik have launched Mission Control – a bold experiment in rethinking how creative agencies operate in the AI age. While Clay serves established companies with structured systems for global scale, Mission Control focuses on early-stage start-ups, offering transparent pricing, equity partnerships and senior design talent from day one. Both ventures operate on an asynchronous-first, fully remote model that Zykin and Tsozik perfected long before the pandemic forced the industry’s hand. Their conviction that “great remote teams are built on trust, not control” underpins a working culture that has attracted top talent globally whilst maintaining the direct founder involvement. In this conversation, they share insights on creating future-proof design, integrating AI without losing human creativity, and why they believe the most successful agencies will treat creativity as both their service and their product. TBI: Hi Anton and Dima! How’s it going? AZ: Doing well and staying busy. Between Clay and Mission Control, there is always something exciting to build and explore.