The R&D Dept. is an AI-native agency in Costa Mesa. We build brands and websites, get you found in Google and AI search, and automate the marketing and admin work that eats your week. AI handles the research, first drafts, code and monitoring. A person owns the strategy, the taste and every final call.
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Positioning, messaging and identity systems that make you easy to choose. AI speeds up the market research and message testing. The creative direction is all human.
Fast, accessible sites your team can edit without a developer. We're in the Webflow Expert Partner Program and build e-commerce on Shopify.
See it: TrueCar, Aroma Crafters
Make sure Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini can find you, understand you and recommend you.
We connect the tools you already use so the busywork runs itself. A person still approves anything that reaches a customer.
How we do it: marketing, CRM and notifications
The unglamorous work that keeps you out of trouble, built in from the start instead of patched on later.
For the right businesses, we build the brand and first site at cost, then get paid on revenue share, profit share or equity.
For local service businesses
If you run a trades or home-service business, a lead only counts when it turns into a job on the calendar. We find where your site and follow-up leak, then plug the holes.
Start with the free leak check. Then we walk your site, ads and follow-up the way a customer would.
Tap-to-call, one clear next step, short forms, reviews next to the button, and online booking through the tools you already use.
Automatic text and email replies the minute a lead comes in, routed to whoever answers, with texting registered the right way.
Reporting that ties your ads and pages to booked jobs, not clicks or form fills.
How we work
What AI does
What people do
We'd rather own a piece of your growth than bill you for hours. Here's how it works.
Brand strategy, identity and your first Webflow website, priced at our cost or cost plus a small margin. You get senior work without the agency markup.
We stay on as your growth team: AI visibility, content, campaigns and site improvements, measured against real revenue, not deliverables.
Our compensation is tied to your results through revenue share, profit share, equity, or a combination we agree on up front.
It's not for every business. We partner with founder-led companies that have a proven offer and room to grow, and we're selective about who we take on. Prefer a fixed-fee project? We do those too.
