Foundation
- CIPC Pty Ltd registration filed and approved
- SARS income tax number issued
- POPIA Information Officer registered
- .co.za domain purchased and DNS configured
- Google Workspace mailboxes live with SPF + DKIM
// about.cipher
The agency that built everything for itself, first.
Cipher Shift was founded by Quinton Hoy on a simple belief: if you're going to sell a service, you should have delivered it to yourself first. Our entire stack — registration, website, email, CRM, logo, brand, automation — was built by hand, in four weeks, before we opened to clients.
▸ founder = "Quinton Hoy"
▸ background = [
"cybersecurity",
"sales",
"marketing",
"design",
"entrepreneur"
]
▸ location = "Roodepoort, ZA"
▸ stack.built = true
▸ days.to.proof = 30
// the story
From concept to company, in under a month.
The idea wasn't original. Every South African entrepreneur needs the same stack to go from idea to trading: a registered company, a domain, a business email, a website, a logo, a way to capture enquiries, and eventually some advertising.
What was unusual was doing all of it ourselves. Over 30 days, we registered Cipher Shift (Pty) Ltd with CIPC, applied for the SARS tax number, registered our POPIA Information Officer, bought the .co.za domain, configured Google Workspace, designed a logo, built this website by hand, wired up a CRM in Google Sheets using Apps Script, and wrote a full business plan.
No agency. No contractor. No shortcut. Just a checklist, a text editor, a pot of coffee and a stubborn refusal to outsource anything we intended to one day sell.
“Building my own company from scratch was the most honest sales training I could have given myself. Every client now gets the exact process that worked — not a pitch I made up.”— Quinton Hoy, Founder
// 30-day build
Week by week, exactly what got built.
Building from absolute zero took 30 days — every step figured out from a blank page, plus a CIPC waiting period that adds days to any registration. With the playbook now in place and the templates tested, client launches ship in 5–21 days depending on package, with CIPC running in parallel from day one.
Identity & presence
- Brand system designed from scratch — colour, type, voice
- Logo and favicon delivered as SVG + PNG
- Website designed in Figma and hand-built in HTML/CSS/JS
- Deployed to Netlify with Lighthouse 98+ scores
- SEO meta, Open Graph and sitemap complete
Automation & systems
- Netlify Forms → Google Sheets capture
- Google Apps Script auto-reply engine built
- Status-tracked CRM log with POPIA retention alerts
- WhatsApp Business integration prototyped
- Entire stack documented in a runbook
Launch readiness
- Business plan rewritten and financial model built
- Interactive client brief designed and deployed
- LinkedIn and Instagram content calendar drafted
- First three client conversations opened
- Cipher Shift digital agency division launched
// why we exist
Most South African founders don't fail from lack of ideas. They fail from launch paralysis.
CIPC portals, DNS records, MX records, POPIA, logo briefs, Google Ads accounts, conversion pixels — it's genuinely overwhelming. We remove that entire layer. You focus on your business. We handle the rest.
We deliver, then explain
Every deliverable is live before we ask for feedback. We don't run in circles on moodboards. We ship, you react, we refine.
No mystery tech stack
We use free, stable tools your business can maintain without us. Netlify, Google Sheets, Apps Script, Workspace. No proprietary platforms.
Transparent pricing
Our full price list is on the site. Pass-through fees are quoted explicitly. No back-and-forth required to see what something costs.
POPIA from day one
Privacy policies, retention monitoring, Information Officer registration — baked into every launch. Not an afterthought.
// direct.line
Talk to us directly.
Every enquiry goes straight to our team. No salespeople. No junior account managers. Same-day response, every time.
Phone
082 421 9527
quintonhoy@ciphershift.co.za
linkedin.com/in/quintonhoy
Based in
Roodepoort, South Africa
// next step
Same process. Your business this time.
Send a brief. Get a fixed quote. Launch a real business. That's it.
response time: same-day. · no-obligation.