We were lucky to catch up with Dominic Magnifico recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Dominic thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
We started House of Giants as a direct response to the shortcomings we saw in our 10+ years at various agencies.
Traditional web design and development agencies follow the antiquated leadership structure of ad agencies in the 60’s (though they’re veiled now with catchy terms and silly titles). The leadership at the top of the chain got there by building processes and standards many, many years prior. And those folks in leadership are now grasping at straws to stay relevant in their field, after being out of the production loop for so long. When a new idea or process comes along, it’s generally met with friction, rather than collaboration.
We started House of Giants with a mission to stay small on purpose. Remain agile, and adapt to our industry as it is ever changing.
Dominic, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
House of Giants started back in 2015 as a more professional way to manage freelance work. it didn’t take long before we realized we were building something bigger. We weren’t just launching websites, we were helping brands tell better stories, remove digital friction, and stop settling for cookie-cutter solutions that didn’t fit.
Today, we craft bold, custom digital experiences, from marketing sites to fully interactive web applications, for teams who are ready to scale but need a partner who can help them get there. We ask better questions. We listen deeply. We figure out what actually needs to be built, before a single pixel gets pushed.
What sets us apart isn’t just the tech or the visuals (though we’re damn proud of those). It’s the way we work: collaborative, thoughtful, and committed to solving real business problems, not just making things look pretty. We’re most proud of the trust our partners place in us and the results we get to build with them, together.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
Hands down, word of mouth. The trust our partners place in us speaks volumes when they’re communicating with others in their own industry. Maintaining relationships with good folks you’ve worked with in the past is crucial when rolling your own business. You never know where those people will end up 2, 3, 10 years down the line.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
We had to unlearn the idea that a handshake and a shared vision were enough.
When we first started House of Giants, we believed deeply in trust. In our eyes, if we delivered great work and communicated clearly, everything else would take care of itself. And for a while, it did.
But as projects got bigger and timelines got messier, we realized something: trust isn’t a substitute for clarity. A vague scope breeds vague expectations. A verbal agreement sounds friendly, until it’s 11:42PM and you’re reworking features that were never in scope to begin with.
So we unlearned that kind of “blind trust” mentality. We stopped romanticizing flexibility as a virtue and started seeing structure as a kindness. Today, we bring the same creativity to our contracts and proposals that we do to our design. Because when everyone knows the rules, you can build with way more freedom.
It wasn’t about losing trust. It was about protecting it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://houseofgiants.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_houseofgiants/
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/houseofgiants
- Twitter: https://x.com/_houseofgiants
- Other: https://bsky.app/profile/houseofgiants.com
Image Credits
Colby Clites