Founder, The Gaygency
Daniel Montelongo.
Daniel spent ten years running campaigns at Apple, Dentsu, and Ann Inc. before founding The Gaygency. He leads every engagement himself, and what he brings is a point of view most agencies can’t fake: he markets to this community because he’s part of it. Clients come to The Gaygency for an agency that genuinely understands them.
Daniel Montelongo, founder
The record
2022
Founded The Gaygency, no outside capital
$15M+
Client revenue driven across the roster since
1M+
Verified LGBTQ+ consumers in the studio dataset
The story
Why he built The Gaygency.
“We do not just say we know the community. We are the community.”
Daniel Montelongo spent ten years leading campaigns before The Gaygency existed, with roles at Apple, Dentsu, and Ann Inc. and multimillion dollar programs for Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Virgin America. That is where he learned what a serious marketing operation looks like at scale. It is also where he watched queer-owned businesses get overlooked, underserved, or priced out of that caliber of work.
The firms that did show up mostly arrived in June and left in July. So in 2022 he founded The Gaygency with no outside capital: an agency where every discipline lives under one roof, the numbers get published, and the partner stays past Pride month. Since then the studio’s work has driven more than $15 million in revenue across its roster: jewelry makers, travel companies, pro sports partnerships, films, clinics, and solo founders getting their first real brand.
He leads every engagement himself. Behind him sits a senior team and the production systems the studio built for its own use, which is how a small crew ships the volume of a large one without the overhead a large one bills for.
“We started The Gaygency because we were tired of watching our community get treated like a marketing segment.”
Before the studio
Ten years inside the biggest rooms.
Apple
Campaign leadership inside one of the most disciplined brand systems in the world.
Dentsu
Global agency scale: media systems and production discipline at network size.
Ann Inc.
Retail brand marketing, where creative has to reconcile with a sales ledger.
The client work from those years includes multimillion dollar programs for Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Virgin America.
Builder proof
He ships products, not just advice.
Daniel is the founder of Gaydar, a dating app for the LGBTQ+ community that The Gaygency designed, built, and shipped to the Apple App Store and Google Play, then grew with its own paid acquisition system. It is the studio's standing proof: when a client hears 'we build systems,' there is a live consumer product behind the claim.
Gaydar
Live on the Apple App Store and Google Play
1M+
Verified LGBTQ+ consumers in the studio's proprietary dataset
NGLCC
Certified LGBT Business Enterprise; NYC-certified Minority Business Enterprise
100%
LGBTQIA+ owned, with an 80 percent LGBTQIA+ team, 20 percent transgender
On stage and on record
What Daniel speaks about.
Keynotes, panels, podcasts, workshops, and press comment. Every topic below comes with operator data behind it, not borrowed research.
LGBTQ+ consumer behavior and the buycott era
What $1.4 trillion in purchasing power does when brands retreat, and how LGBTQ+ consumers now reward the brands that stay. Grounded in the studio's own client revenue data, not survey summaries.
Building products for queer communities
Lessons from designing, shipping, and growing Gaydar: verification as the product, trust and safety as the retention lever, and consent as the basis of community data.
Community data versus platform targeting
The platforms removed the direct ways to reach LGBTQ+ audiences. Daniel makes the case for owned, verified community data, and can speak to running a 1M+ consumer dataset in practice.
Founder lessons from running an agency and an app
What holding both a client roster and a live consumer product teaches about accountability, staying specific, and building without outside capital.
Public health marketing for LGBTQ+ communities
How to run health campaigns the community trusts, drawn from live work with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and health brands where stigma, not information, is the barrier.
Running an AI-first agency
How a small senior team ships the volume of a large one: the production systems The Gaygency built for itself, what AI changes about agency economics, and what still requires a human who knows the culture.
Featured thinking
The founder column.
Daniel writes a monthly column in the studio's guides: market reads, product lessons, and positions he is willing to be quoted on.
Speaking and press
Book Daniel.
Conference keynotes, panels, podcasts, workshops, and press comment on LGBTQ+ marketing, consumer behavior, and building products for queer communities. Send the format and the date; Daniel replies himself.
Email the format, the audience, and the date:
daniel@thegaygency.comPress kit, headshots, and past talks available on request.