About Us
Who are We?
We are a Silicon Valley-based marketing and web design agency helping companies increase leads. Our clients range from High-Tech companies, startups, biotech and e-commerce websites.
Established by Philippe Alexis in Mountain View, California, in 2001, No Diamonds originally began as a one person web development shop. The company gradually grew to its current iteration of a dozen professionals based around the world and headquartered in Palo Alto.
Our team
Our team is composed of experts in their fields with a minimum of ten years’ experience ranging in project management, web and UX design, coding, SEO, PPC and marketing technologies. We design and market websites using Open Source software, such as WordPress, Drupal and Magento. We work with B2B tech companies based in Silicon Valley, startups, nonprofits, universities and a whole range of small local businesses. Read here about why Philippe chose the name “No Diamonds”, meaning ‘no bling’.
Our Values
- We value all people, regardless of race, gender, orientation, or any other reason they may be different from us.
- We are friendly and easy to work with.
- We answer emails within a day, even if just to say ‘got it’.
- We aim to communicate clearly, without jargon or legalese.
- When in doubt, we ask for clarification.
- When mistakes happen, we take ownership, are transparent, learn, and do what’s needed to fix it.
- We pay invoices when they’re due, and often earlier.
Project Wren
Each month, NoDiamonds offsets 3.3 tons of CO2 by funding the Clean cooking fuel for refugees project on Wren. See more details about this project here.
In 2021 NoDiamonds offset 90.5 Tons of CO2 – that’s like 4,152 trees absorbing CO2 for a year, or avoiding 223,846 miles of driving, or avoiding 93 flights from NY to SF.
Why No Diamonds?
The domain name nodiamonds.com was originally purchased for an informational website on the realities of the diamond industry. Slowly it became evident that it would also be a good name for a web design and marketing company. It captures the belief in the virtue of simple approach, as opposed to surface flashiness, but ultimately impractical and hard to use.
To illustrate this point, here is a Suzuki Roshi quote from his book, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” (Goodreads link):
“If you continue this simple practice everyday, you will obtain some wonderful power. Before you attain it, it is something wonderful, but after you attain it, it is nothing special.”
No Diamonds also stands for “nothing special” as described in the quote above. It represents the “something wonderful” which takes a lot of effort and dedication, but once achieved it seems the obvious solution and you wonder why you could not see it clearly before. This is the hidden jewel within No Diamonds.
Philippe Alexis, founder of NoDiamonds has an ethos rooted in trust and generosity of spirit and these form the foundation of how our team pulls together, believing in positivity and excited by the possibilities that come from working together with good people towards a collective aim – the success of your business.
After a stint as a derivatives trader, Philippe started developing small websites in 1998 by teaching himself HTML. He worked as head of marketing for a startup (bivio.com) until 2001 when he started NoDiamonds.com. Since then he has been focused on growing the company, managing hiring, sales and marketing. He has scoped and managed hundreds of web and marketing projects, using multiple technologies such as PHP, MySQL, WordPress, Drupal, Magento, WooCommerce, Marketo, Hubspot, Pardot, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studios.
He now focuses on helping clients with web and marketing strategy, and using a company’s web presence to achieve lead generation goals.
He also teaches Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, pranayama, meditation and is an avid biker. He speaks English, French, Greek and Japanese.