The Path from Agency Owner to SaaS Founder
by Jean-Raphaël Poulin Arguin, Founder / CEO
PAIN POINTS AND BENEEFITS
https://twitter.com/j_starte/status/1685318011907915777
Create HYPE - CREATE HYPE
SaaS: Software as a Service
This is a document dedicated to agency owners who grind day in and day out, who work hard to earn their money and who spend countless hours helping businesses grow and make money. This is for the ones have spent countless hours onboarding clients, managing projects, hiring and firing.
This is for the ones that want to build something bigger than an agency.
This is for people who are looking to invest their time and money into something that is more sustainable.
Moving from agency owner to SaaS Founder might seem like a big step.
But it is very approachable and you already have a lot of the skills needed to get started.
This document will reveal everything you need to know to make the jump.
0. Why a SaaS
Agency work is good money but very labor intensive, hard to scale and hard to exit.
The whole point of moving money from your agency into a SaaS is to build an asset that is more scalable and easier to exit and moving from project-based income to recurring revenues.
- Costs nothing to run
- Recurring Revenue
- No need to onboard clients
- No fulfillment
Costly to develop? Maybe with the wrong team and wrong technology. But it doesn't have to be.
1. Ideation
There are two kind of SaaS you can build:
- A business to consumer SaaS (Spotify, Dropbox, etc.)
- A business to business SaaS (Salesforce, Hubspot, etc.)
If your service B2C clients then naturally you should build a B2C SaaS and vice versa. You should feel comfortable about generating leads for the SaaS you're building.
The best and easiest to sell ideas in the B2B space are the ones that helps your client make more money.
Examples of successful money generating SaaS:
- Instantly: Cold Email Campaigns Manager
- Inframail: Cold Email Infrastructure
- Apollo: Propsecting Platform
- FindyMail: B2B Email Finder
- Air.ai: AI Cold Caller
Top tip
A good way to generate ideas is to take a look at tools and putting a unique spin on them. A bit like how everyone is doing X with AI now.
In the B2B space, you should aim to build a SaaS that charges at least $100/month per client.
(I will be posting more content on how to generate ideas in the future, make sure to follow me on Twitter to get notified when I do.)
2. Prelaunch
Instead of building the whole SaaS before launching it, you should build a landing page and start collecting emails to test demand.
To build a landing page, you can use AI, Webflow or hire someone on Upwork.
From there, use the lead generation you're most familiar to run a campaign to drive traffic to your landing page and test demand.
(Stay tuned for a post on how to run a lead generation campaign.)
3. MVP+Launch+Marketing
If demand testing goes well enough, building a SaaS is the next step.
Influencer Launch BetaKit Product Hunt Affiliate Podcast
SEO https://twitter.com/ConnorShowler
https://twitter.com/aliszu/status/1724125945663987757
https://twitter.com/MicroSaasGuy/status/1707391478492692673 Keep running lead generation campaigns to drive traffic to your landing page and collect emails.
Run email campaigns to hype them up and launch.
If you want to learn more, just enter shit here and I'll send you trash emails
Interested in building your own SaaS, but don't know where to start? Reach out using the link below!