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Lessons from starting a design-as-a-service startup
- corobo 9y agoDoes 2 months actually count as $x/month? Not rejecting the concept, honestly curious. I'd imagine that figure would not be used if you were to sell the business or look for investment for example
- mamon 9y agoSerious institutions, like banks or VCs usually want your financial history for at least a year back, so no, two months won't cut it.
- vinrob92 9y agoOP here. 100% agree with you, it is a new concept. The $15k figure is what we made so far in February. It still has to be fully proven. Right now our best clients are startups that require a lot of graphic design work mostly for their Instagram and Facebook pages (banners, infographics) but I am expecting a higher churn for clients that only need some landing pages or some logos. We are happy to work for everyone right now though!
- everdev 9y agoYou typically sell at a multiple of the last 2-3 years average revenue.
- fnayr 9y agoTypical for what? SaaS websites? Websites monetizing with ads generally sell for only around 12 months revenue, and apps generally sell for around 6 months, because of the volatility in users/downloads and uncertainty in the markets. Regardless, the poster you replied to was making the point (I think) that it's a little early to say you're making 'X-monthly' revenue when you're basing it on 1 or 2 months (which even the OP agreed with).
- pc86 9y agoYou could write a book filled the caveats you should have on such a generalized statement as this, and 2-3x revenue is certainly the exception rather than the rule. Plenty of business sell for a year's gross revenue or less.
- probablynot 9y agoIn six months OP will likely have exhausted their reservoir of friends willing to subscribe to their startup, then the hard part starts.
- acidburnNSA 9y ago> It does not matter. Just keep launching as fast as you can and see what works. Just think of it as throwing spaghettis on the wall and see what sticks. I get that you can't do what you love and expect to make money. But this feels like it's gone too far. It seems like true greatness and satisfaction requires just a little bit of intent above just making easy money. I guess if easy money is your only goal this would be satisfying.
- justherefortart 9y agoMoney is freedom. You can do a lot more projects that tickle your "true greatness and satisfaction" when you're not worrying where your next check is coming in.
- double0jimb0 9y agoHow upset would you be if “Money is freedom” isn’t true? I think your setting yourself up for some disappointment with that one.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoIt’s all relative. No amount of wealth can buy time or immortality, but having very little money means less choice in where you live, how you get from place to place, how you eat, how you dress, the medicines and treatments you receive when you are sick (if at all), and so on. Moderate wealth certainly means more freedom than little to no wealth. Edit: I just recalled a quora question a while back when somebody asked about the drawbacks of being a billionaire compared to a millionaire. One perspective was that while a millionaire could go for a Sunday drive in a nice car with the spouse and kids at the drop of a hat, a billionaire may have to schedule their transportation around security parameters and travel with bodyguards because their wealth can make them a target. So in some ways, too much money can make life less free.
- justherefortart 9y agoWhy would I be upset that "you're" opinion differs? I'm referring to a lifetime of what I've seen, perhaps your life experience is different.
- fredgrott 9y agoThis is helpful as I just started bootstrapping services in that exact area..very helpful guide into scaling it that way..thanks for posting it
- robodale 9y agoI see the comments here already tearing apart the article. I'm creating part of my SaaS offering that includes an optional service for new signups (importing and formatting company documents into our system). I thought the article was thoughtful, well-laid out, detailed key steps, and above all...offered much-needed value to me. The Facebook group offer at the bottom was a nice touch, as I want to learn more and share what I have going on. OP if you're reading this, well done.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- corobo 9y agoIf you're including my comment in that please be aware I put in "Not rejecting the concept, honestly curious" sincerely. At the time of comment I'd read the title and "Two months ago" in the article's first sentence. If anything my comment was technically off topic.
- vinrob92 9y agoThanks!
- pouta 9y agoThank you for this article Robin!
- maxxxxx 9y agoHow can this be so cheap reasonably? If I understand correctly I can have a full time designer for $279/month. Maybe a lot of subscribers use only a small part of what they could be using but it seems to me this can easily be abused.
- vinrob92 9y agoOP here. I am in Asia and work with the best designers here (a lot of designers have worked previously with top UI teams at leading startups in Asia and even two unicorns). They handle 3 to 4 clients per month and we make only a small margin. We do not intend Manypixels to be a huge business, but rather something small and if possible allowing us to have a good lifestyle while making designers and clients happy.
- phkahler 9y agoYour labor costs are very low. Are your clients local, or are you bringing in a lot of business due to a price differential between where you are and more expensive places? If it's the later then it won't work for readers in the more expensive places.
- vinrob92 9y agoMost of our clients are located in the US, Europe, and Australia. Our team is based in a few different cities in Asia (and I am too, actually I am replying to all people on the chat of our website in a taxi in Yogyakarta, Indonesia). We pay our designers actually very high rates compared to what they earn as freelance designers and have set up great processes in place to ensure quality consistency and speedy ETA.
- maxxxxx 9y agoCool. I didn't want to criticize you but just wanted to figure out how such a thing can work and learn from it. Thanks!
- vinrob92 9y ago
- afeezaziz 9y agoThis is amazing. I mean the service. Count me as your customer
- vinrob92 9y agoThanks for the love! We love you too so here is a 20% forever discount code on all subscriptions (only 10 available): 915Z6X1
- skellera 9y agoBought! Thank you. This was just what I was looking for.
- xweb 9y ago@vinrob92 - This is great of you to put this discount code here. I am strongly tempted, but it is unclear on the website what the value proposition of the "premium" service is. Looking side by side, it just appears to add "logo, branding, and illustrations" to the basic plan. But wouldn't that fall under "graphic design" in the basic plan? Can you explain here what "premium" means in your service offering?
- DoreenMichele 9y agoReally nice to see this. I have been doing piece work for the last few years rather than hourly work. I typically get paid by the page or by the word. I am more comfortable with that than with charging by the hour. For one thing, it gives me a clear means to improve my hourly rate without wondering if I am a con artist bilking people: just get better and faster. Their price remains the same. My de facto hourly wage goes up. I have been asked to submit a bid to a local organization that needs help with their websites. I am thinking of charging a monthly retainer for being the admin and a per page fee for creating new content as needed. I wasn't sure if that made sense. I haven't seen it done that way before. But that is very in line with what you are describing. Now, I just need more customers willing to pay me X amount for a page of content for their site. And to define the scope of what constitutes a page of content.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoThat makes sense to me and it's in line with the web devs who advertise basic sites like "3 pages for $xxx." I'm one of those who prefers fixed price bids to hourly/daily. I like to be able to say "I will do X and it will cost you $Y." I lose my shirt occasionally but that gives me more incentive to improve my quoting skills :-)
- meteor333 9y agoI'm genuinely curious on how people find new customers or get people on your website? Is it based on referrals, advertising? I've struggled with outreach and getting first 100-1,000 on simply on the website, let alone signing up. Are there any good resources on this?
- vinrob92 9y agoWe are just making what people want and mostly it goes from word of mouth. We are also limiting our services. We know that people love the type of illustrations we do (for blog posts/landing pages), love the type of landing pages we do, and also love the logos. We do not try to do 1000 things well, but rather 15-20 things really well and know our customers really well. I only reach our customers via a few channels and mostly do content marketing but most of it is word of mouth. We have not yet any referral or affiliate system in place but we are building one for our v3 which should come end of this month.
- meteor333 9y agothanks that's helpful. How many users/customers did you before you did any content marketing? How much do you currently spend on advertising?
- vinrob92 9y agoWe do not spend any money on advertising. We only do direct sales and content marketing. We had our first 10 subscribers with direct sales.
- giarc 9y agoIt likely doesn't take much. I listened to a podcast with a similar company and started to research them as I was in need of work. I guess the hard part would be to get on podcasts with a sizeable audience. I've found that in my startup, even though it's small, it can be easy to get free marketing. I think many people assume that journalists have a backlog of articles and they ignore their emails with suggestions. And perhaps that's true for big ones. We got free press simply by searching the archives or a few local papers, finding a journalist that had written a similar article and reaching out through social media. They are paid to create content, therefore if you get in touch with easy to create content (you are happy to help write/edit, make yourself available at a moments notice) getting an article written about you isn't tough.
- ataturk 9y agoThese indie hacker things are total bullshit. "I made $15K/mo your life sucks!" Yeah, you made $30K total, then the thing flopped. Let's be real. There's no magic money tree just like there is no winning in Vegas, not really. The only software guy I know who made it big created a fairly important tool that a lot of companies rely on. He only made it big because he sold it to his former employer after that employer encouraged him to spin off a company in the first place. Insider connections. Noodle on that.
- moduspwnens14 9y agoOh man I was looking for something like this. I have a personal project I wanted to make actually look professional but as a freelancer it's tough to justify big bucks for something like that. But this might work!
- vinrob92 9y agoFeel free to try, we have a 10 days, 100% money back guarantee anyway!
- stevenwoo 9y agoThere's a /r/startups subreddit (reddit.com) you may want to submit this to for more coverage, though a link requires mod approval there.
- bulgor 9y agoNot sure about the quality I can expect here. Most of these services use cheap laour. I’ve enjoyed using a more high-end service thats focussing on [1] User Interface and UX design with senior level designers. [1] http://fairpixels.pro http://fairpixels.pro
- neil_s 9y agoThe website (ManyPixels) seems pretty incomplete: I can't seem to enlarge the portfolio, there are repeated strings in a bunch of places, and the FAQs refer to other parts of the site without actually linking there. Currently resorting to finding your work on Dribbble.