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Thanks for the perspective. Cool hearing about your story! How did you get the initial capital to buy businesses, just from your savings as a research professo

Thanks for the perspective. Cool hearing about your story! How did you get the initial capital to buy businesses, just from your savings as a research professor?

csa 3y ago
> How did you get the initial capital to buy businesses, just from your savings as a research professor? Much like Andrew Wilkinson, I started an agency. Agencies are great cash cows. In retrospect, I could have just started with savings (I had enough). It probably would have added stress I wasn’t looking for. That said, the agency was and is still great cash flow. It’s also a useful business space for learning how to build a business that (mostly) runs itself.
- ericjmorey 3y ago
  What is an agency in this context?
  - csa 3y ago
    > What is an agency in this context? Successful tech agencies that have been started by people I know: - programming - digital marketing - social media - web development - SEO - data science - AI (this is emerging) The agency is a business that goes to other businesses and offers to solve one or more of their business problems for a fee. Sometimes these fees are one-time payments, sometimes they are recurring, sometimes both. I recommend having recurring payments being baked into your agency model. It’s a relatively easy way to get “ramen profitable” (or more!) along with some money to invest.
    - akaljotc 3y ago
      question(s): would you consider a small saas product in this realm? that is, is there a clear distinction for what could be considered an agency vs a saas product? or is the line blurred in some contexts?
      - csa 3y ago
        Yeah. If you have a SaaS that has product-market fit, you are way ahead of the game. Cash cows don’t have to be agencies, but agencies are easier to spin up than a SaaS. In terms of nomenclature in general, productized consulting is a thing. Whether you can spin a healthy amount of recurring revenue from it depends on the SaaS product.

Thanks for the perspective. Cool hearing about your story! How did you get the initial capital to buy businesses, just from your savings as a research professor?

csa 3y ago

> How did you get the initial capital to buy businesses, just from your savings as a research professor? Much like Andrew Wilkinson, I started an agency. Agencies are great cash cows. In retrospect, I could have just started with savings (I had enough). It probably would have added stress I wasn’t looking for. That said, the agency was and is still great cash flow. It’s also a useful business space for learning how to build a business that (mostly) runs itself.

ericjmorey 3y ago
What is an agency in this context?
- csa 3y ago
  > What is an agency in this context? Successful tech agencies that have been started by people I know: - programming - digital marketing - social media - web development - SEO - data science - AI (this is emerging) The agency is a business that goes to other businesses and offers to solve one or more of their business problems for a fee. Sometimes these fees are one-time payments, sometimes they are recurring, sometimes both. I recommend having recurring payments being baked into your agency model. It’s a relatively easy way to get “ramen profitable” (or more!) along with some money to invest.
  - akaljotc 3y ago
    question(s): would you consider a small saas product in this realm? that is, is there a clear distinction for what could be considered an agency vs a saas product? or is the line blurred in some contexts?
    - csa 3y ago
      Yeah. If you have a SaaS that has product-market fit, you are way ahead of the game. Cash cows don’t have to be agencies, but agencies are easier to spin up than a SaaS. In terms of nomenclature in general, productized consulting is a thing. Whether you can spin a healthy amount of recurring revenue from it depends on the SaaS product.