In this instructional video, Akeel Jabbar addresses marketing and general agency owners who want to move from a service‑based agency model to a product‑based SaaS business. He first outlines three primary motivations for the shift: limited scalability of agency revenue, the heavy time and people management burden, and burnout from constantly reacting to client demands. He then explains how to discover a viable SaaS idea by either leveraging the agency owner's own expertise (e.g., building tools around video production, podcast marketing, etc.) or by probing the specific pain points of existing clients in niche industries such as law, healthcare, or real estate. The next step is to bootstrap an MVP using cash generated from the agency, build a minimal product that solves the identified problem, and validate it by offering a steep discount to the first client to test willingness to pay. After validation, he advises on launch tactics—using platforms like Product Hunt, BetaList, and AppSumo—to gather rapid feedback, iterate, and generate early revenue. Finally, he emphasizes that the transition is gradual: the agency can continue operating while the SaaS gains traction, eventually allowing the founder to become full‑time SaaS. Throughout, he encourages immediate action, invites comments for personalized feedback, and references his other videos for deeper launch and growth strategies.
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If you're a marketing agency or a general agency owner looking to shift to a SaaS business, looking to either build one in the near future, this video is for you. My name is Akeel Jabbar and welcome back to another video on my channel of SaaS District. Today I'm going to be talking about how do you go from an agency owner to a SaaS founder? Cashing in from your agency and moving into a successful SaaS company and replacing it completely is not an easy task and is not for everybody. Now, in order to be successful, you have to make sure you do it right. Now, obviously, as you know, owning an agency can be super lucrative. It can create a lot of cash for you as a business owner because it doesn't require a lot of cash upfront in order to inject into it. And build a company. However, as we tend to see, as I speak to a lot of business owners and agency owners, including myself as a previous one, many agency owners are looking to shift away from the agency model and get into the SaaS place. And there's several reasons for that, which I'll talk about today. So one of the reasons why a lot of people move away from the traditional marketing agency approach and business model and go to this, the SaaS route, or just, they just want to get away in general, is that as an agency, you're not going to be able to scale. Okay. And what I mean is you're going to hit a plateau in terms of your growth. You know, some of the bigger agencies out there that I've seen are usually, you know, maybe $5 million, maybe even $10 million ARR. Now that seems like a legit and actually a really good sized company, but if you really want to scale and, you know, grow to a company to, to higher, you know, achievements, you know, SaaS is probably a better route to go in. Number 2, the second reason why you want to move away is probably because There's just so much time commitment in terms of managing the team, managing people, and managing process just to be able to deliver a service or deliver the demands of what your clients are asking. And the third thing, the third reason why people want to move away from the agency model is they basically get burnt out. Okay? So they get burnt out of doing client work, from being at the hands of client demand. So things change on a monthly basis. Their clients' businesses change. Their budgets change, their requirements change, and it's just a constant battle to be able to keep the revenue, keep the lights on, and they get burnt out from the constant demands that it drains from them. So those are the 3 reasons I typically see why agency owners, they love the technology and they want to move into technology. There's just something they're passionate about and they want to get into that space because it's a lot, you know, it's a hotter space to be in. It's a lot more scalable and there's a solution that can be provided at a lower cost for as you grow the company. And the beautiful thing about SaaS is that once you build a product, you know, there's a little bit of a cost involved in terms of launching it, but once you build it, you have a lot more scalability once you've built that technology, right? And you can apply actually a lot of the skills that you learn from running an agency and apply it to be able to grow this business without relying as much on, you know, people to be able to manage that. Because once you build it, Sales is a skill you're going to need to know. Marketing is going to be a skill you need to know. Customer support, customer experience, customer, you know, product onboarding, customer onboarding, you know, all these, these, these processes and skills you develop when in terms of managing a SaaS business or sorry, managing an agency are going to apply and you're going to have to be able to do effectively to be able to manage a SaaS company. Another one obviously is going to be managing teams, hiring, firing, being able to manage people, hiring developers. All that's going to be stuff that you're going to need to learn and also apply to your SaaS company. So let's get into it. The question then becomes, all right, you've agreed. You said, okay, Akeel, I got it. I need to get away from my agency. I've hit a plateau. I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to build a SaaS. But the question is, How do I find the right idea? How do I know what's the right SaaS application I need to build using the skills that I have and to be able to make that shift into being a SaaS founder? So I'm going to talk about 2 ways that you can go about finding that, that perfect idea that's best for your company. So number one, I'm going to tell you it should be based on your area of expertise. Okay? What is your background? What is your passion? What is something you really love? So for example, if you run a digital marketing agency that does video, Let's say videography is your passion. You guys do a lot of video work for your clients. Maybe build a SaaS product that's specifically based around video technology. Look at problems in that space. Maybe you're using different products and tools out there and you find that there's just something missing that could be better or improved upon. Maybe you do podcast marketing. Is there a podcasting platform or hosting platform or some inefficiency in the process that you see that your clients are demanding or you've been offering to your clients that you can build a solution for through a SaaS application. Okay, so that's the first way I'd look at is what are things that you're an expert at that you've already done through your agency and maybe you can find a small solution that you're now doing either manually or your team is doing or you're doing through a spreadsheet that can be automated and your clients are willing to pay for it. So that's number one, base it on the problems and the solution of what you can provide based on the problems you see that you interact with on a day-to-day basis. Number 2, I would base it upon looking at what your clients' demands are and what are their problems. Okay, so one is looking internally, what are some problems that you guys have in terms of what your expertise is? Second is look at your clients. Let's say as an agency owner, you work with lawyers, maybe you work with hospitals, maybe you work with— Realtors. Universities. Now focus on a specific problem and talk to your clients. Ask them, okay, you're a lawyer, what are some inefficiencies or problems that you're facing that are manually done? And, you know, maybe if we bring in something that's more automated, a tool that you would love to use, and maybe you can either A, partner with them to be able to build this product, or B, they become your first few clients. They'll be able to share it with their network to be able to, to grow your company at the initial stages. So, you know, look at, you know, lawyers, hospitals, doctors, dentists, every single field out there. Work with one of those clients. Maybe you feel a trust and connection with, talk to them, ask them what their problems are and look for small solutions that you can build for that industry specific. I always love to start with an industry, you know, build, start with that niche and then you can always expand later on. And if you're wondering how to go about, you know, building it, Use some of that cash, use some of the profits that you get from your agency and take that to build your first MVP, your minimum viable product. And all your— the goal there is just to validate if you're— that client you're talking to or the people you've spoken to, if they're willing to pay for it. Okay? So take some of your cash, build that initial product for them, and then go back to your client, the lawyer you spoke to, for example, and say, I've got this product, I built it for you exactly what you mentioned. I'm looking to give it to you at a discount this year for 50% off regular, you know, $1,000. I'm going to give it to you for $500, and that's going to validate whether your product is worth it or not. Now, if you guys want to check out my other video, I actually talk about how to actually launch and build a SaaS company. That'll give you more details on what to do at this stage. But at this point, once you've gotten to this point, continue building out the product, make those adjustments based on their feedback, and go out there and build a launch strategy. Now I'll also talk about that in my other video about the launch strategy. That's super important to get feedback, but some popular places that you want to look at are, you know, Product Hunt, BetaList, and there's many, many others. You go out there, but the idea is that you're going to get accelerated growth and you're going to get that feedback loop. So people are going to give you feedback right away. AppSumo is another big one as well. And based on that feedback, you're going to take that cash, rebuild, continue to iterate. But the idea here is that it's a process. It's slow. It takes time. It's not going to be overnight that you're going to shift from agency owner to, to a SaaS founder, but you can do both simultaneously. And as your SaaS company starts to grow, as it starts to grow traction, you can start making that shift over and be a full-time SaaS founder. So I hope you guys enjoyed that video. If you guys are an agency owner ready to take action and move to the SaaS route, I highly recommend you guys get started today and comment below. What are you guys thinking? If you're an agency owner, where are you guys at in terms of your stage of, of your SaaS business? And where are you in terms of thinking of your stage of starting your SaaS company? Let me know in the comments below. Happy to give you guys feedback on your SaaS product.
