The podcast discusses the journey of a CEO from a corporate job to starting his own agency, the growth and structure of a 10-person agency, revenue management challenges, and their plans to disrupt the SEO tool market with an upcoming SaaS tool.
Successful SaaS founders often start with agency or service revenue before transitioning to SaaS
Hounder's upcoming SaaS tool, SEO Central.ai, aims to optimize SEO efforts for large enterprises by replacing tools like Yoast
Deep dives
Background and launch of hounder agency
Josh Northcott left enterprise software in 2015 to launch hounder.co, an agency that specializes in large web system implementation and development. The agency has had a successful track record, achieving a million in revenue in 2021 and two million revenue last year. Their success has prompted them to secretly develop an internal SaaS tool, which they plan to release later this year.
Services and revenue model of hounder
Hounder primarily focuses on enterprise projects with a minimum project value of 100k. They offer services such as marketing system implementation, CMS, and custom designs. The agency carefully selects and hand-picks five to six projects per year, alongside ongoing services. With 10 full-time employees, Hounder has managed to achieve impressive revenue per employee, reaching 200k. They aim for consistent revenue growth and have set a target of 2.5 million in revenue this year.
The upcoming SaaS tool: SEO Central.ai
Hounder is developing a unique SaaS tool called SEO Central.ai, which targets the SEO market. They plan to offer AI-driven automation and machine learning capabilities to optimize SEO efforts for large enterprises. The tool aims to enhance existing CMS platforms like Drupal, WordPress, and Adobe Experience Manager by replacing tools like Yoast. With a soft launch planned for the end of this quarter, SEO Central.ai has already attracted a hundred companies for their beta program.
The first customer they landed signed a $1m contract. How? Service contract (‘that’s terrible… I can hear you thinking). False. The most successful SaaS founders almost always start with some sort of agency or service revenue. Their new SaaS could beat out Yoast SEO wordpress tool.
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