Agency Startups

Anise Onyando founded Green Room Creative, a digital growth agency serving early-stage and mid-sized companies. The agency grew from $700k in revenue last year to a projected $1.5M+ this year by synthesizing creative production, paid media strategy, and consulting to drive conversions rather than impressions. Anise survived end-stage kidney failure at 24 (receiving a transplant from his father) and has built the agency while maintaining 5-6 hours of sleep nightly and full energy.

Blue Fish is a luxury concierge service founded by Steve Sims that creates bespoke, high-end experiences for corporate executives, celebrities, and professional athletes. Starting from a Hong Kong nightclub password in 1993, the company evolved into a legitimate business by securing major contracts with New York Fashion Week, the Kentucky Derby, and the Grammys. In 2016, Blue Fish generated nearly $9 million in revenue through curating exclusive, bucket-list experiences tailored to ultra-high-net-worth clientele.

Elizabeth Ozder runs a 10-year-old consulting firm (The Ozder Group) specializing in media strategy and digital transformation, while also serving as head of revenue at LaCona, a content management platform powering 150 million unique monthly users across 60% of local markets. She advises legacy media brands and publishers on navigating the shift from scale-based ad models to subscription and engaged audience models, with clients including AOL, Univision, Associated Press, and others.

Vandex is a blockchain consulting agency founded in 2013 by Kevin Hobbs and Lisa Chang that helps companies build blockchain solutions and conduct token sales. The company has grown to 42 full-time employees and generated $3.2M in revenue over the past 12 months from dozens of clients including Fortune 100/500 companies, government institutions, and banks. They're expanding into SaaS with Ether Party, a no-code smart contract platform, which has 4,000 people on its waitlist and is planning to launch a securitized token offering as their first equity product.

Koala Rank is a bootstrapped content marketing agency founded by Arigato Loporte in January 2020, serving small B2B firms and SaaS companies. Starting with $3,500 from his best month on Fiverr, the founder built an all-in-one content marketing service that creates strategies, editorial calendars, and produces optimized content. The company currently has 5 paying customers generating approximately $4,000 MRR, with traffic driven primarily through SEO (ranking #1 for 'is blogging dead') and guest posting partnerships.

Vaporware is a B2B SaaS consultancy founded in 2013 that helps entrepreneurs take their ideas to market using lean practices and fixed-budget, flexible-scope projects. The agency operates with specialized pods (product manager, designer, and developers) to build MVPs and test specific hypotheses, with projects ranging from $25K to $100K+. As of 2019, the agency had 8 employees and generated $1.2M in annual revenue, offering unique benefits like 40-hour work weeks and revenue-sharing programs.

Sales Playbook is a sales coaching and enablement agency founded by Manuel Hartman in February 2019 to help B2B SaaS companies hit product-market fit and scale their sales teams. Starting from $90K in 2019 revenue, the company grew to $360K in 2020 (300%+ growth) and currently operates at $25-30K MRR across 30 paying customers. The agency uses a coaching model with experienced VP-level sales professionals who spend 2-10 hours weekly coaching founders on sales strategy, templates, and execution.

Rev.Team is a service agency founded by Damian Thompson that helps B2B SaaS founders build and scale revenue teams to grow from $50K-$100K MRR to $1M+ MRR. Starting from zero in June 2020, the business grew to $200K+ in revenue by end of 2020, and scaled to $50K MRR across 12 customers by the time of this interview. Thompson is bootstrapped, uses word-of-mouth and community engagement as primary growth channels, and is building a SaaS tool to productize 80% of his agency services.

WPOK is a bootstrapped WordPress website management agency founded in 2015 by Daniel that serves small businesses needing ongoing maintenance, security, and support. With 150 active customers managing around 200 websites and $15k MRR, the company has achieved strong unit economics and low churn (4-5% monthly) while remaining profitable with a 6% profit margin. Daniel built the team to 8 people (6 technical, 1 sales, 1 customer success) and focuses on sustainable growth through excellent customer service rather than aggressive expansion.

Richard Harris launched Harris Consulting Group in 2013 as a sales consulting practice focused on helping SaaS companies build and scale their sales teams. His NEAT Selling Methodology teaches reps how to ask the right questions at the right time. He works with 2-5 clients per month at approximately $2,000/month per engagement, generating around $10,000 in monthly revenue while maintaining a lifestyle business that allows him to be present for his family.

FullFunnel.io is a B2B marketing consultancy founded by Andrey Zinkovic that generated €250k in revenue in 2020 through 27 consulting projects and coaching 51 startups from European accelerators. The founder is simultaneously bootstrapping a SaaS product called ROI Plan to help B2B companies manage marketing plans, which has 3 paying customers paying lifetime deals ranging from €150-€200. The agency revenue funds the SaaS development with a team of 2 full-time founders and 4 part-time developers in Poland, with a goal to reach €100k ARR for ROI Plan by the end of the year.

MP is a 17-year-old bootstrapped HR services company that started as a pure payroll provider in 2003 but pivoted in 2012 to become an iSOLVE HCM implementation and services partner. They now serve 1,300+ clients across ~40,000 employee seats with a pricing model of $8-$40 per employee per month, generating $650k MRR ($10M ARR projected for 2021) while maintaining 8% net profit margins. Founded and wholly owned by Jason, the company employs 70 people (12 AEs, 5 SDRs, 2 customer success team members, zero engineers) and breaks even on customer acquisition at the 20-month mark with strong 6+ year customer lifetime value.

seed2c is an agency that builds fractional and full-time sales development teams for SaaS founders. Founded by Gino D'Notti, who previously built successful outsourced SDR teams for private equity portfolio companies, the company now manages just under 70 SDRs across approximately 20 client SaaS companies. Their model provides outsourced SDRs starting at $2,500/month for part-time (20 hours/week) or $5,000/month for full-time, each with a dedicated coach, and they take a 15% fee on the first annual base salary if clients want to convert SDRs to full-time hires.

Austin Artificial Intelligence is a data science, ML, and AI services firm founded by Robert Corwin in 2021 after he left the hedge fund space. The company operates a packaged services model, deploying pods of data scientists (typically a senior data scientist, mid-level engineer, and junior resources) to solve business problems for clients in technology, financial, and industrial sectors. They raised an angel investment from Silicon Partners in 2021 and are currently working with seven customers, focusing on practical business results rather than selling frameworks as panaceas.

Support Ninja is an outsourced support and business services company founded by Cody McClain in 2015, based in Austin and Dallas with operations in the Philippines. Starting with just a website and Google Ads, the company grew to over 1,000 employees and nearly $25M ARR by 2021 by combining inbound marketing with enterprise sales, strong company culture, and creative use of outsourcing.

Eric Siu, founder of Single Grain, a SaaS-focused marketing agency, shared his playbook for scaling through content-driven SEO and organic channels. His team operates a survival website that drives 18-20 million visits monthly with a $40-50k monthly budget, generating approximately $3 million annually in affiliate revenue. By leveraging content refreshes, strategic keyword targeting, and building personal brand through podcasts (Marketing School at 80 million downloads, Leveling Up at 6-7 million downloads) and multiple distribution channels, Siu demonstrates how to create lasting competitive advantage through owned media assets.

NP Digital is a nine-figure revenue ad agency founded by Neil Patel that pioneered a product-led growth strategy by acquiring and giving away free software tools (Ubersuggest, Answer the Public) to generate leads. With 40% of agency customers coming from Ubersuggest users and collecting 20,000+ leads monthly, the company demonstrates how free premium software can drive acquisition into higher-margin services, generating eight figures in EBITDA from both the software division and agency services.

Bloom Growth is a B2B SaaS growth agency founded by someone with experience at Andreessen Horowitz and roles at companies like Planet Labs and Zora. The founder presents a contrarian thesis that SDRs should be treated as brand marketers and integrated with demand-gen efforts to reduce CAC by 20-40% and increase pipeline velocity. They offer free marketing strategy workshops and operate the Pipeline Superheroes Podcast.

Outsource RevOps Consultancy is a B2B SaaS consulting agency advising companies on RevOps tech stacks and go-to-market operations. The founder presented at SaaSOpen conference on how to strategically build and scale sales, marketing, and CS technology infrastructure across different revenue stages (1-55M, 5-10M, 10-100M ARR), emphasizing lean tech stacks, data-driven processes, and tool integration rather than technology accumulation.

Revolution Design is a design agency-as-a-service hybrid founded by Kriyamalalami and a co-founder in January 2020, offering full-stack design talent (brand, web, and product design) for $5,000/month. After just 8 months, they've acquired 4 paying customers generating $20,000/month in revenue with zero churn, all through inbound channels from their past freelance client network. They're profitable, reinvesting earnings into team growth, with a goal to reach 20 clients and $100,000/month ARR by year-end.