Screw it, let's do it! - Scaling a UI/UX Service for SaaS Startups
Hey Indiehackers,
I'm Vlad, a 21-year-old entrepreneur and fellow Indiehacker based in London with a focus on UI/UX design. I recently launched AKIDOO, a subscription service that provides on-demand design support for SaaS startups. At AKIDOO, we have worked with a range of companies, including a small start-up where we helped build a TailwindCSS builder and a publicly listed company from Bucharest valued at over $600 mil (one.ro).
After several months (this December), I decided to put up a landing page that accurately describes the services offered.
The challenge?
Most of the clients we had until today came through referrals, and this represents a quite high risk in terms of future expansion. Ideally, is to have a combination of organic growth from posts such as this one, sharing my thoughts, Email/LinkedIn cold outreach, and social media posting.
Our cold outreach campaigns have started for a month now and seem like they have great success, still lots of ways in which it can be improved though.
The problems we solve?
As a startup, it can be tough to find affordable and reliable design support. Hiring a full-time designer can be expensive and may not make sense for a startup with limited design needs. Working with agencies can be slow and costly, and relying on freelancers on an hourly basis can be unpredictable. That's where AKIDOO comes in.
For a flat monthly fee, you can get access to top-notch specialized design support in SaaS, without the need for long recruiting processes or binding contracts. Your requests will be completed within 48 hours, ensuring that your design needs are met quickly and efficiently.
Our main offer
At AKIDOO, we understand that committing to a subscription service can be a big decision. That's why we offer a 7-day trial for anyone who signs up for our on-demand design support service.
During the trial, you'll have access to all of the features of our service and can submit as many design requests as you'd like. Our team of talented designers will work quickly to ensure that your requests are completed within 48 hours.
If you decide that our service is right for you, simply continue your subscription after the trial period. If not, you can easily cancel at any time.
You can check out my website here: https://akidoo.digital
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions.
Nice website, looks really clean and modern!
Btw, I find this interesting, I've seen this model on a few different agencies recently and was thinking about what turnaround times and prioritization looks like for something like this. As an agency owner which has more customized pricing and sales pipelines for deals, this is basically the complete opposite of what we do.
The biggest challenge we had when taking smaller gigs in the initial journey for FireKamp was prioritizing a ton of work coming into the ad-hoc queue amongst all of the resources. In the beginning everything seemed dandy and revenue was very high, but over time it wasn't sustainable (for us) to run a business like this since there was a ton of context switching across products and overall less focus. We manage this now by having more dedicated support for ongoing initiatives, quarterly commitments and capacity planning.
I'd love to hear more about how you might be solving some of the issues mentioned above!
Hey there! That's a great question, so usually if you put a task in our kanban board for us to start working on it, let's say a landing page, it would take 48h to provide the first draft. So, if the client provides 6 tasks for us to complete, we take them one by one starting with the first.
The client reviews it and we adjust things accordingly until everyone is satisfied. It is safe to assume, depending on the complexity of the landing page, it would take about 5 working days to complete, including talking back and forth with the client.
We also have custom UI/UX packages for bigger clients in the range of 10-20k per project. The 2.5k per month plan is for startups with ongoing needs.
Hope this answers your questions!
Awesome! love your story. I also just lunshed my own design subscription agency. and I built the site on pitch (Presentation tool). I still have no client what do you recommend me to do?