What I've learnt making the transition from web agency to product company

Sup Indie Hackers,

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I'm Adam, co-founder of Relume, a Webflow exclusive agency, and maker of Relume Library, alongside my partner in crime @dcanisse.

Today I'm proud to have launched our first product on ProductHunt. As product people at heart, it's something @dcanisse and I set out to do from the beginning and it's taken us 1.5 years to get here. The truth is making the transition from client work to building products isn't easy, but it's very possible.

Here’s what I’ve learnt so far on my journey from being an agency to building our first product. I'm putting this out there into the community as it may help some of you wanting to do the same... Who knows. Here it goes:

1. Have a plan but don’t take it too seriously. In the early stages it’s important to be flexible and embrace randomness so that you’re more open to product opportunities that arise.

2. Building a product for yourself, aka “scratching your own itch”, is the easiest path to product-market fit. Well so it seems from my experience. Less assumptions, less research, more understanding of the problem, more time spent building the solution.

3. You don’t have to know how to code to build software products and it doesn’t have to take more than a few weeks. The no-code space is alive and well, start with Webflow as your front end, Zapier for integrations and Airtable as your database.

4. Pursue projects that provide an upside irrespective of the financial outcome. These upsides can include new learnings, improved relationships, networking, brand awareness etc. Relume Library may or may not be a success on paper, but we’ve learnt a lot along the way and have grown our community and brand from building it.

5. Narrowing focus in the short-term increases opportunities in the long-term. Ever since we decided to niche into Webflow and focus only on Webflow development we’ve been able to focus our resources and skill acquisition more effectively. As a result we’ve unlocked product opportunities we wouldn’t have had before.

6. It’s okay to say “No”. Saying “No” might burn you in the short-term but help you in the long term. We’ve walked away from client work to focus on a product that may not make us any money. The upside of the product working in the long-term is worth the punt.

My journey building Relume is still in its early stages and there’s lots more to learn and build. Although we’ve just released our first product, we’ll still be operating as an agency and will continue to build beautiful Webflow websites for clients. We like to call this the Barbell Strategy - a concept taken from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Antifragile.

In the meantime, feel free to learn more about our product on ProductHunt and show some support if you like what you see! https://www.producthunt.com/posts/relume-library