Pixelpal
Unlimited design as a service for SaaS businesses
Got a first customer in a month of launching the site – a funded SF based startup. Pretty excited to learn if the model works out and how I feel working this way + how long they'll retain. In the meanwhile we're 2 / 3 months in and they're more than happy with the results + I love doing a Web design again in a tool I'm a big fan of: Framer 🎉
Very much intrigued by a few successful creators such as Brett Williams, Robin Vander Heyden, and the process Justin Welsh went through, I decided to start exploring the game of productised services as well with yourpixelpal.com.
Pixelpal also scratches an itch for me personally: I’ve been contracting for a few companies after a VC-backed startup adventure and multiple years of running an agency. Turns out, I like the earlier stages of companies – in particular SaaS – more so than the corporate dinosaurs.
With the experience I have, I figured a model like this could work really well for earlier stage SaaS companies where the founder has product sense but lacks the execution skills for design and values some input on product discovery every now and then.
Just starting testing the waters with $0 revenue yet. Keep you posted.
-
1
Brett's story has inspired me (software engineer), too, as at the first look it seems this totally could not work. Flat-Rate for design, wow.
But it made me think if really the same could be done in my space too. I think his trick is the limit to "1 design task at a time" and I would have to figure out how this could look.
As someone from the other side (like being the buyer, not the contractor), do you see an opportunity there for tech instead of design?
-
1
I think the benefit of design is all the work you do is immediately visible and it's a bit easier to set a rule of thumb on what people can expect in terms of design requests delivered and the scope of that. Might depend on what kind of engineer you are but I guess it's harder to package that up in such a way, based on 'output' (instead of hours), as often times (from own experience) there is complexity that's either harder to understand for a customer and things that aren't immediately visible.
I would go through Brett's Twitter threads or join his Productize Yourself community to see if there are any good engineering examples you can learn from...
-
8 Comments
How cool Frank! Good to see you have something that works.
By the way, I am curious whether your customers come from your own country (the Netherlands, judging by your name) or whether you get customers from abroad.
This first one is SF based. They somehow found me online / Twitter (my personal design portfolio franklagendijk.com) and wanted to work with me. Proposed them this new type of offering and they were open to try. Works well until now.
Have a few in the pipeline just through netwerk, sharing what I'm exploring and working on. Slowly starting to think about figuring out the distribution channels that will bring in leads consistently. My hope is that through 3 or 4 via my own network, there will be a tiny bit of word of mouth / referral that will help with that but it's clear there needs to be a consistent marketing/sales effort beside that as well.
How cool that they found you on Twitter. I am very curious how you maintain the relationship with the company from SF.
It's basically async, back and forth in comments on the requests/tickets + 1 bi-weekly hourly call
No specific focus on geography btw. I just try to leverage my existing network (done Techstars previously, so know a few startup founders etc) and just started sharing a bit here on IH
Excited to hear how this goes for you! It seems like when people try out this model they typically go through a stage where they're swamped with work – then they raise their prices and things even back out. Hopefully, you can avoid that part!
Yeah, we'll see how it goes! Thanks for the support! :)
How many clients do you get monthly
If you don't mind me asking
@franklagendijk