Collabify.Design
World Class UI/UX Designers for an Affordable Subscription
Margins are around 50 t o70% roughly.
We need to keep closing clients as the LTV is on average 2 quarters per client!
To make this sustainable we need at least 5 plus plan clients on quarterly plans.
We have 1 audits running right now on our risk free trial model. Let's see if we close them!
We are almost half-way towards our target of 50K MRR, currently closing 2 plus plan clients, one payment came through and second one is going through the process. The 3rd hopefully will be closing soon.
If we cover our overhead we can fill in a % of revenue at hand on paid marketing activities to fill in more leads. God-willing.
Note: we cannot account for everything via our Stripe verified revenue as some companies can't seem to always get a large subscription cost approved through HR. Strange!
We recently had a client complain about the timeline of his project.
This was because his previous designer created loose UI screens and skipped design systemization and components creation. Although it may seem faster to knock out an MVP, this is a recipe for disaster in terms of scalability.
But of course we can't blame the client for not understanding the value of design systems and high fidelity prototypes.
SOLUTION:
We realized these sorts of issues could happen to any future client. Therefore to solve this problem we created a series of onboarding videos that explained the value of scalable design systems and how it will allow him to future proof the design process and build new features faster.
We also created a system that would calculate an ETA for completion using a formula based on the rate at which their designer would complete a task. This is tallied up and displayed on a Notion task board via the formula automation.
After onboarding the client, he is over the moon. A huge "aha" moment was seen after he understood the value of design systems, in fact he realized why his app was being rejected by the Ipad app store due to lack of a robust design system! Also now that he has an accurate ETA, he can prioritize business goals accordingly.
You can check out one of our onboarding videos right here: https://www.loom.com/share/7c54290860a347649d2ef17289b90d75
Will be writing a post soon on Indie Hacker's main feed to go deeper into our systems. Stay tuned! ⚡️
Super excited to announce closing 10K MRR worth of deals in the last 2 months of launching Together.design.
One client came through our cold outreach effort which is super rare. Cold outreach is a numbers game. You need to build a huge list of ideal customer profiles and send a decent intro about your service at scale. If your message lands with the right person at the right time - Boom! 🔥
This client signed up to the Plus Plan ($5K MRR - Not verified by Stripe since they needed direct to bank payment)
Two clients came through our network. Your network is always the best opportunity as the profiles are much more low hanging fruit. They know who you are, you may have rapport with them and hence the trust already exists.
Both these clients signed up to our Lite Plan ($2.9K MRR verified by Stripe)
Our plan is to continue to build from here and review our pricing and overall model every quarter and make necessary changes for the next phase of growth.
-
1
Congrats Omar! Speaking of cold outreach you should check out kinde.com for auth ;)
Seriously though that is awesome - looking forward to more updates
-
1
Cheers buddy! Will check it out ;) Have you used them?
-
1
I work for them, it's a cool product though. Basically all of the functionality a SaaS company needs but for a lot less than Auth0, and a lot more focused on maintaining your branding. We're also releasing billing and feature flags functionality next year so eventually will be a platform with all of the building blocks a SaaS company needs.
Lmk if you'd like a demo
-
-
This post is very pivotal in terms of educating founders on the importance of a proper UI/UX design process, design systems and high fidelity prototyping. I am getting amazing feedback from this post already; many founders are not aware of what a truly scalable design process looks like, nor how it guarantees a better product, and more than anything faster and cleaner development production!
It impacts your entire business!
Super excited as I hit the top of the popular list today! 🔥 🔥
The goal of Together.Design was NOT to look like an agency. It is a productized service, a model validated by companies such as Design Pickle, Superside and DesignJoy.
The idea is give customers control and accountability over the onboarding by selecting a simple paid subscription plan which outlines what you get, just like a self service SaaS model would do.
We even have a free plan that includes a 1 week audit and deliver initial concepts. This is our chance to blow clients away and make them vested in the process. We're so confident in our delivery that we are more than happy to assume the full risk of the free plan ourselves.
-
2
Looks nice. In fact, looks like you've been around for years as far as I can tell! One comment though, your last step was a "prototype". When is it a finalized, tested, deliverable? At a certain point, isn't the UX design is finished?
-
1
Technically for many companies yes. But most companies are on an ever evolving iterative journey. They keep adding and testing new features. We've discovered through conversation that many UI/UX teams have worked with SaaS startup and other enterprises over a long period even after nailing and polishing the main product.
We are therefore expecting both scenarios. The 3 clients that have signed up so far, we expect will have ongoing with for a minimum of 6 to 12 months that is plenty of time to address our pipeline and overcome churn ;).
-
-
1
Wow, Omar! I love this - the site is very nicely designed, and got me to scroll all the way through :) The whole experience feels like a saas product, which is really interesting.
As much as you are willing to share - how has this “productized” agency model been working for you so far? Does it seem like your clients are from larger companies/agencies? I am new to IH and am in the beginning stages of starting a niche agency myself (I have a design/marketing background and currently lead an in-house design team supporting an HR department).
This productized approach seems to be the way to go, especially if you have consistent needs and don’t have the headcount/budget for another team member.
Excited for you, and best of luck!
-
1
Thanks @Nolan_R! Apologies for the delayed reply! Been crazy busy!
Appreciate the feedback on our site 🧡, more coming soon with our interactive case studies section.In terms of success, the productized mode definitely makes the conversation and process move much faster and gives absolute clarity to clients on what we provide, VS your typical boutique custom solutions and quotes. The transparency on our website clearly defines what they get including pricing, which removes that sort of Elephant in the room when having conversations with any expert.
We have systemized the client sales and onboarding process overall. We have consistent leads too, but can't say it's systemized, it's hit and miss with organic efforts team wide.
Best of Luck!
-
-
1
Free plan is a nice touch! (and super generous :). I know there are folks rolling their eyes to the subscription model approach but there are clearly clients out there who are looking for this. Site looks great, I hope this works like gangbusters for you.
-
2
It's of course a calculative risk we are taking. So far 100% conversion rate on anyone that get's on the free week! If you confident you can overdeliver and people will say yes in that cycle why not?!
Saves you a huge hassle of the usual sales led approach that can easily end in ghosting!
-
-
1
Can I contribute please?
After ironing out our customer onboarding process, we were ready to reach out to some potential leads. We are so lucky to be part of a VC portfolio which consists of multiple tech startups at various stages.
In week 1 we secured 1 enterprise client on the high paid plan, and week 2 we secured 2 clients on our free demo. The total potential MRR after the trial would amount to between $10K to $16K. If we keep moving at this rate our company will be 100% sustainable and we can continue building Glorify at a good pace while scaling Together.Design!
On week 2, we built our case study page to house the first 4 case studies I wrote.
The case studies walked through the various projects our team worked on both internally for own SaaS products and with clients.
We had a lot of strong stories that sold the importance of a robust UI/UX design process. It covered how we approached wireframing, concept design and style exploration, all the way to design systems, high fidelity prototypes and dev team handoff.
We even made a case study of the Together.Design branding and web platform project.
Check it out right here: 👉🏾 https://together.design/blog/together-design-case-study
My hands couldn't stop typing. Surprisingly it was not long before I stumbled upon a simple URL on GoDaddy that made perfect sense for our new business; Together.Design - both words made sense together, it evoked a sense of the UI/UX design process which is collaborative by nature PLUS the brand name was also the URL!
After a short discussion we acquired it and organized a call straight away to run a team-led brand workshop to arrive at our core brand values and style.
I did a little Instagram reel summarising the process, do check it out and follow me if you enjoy it! 👉🏾 https://www.instagram.com/p/Chus1VPj-TM/
In under 1 week we arrived at exactly what this brand was going to look, feel and sound like!
As we saw a few successful sales, we started to look at our growing pains in terms of sales, client onboarding, maintenance and growth through hiring (the more designers the more clients we could onboard). Our big client TeeSpring had paused their subscription as we executed all the assets they needed for the time being. We also had a lot of struggle in terms of how the onboarding and ongoing communication was managed between designers and clients; making sure alignment with the brief was on point etc...
So we went back to the drawing board to think about how could we refine the business model to be more specialized and valuable. What we noticed was that the majority of the work that came through happened to be UI/UX oriented. And this was a skillset that we had been sharpening in house as we were building our own SaaS Glorify.
We knew the value of great UI/UX design, and how that could impact a tech startup. Good UI/UX helps you ship better products 100x faster, and we knew that most companies were not leveraging all the best practices to create scalable design systems and handoff work seamlessly to dev teams without months of painful documentation. We wasted 100,000s of dollars on UX alone until we trained ourselves and attended the best bootcamp we could find which was by memorisely.com.
If we were to only focus on UI/UX design, the communication and onboarding with clients using Figma would no doubt be seamless + the value would be immense as we were experts already! Ah the joy of niching down! 😁
Comment