Case study: agency launches SaaS product

Happy Monday. I sat down with Daniel Coulbourne and John Drexler (the founders of web agency Thunk) to workshop the launch of their first SaaS product, Tidy.

Note: this is a sample of the content I'm releasing over at Marketing for Developers.

Tidy is agency management software they built from years of running their own shop: time tracking, invoicing, scheduling, and client agreements all in one place. They'd been using it internally for a while, but now they're opening it up and want help thinking through how to promote it.

Here's what we covered:

The Basecamp lesson. People sign up for Basecamp because they're buying into the Basecamp way: a philosophy, a methodology, an opinionated system. Tidy has the same opportunity.

For example, Tidy is built around the assumption that you're selling hours. These days, that's considered countercultural because many influencers advocate "outcome-based billing." Tidy could be unapologetic about hour-based billing: "Lots of agencies have tried outcome-based billing, but it just doesn't work in practice. When you finally admit to yourself that you're selling hours, come back to Tidy."

LLMs are now driving 50%+ of trial signups. For my product, it was maybe 10–15% a year ago. Now I'd peg it at more than half. LLMs are pulling from Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, Trustpilot, G2, and Facebook groups. The playbook for getting recommended by AI is to build a broad online footprint. As I discussed with Lars Lofgren, this can mean that the founder is the "unfluencer," posting authentically on multiple channels across the web.

The "wide footprint" framework. I recommended that Daniel write a blog post about hourly billing under his own name. He should cross-post it on LinkedIn, submit it to Hacker News, and mention it on Reddit. This is the key: having a real person, attached to a real product, with a real opinion, distributed across a wide footprint on the web. That's how you get recommended on LLMs.

A simple review-building tactic. Two weeks after someone upgrades to a paid plan, send them a short email: "We're a small, independent team. One of the best ways people find us is through reviews on Trustpilot. If you could leave us an honest one, we'd really appreciate it." That's it. Do that consistently, and by the end of the year, you've got 10–20 real reviews, which both Google and LLMs treat as a trust signal.

Make your website human.

When I looked at the Tidy website, the biggest thing missing was human faces. Nothing I've tested converts better than having a real person visible in the hero. Adding a picture of a real human almost always converts better.

At the bottom of the page, I recommended they add a section that answers the question: Who's running this thing? Something like:

Hey, we're Daniel and John. We've been running Thunk for X years. We built this because we kept getting burned. Here's what we've learned. We are veterans. We are experts. You can trust us.

The way to convey authenticity is to make your website more human: show photos, and tell your story.

This all matters in the age of AI because a website with just a logo, some feature bullets, and no people attached to it looks like something that got spun up overnight.

"Build a Zero Risk Agency." This is the concept I think Tidy could own. Daniel and John have restructured how Thunk operates around one conviction: they don't take financial risk on clients. They get paid upfront. They bill hourly. They don't make project-based bets where either they or the client will lose. That's a rallying cry for every agency owner who's been burned. "Build a Zero Risk Agency" should be Tidy's manifesto.

In the AI era, the products that win will marry "methodology + software." A user isn't just buying a tool; they're buying into a "better way to work."

Daniel and John need to let people opt into the idea that there's a better way to run an agency; one where you're not constantly taking on financial risk, chasing invoices, or losing bets on fixed-price projects. Then introduce Tidy as the tool that helps you implement that system.

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As I mentioned, I'll be releasing more stuff like this over at:

https://marketingfordevelopers.com/

You can also sign up as a paid member and join my private Discord, where I help software devs figure out their marketing.

Be sure to check out both Thunk and Tidy!

Any thoughts on any of this? Reply and let me know.

Cheers,
Justin Jackson – Bluesky

PS: You can also listen to this case study as an audio podcast.