I Built A $1.2M No-Code Agency At 17 Years Old
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hey everyone! My name is Jacob Klug and I’m a 20-year-old entrepreneur and the co-founder of Creme Digital. At Creme, we build beautiful products for a fraction of the cost and time.
Ranging from MVP’s for startups all the way to internal tools for Fortune 500 companies. All our software is built on no-code tools like Bubble, WeWeb, Xano, and more. I started the agency when I was 17-years-old in high-school, and have since scaled it to $100k/month.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
As early as grade 6, I was hustling. My first ever venture was building an app that would notify my parents when I got to school safely. Throughout high-school it was running multiple different businesses from dropshipping, real estate photography, a marketing agency and more.
Though I had some coding abilities it wasn’t enough to build the more advanced applications I wanted to build. So I came across Bubble, and started tinkering with it.
It wasn’t until covid hit, some of our existing clients in the marketing agency needed help transitioning their business to the new digital age. That’s when the light bulb moment struck to build apps for businesses using Bubble.
The advantages from a cost and time saving perspective were obvious. It wasn’t long before the demand caught up to us and we realized we needed to focus on only this.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
Our process for building products has shifted over the years. We recently switched to a bi-weekly subscription model with all clients. The reason being that software is always evolving and we want to align our goals to be building the best product possible that’s not limited by scope or budget.
We work with clients as a dedicated team – where they have 24/7 access to a designer, developer and project manager. With mainly asynchronous communication via Slack, Notion and Loom, with a bi-weekly meeting to match our 2-week sprint dates.
Narrow down to one thing: one customer, one offer, one main price. Sell results not services/products.
Describe the process of launching the business.
When I started this agency, lots was going on in my life. I was in Grade 11, determined to have a strong reason not to go to college. On top of that this was 2020, when the world had shut down – meaning my classes were virtual. Looking back this was a blessing in disguise because it freed up my time not needing to be in class, where I could be working on the business. Being a relatively broke high-school student I didn’t have much money.
Luckily, running an agency the easiest part is starting it. No upfront capital or intensive resources needed. Our early deals came from personal networks, referrals, and RFP (request for proposal) programs that were tied to the platforms themselves. The very first one being a Takewondo studio looking to move digital during the pandemic. So we built a community platform custom just for them.
After seeing the power of no-code for businesses we decided to double down and focus solely on that. It wasn’t long before we started to build a sales and operation process to win, and execute on deals – mainly coming through RFP’s in the beginning. We later grew by referrals, some paid ads (mainly Google) and experimenting with organic content.
An agency is a simple business model: you get paid to perform services, and pay other people less to fulfill it. But the hard part is finding people that can do the job better than you and convince them to join.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
For us our focus has always been on delivering a top-notch product. This is the bare minimum when it comes to running an agency. This leads to a lot of referrals, and word of mouth inbound that comes our way.
But that only takes us so far, also with the limited knowledge most people have around no-code and it’s capabilities. So we’ve started to focus on media, PR and podcasts.
This has allowed us to get the word out on what are the capabilities of no-code. As most people have a stigma around it or may not even know the option exists. This has broadened our audience to be people who haven’t even heard of no-code but can appreciate the benefits over traditional development. Funneling that back into our core belief of building great products, retaining clients and bringing new ones on – keeps our business growing.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
The business is doing well, doing about $100k/month. About 75% of that revenue comes from our main offer of $4.5k/bi-weekly for a fractionalized product team. This includes a designer, developer and project manager. We work in agile 2-week sprints, with an average time to market in about ~2 months.
We’re profitable at about 30% net margins. Unfortunately our growth has been stagnant over the last couple of years, so we’re implementing new strategies to continue to scale. Such as changing our model recently to be recurring to increase LTV per customer. We have a top of funnel issue, which just means we need more leads. So we’re launching cold email campaigns that we’re seeing slow but steady lead flow in.
Here’s our current breakdown of lead flow & deals.
We operate mainly in Notion. Notion has been a game changer for our business. It’s the perfect mix of pre-built infrastructure with the ability to customize your own system. Add in Zapier for automations Notion is a powerful tool for internal and external management. This allows us and the clients to manage sprints, tasks, and scope – all in one place.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I started this business when I was 17-years-old. Currently about to turn 21, so it’s fair to say a lot has changed. Sometimes it’s hard to know what I learned in the business versus through my journey of just evolving as a human and dealing with people.
I think one of the main reasons Creme Digital worked was timing and picking a market that is growing. Picking the horse to bet on, instead of the jockey. I believed in no-code and thought it had huge potential, but it was nowhere close to as big as it is now. I believe this was partially due to luck, but intuition and belief were factors as well.
I learned the power of delegation and hiring. An agency is a simple business model. You get paid to perform services, and pay other people less to fulfill it. But the hard part is finding people that can do the job better than you and convince them to join. Agencies live or die by their people – so it’s taught me important lessons in just how important they are.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Our main tools are:
Notion: For management and operations of our entire company
Bubble: Our main development tool of choice
Slack: For client and internal communication
Zapier: For automations between our tools
Figma: For collaborative design between teams
Gsuite: For emails, calendar, docs, etc
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I love podcasts as a digestible way to consume information that’s up to date. I listen to all the standard entrepreneurial podcasts (MFM, How I built this, Diary of CEO).
But more than anything, I like to dive in on particular people especially the podcasts that are more niche that will ask specific questions around one topic.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
I talk to a lot of other agency folks. Agencies strip away at all the fat and get to the most basic level of business. But these same things apply to almost all business types.
There are main themes
- Narrow down to one thing. One customer, one offer, one main price.
- Sell results not services/products.
The first point is one that people often get wrong. You’d think the more you do, the more you offer, the more luckily you are to attract clients. And in the very beginning this isn’t a bad approach to find what you like, but it’s definitely not an approach to scale with.
The same reason we trust the surgeon that is a specialist in that one field, to perform that one surgery is the same reason companies trust specialists in their fields to perform and execute successfully to reach the desired outcome.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We’re always looking for new members to join our team. The main roles we hire for are Bubble Developers, Product Designers & Project Managers. If you’re any of those three reach out to me at jacob@creme.digital.
Where can we go to learn more?
For more info on Creme Digital check out our website.
Follow me on Twitter where I engage the most.
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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