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May 6, 2019 · 17m · top-founders

1381 When should you shut your agency down to go all in on SaaS?

John Wuebben · 7m spoken Nathan Latka · 7m spoken
0:00 / 0:00

gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions

In this episode of The Top Entrepreneurs, host Nathan Latka interviews Content Launch founder John Wuebben to examine the financial metrics, technical hurdles, and strategic pivots required when transitioning from a service agency to a pure-play SaaS platform.

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 48.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Nathan as informed peer 5.8 Guest teaching 2.0 Guest disagreement 3.0 Nathan pushing back 5.5
05100:0010:003:29–5:50 · Nathan as informed peer 7/10 Dissecting Customer Numbers and Pure SaaS Revenue Latka relentlessly presses Wuebben to separate pure SaaS subscription revenue from agency and services revenue. When Wuebben claims he does not know offhand because he is not the CFO, Latka calls him out directly for not knowing his daily SaaS MRR.5:51–10:57 · Nathan as informed peer 6/10 Visionary Leadership, Agency Support, and Remote Team Latka questions why Wuebben does not check sales numbers daily and uses Hootsuite as an example of agency-to-SaaS transition. Wuebben pushes back by telling Latka to slow down and defending his role as a visionary.10:58–15:31 · Nathan as informed peer 7/10 Addressing Platform Bugs and the Agency Safety Net Latka repeatedly challenges Wuebben for holding onto an agency safety net while claiming to be all-in on SaaS. Wuebben explains he hesitates to push sales due to severe software bugs, which Latka critiques as a leadership flaw.15:32–16:59 · Nathan as informed peer 3/10 Famous Five Questions and Episode Conclusion Standard Famous Five closing sequence. Both parties are amicable, and Latka summarizes the business metrics without tension.3:29–5:50 · Guest teaching 3/10 Dissecting Customer Numbers and Pure SaaS Revenue Latka relentlessly presses Wuebben to separate pure SaaS subscription revenue from agency and services revenue. When Wuebben claims he does not know offhand because he is not the CFO, Latka calls him out directly for not knowing his daily SaaS MRR.5:51–10:57 · Guest teaching 2/10 Visionary Leadership, Agency Support, and Remote Team Latka questions why Wuebben does not check sales numbers daily and uses Hootsuite as an example of agency-to-SaaS transition. Wuebben pushes back by telling Latka to slow down and defending his role as a visionary.10:58–15:31 · Guest teaching 3/10 Addressing Platform Bugs and the Agency Safety Net Latka repeatedly challenges Wuebben for holding onto an agency safety net while claiming to be all-in on SaaS. Wuebben explains he hesitates to push sales due to severe software bugs, which Latka critiques as a leadership flaw.15:32–16:59 · Guest teaching 0/10 Famous Five Questions and Episode Conclusion Standard Famous Five closing sequence. Both parties are amicable, and Latka summarizes the business metrics without tension.3:29–5:50 · Guest disagreement 4/10 Dissecting Customer Numbers and Pure SaaS Revenue Latka relentlessly presses Wuebben to separate pure SaaS subscription revenue from agency and services revenue. When Wuebben claims he does not know offhand because he is not the CFO, Latka calls him out directly for not knowing his daily SaaS MRR.5:51–10:57 · Guest disagreement 4/10 Visionary Leadership, Agency Support, and Remote Team Latka questions why Wuebben does not check sales numbers daily and uses Hootsuite as an example of agency-to-SaaS transition. Wuebben pushes back by telling Latka to slow down and defending his role as a visionary.10:58–15:31 · Guest disagreement 4/10 Addressing Platform Bugs and the Agency Safety Net Latka repeatedly challenges Wuebben for holding onto an agency safety net while claiming to be all-in on SaaS. Wuebben explains he hesitates to push sales due to severe software bugs, which Latka critiques as a leadership flaw.15:32–16:59 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Famous Five Questions and Episode Conclusion Standard Famous Five closing sequence. Both parties are amicable, and Latka summarizes the business metrics without tension.3:29–5:50 · Nathan pushing back 7/10 Dissecting Customer Numbers and Pure SaaS Revenue Latka relentlessly presses Wuebben to separate pure SaaS subscription revenue from agency and services revenue. When Wuebben claims he does not know offhand because he is not the CFO, Latka calls him out directly for not knowing his daily SaaS MRR.5:51–10:57 · Nathan pushing back 6/10 Visionary Leadership, Agency Support, and Remote Team Latka questions why Wuebben does not check sales numbers daily and uses Hootsuite as an example of agency-to-SaaS transition. Wuebben pushes back by telling Latka to slow down and defending his role as a visionary.10:58–15:31 · Nathan pushing back 8/10 Addressing Platform Bugs and the Agency Safety Net Latka repeatedly challenges Wuebben for holding onto an agency safety net while claiming to be all-in on SaaS. Wuebben explains he hesitates to push sales due to severe software bugs, which Latka critiques as a leadership flaw.15:32–16:59 · Nathan pushing back 1/10 Famous Five Questions and Episode Conclusion Standard Famous Five closing sequence. Both parties are amicable, and Latka summarizes the business metrics without tension.

speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

0:00 · Nathan 75% · guest 25%0:00 · Nathan 75% · guest 25%3:00 · Nathan 43.2% · guest 56.8%3:00 · Nathan 43.2% · guest 56.8%6:00 · Nathan 41% · guest 59%6:00 · Nathan 41% · guest 59%9:00 · Nathan 28.1% · guest 71.9%9:00 · Nathan 28.1% · guest 71.9%12:00 · Nathan 45.2% · guest 54.8%12:00 · Nathan 45.2% · guest 54.8%15:00 · Nathan 61.4% · guest 38.6%15:00 · Nathan 61.4% · guest 38.6%
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 6:15 Guest tells host to slow down

Wuebben rejects Latka's premise that a founder must watch revenue dashboards daily, telling him to 'slow down' and asserting his visionary role.

 Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 4:54 Host refuses CFO excuse for revenue metrics

Latka refuses to accept Wuebben's deflection that he is not the CFO, stating that an early-stage CEO should know exact SaaS revenue daily.

 Biggest teaching moment ▶ 13:12 Guest explains pause on sales due to platform bugs

Wuebben educates Latka on the technical reality of why he has not pushed SaaS sales, citing blocking product bugs.

 Nathan holds their own ▶ 7:45 Host cites Hootsuite agency-to-SaaS playbook

Latka demonstrates SaaS domain expertise by citing Ryan Holmes shutting down Hootsuite's legacy agency to reach $200M ARR.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
ChapterTopicNathan as informed peerGuest teachingGuest disagreementNathan pushing backWhy
Dissecting Customer Numbers and Pure SaaS Revenue 7347 Latka relentlessly presses Wuebben to separate pure SaaS subscription revenue from agency and services revenue. When Wuebben claims he does not know offhand because he is not the CFO, Latka calls him out directly for not knowing his daily SaaS MRR.
Visionary Leadership, Agency Support, and Remote Team 6246 Latka questions why Wuebben does not check sales numbers daily and uses Hootsuite as an example of agency-to-SaaS transition. Wuebben pushes back by telling Latka to slow down and defending his role as a visionary.
Addressing Platform Bugs and the Agency Safety Net 7348 Latka repeatedly challenges Wuebben for holding onto an agency safety net while claiming to be all-in on SaaS. Wuebben explains he hesitates to push sales due to severe software bugs, which Latka critiques as a leadership flaw.
Famous Five Questions and Episode Conclusion 3001 Standard Famous Five closing sequence. Both parties are amicable, and Latka summarizes the business metrics without tension.

Statements from this episode (10)

Disclosure
Content Launch charges an average of $100 per user monthly
“A hundred bucks per user per month.”
John Wuebben May 6, 2019 ▶ 2:59
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wuebben: Content Launch has 15 paid accounts and 700 committed partner users
“We have about 15 paid accounts. And then we have, like I said, a big partnership deal we signed where we have 700 paid users committed to joining that, that account.”
John Wuebben May 6, 2019 ▶ 3:35
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wuebben: Content Launch generates about $15,000 in blended MRR
“We're doing about 15,000 MRR right now.”
John Wuebben May 6, 2019 ▶ 3:59
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wuebben: Content Launch pure SaaS revenue is probably $3,000 to $4,000 MRR
“Probably, realistically, we're probably at three or 4000.”
John Wuebben May 6, 2019 ▶ 5:48
Disclosure
Wuebben: Content Launch operates with an eight-person distributed team
“So we have eight people. We have people in North Carolina. We have people in actually in the Eastern Europe, some developers there. We have operations guy in Irvine. So yeah, we have eight, eight in our team right now.”
John Wuebben May 6, 2019 ▶ 7:27
Assertion Partly supported
Hootsuite reached $200M revenue after shutting down its $4M agency
“He grew it to about three, four million bucks and just Professional service revenue. Everyone kept asking for them to manage manually their posting. So he said, I'm gonna build software for this. And then he shut down that agency. He totally washed away four o…”
Nathan Latka May 6, 2019 ▶ 8:07
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Wuebben: Content Launch sued former developers and won
“I got rid of my developers, actually went through a lawsuit with some developers and I won in that lawsuit.”
John Wuebben May 6, 2019 ▶ 10:45
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Content Launch generated $35k in agency revenue last year from video project
“Now the reason we did 35 K last year and agency revenue is because we were working on a big video project that kind of came out of nowhere.”
John Wuebben May 6, 2019 ▶ 11:24
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wuebben: Content Launch is migrating about 40 agency clients to SaaS
“What we're doing is reporting over all the agency clients into the platform. And we have about 40 agency clients over the last two years we're doing that.”
John Wuebben May 6, 2019 ▶ 11:42
Disclosure
Wuebben: Content Launch developers declined equity offers while CTO holds equity
“So the CTO does, our CTO I've offered equity to the developers. They weren't real excited about that. I mean, they wanted, it's a personal choice. Most of the people on our team do have equity but the developers don't.”
John Wuebben May 6, 2019 ▶ 15:17
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