Co-written
by Ryan Matzner
1.Brand with
a single purpose. From day one, we branded Fueled as mobile first and only, and
we’ve ridden the wave of mobile’s dominance ever since. We’re grateful to
receive the bulk of our new business through client referrals and friends. We
do more than mobile apps -- website design, branding, SEO, community building
-- but it’s our mobile brand and expertise that gets people in the door.
2. Fire
fast. If someone on your team is not working out, part ways now. It might leave
the team crunched and you might have to work on Saturday and Sunday. Suck it up
and do it. You’ll thank us later.
When we hire
someone, we tell them up front that it’s for a three-month trial period. At two
months, we have a check-in and assess the relationship from both sides. This
gives them a month to improve or keep on keeping on. If major issues remain
unsolved by the end of that three months, we say goodbye. When something is not
working out, it’s a mutual feeling more often than not.
3. Only
charge flat fees for very discrete deliverables. Hourly rates or project fees?
We finally found the perfect balance: charge flat fees for a series of
well-defined, discrete deliverables with clear, inelastic boundaries.
Once a
project is rolling, we move to a structure with a flat fee for a set amount of
work. For us, that usually means a build of an app with a certain set of
features. Clients know what they’re paying, and we know what we’re delivering.
If the client adds features, we layer on more deliverables and flat fees.
4. Get paid
up front. Don’t start working until you get paid up front. Seriously, stop. Do
something else until you get the money.
It may feel
cheeky, but there’s no faster way for an agency to fold than to carry the debt
of your clients’ unpaid bills. We ask our clients to pay in advance for each
two-week period of work. If they don’t pay, we don’t work.
5. Avoid
cheap clients. If a potential new client tries to lowball you or asks for deep
discounts, shut the door.
It’s this
weird, inverted ratio: the law of discounting. The deeper the discount or the
more generous the favor we give, the more unrealistic clients’ demands will be.
For some reason, the clients who demand discounts will never be happy with your
work, and they’re hardly worth your time and aggravation.
6. Build a
lean product. Bully your clients into building less, not more. Some clients are
surprised when we push for a smaller contract (which means less cash for us).
But experience has taught us that six-month builds of apps with 150 screens is
effectively a guaranteed disaster. Focus first on what you can build in eight
weeks, max. Then add and release the most compelling additional features in
one- or two-week increments.
7. Have
plenty of conference rooms and phone booths. Remember this ratio: one to 11.
Fueled runs and houses its NYC team in The Fueled Collective, a coworking space
with 150 members and 35 startups. We’ve found that the magic ratio of
conference rooms to people is 1 to 11.
Spacious
conference rooms for five to eight people are great, but the number-one use of
conference-room time is phone calls made by one or two members, so to be
efficient with space, try creating phone booths or micro-conference rooms. A
few nooks for impromptu breakouts is also very useful.
8. Managing
the client and managing the process are two different jobs. When we started
out, we had “producers,” managers who handled both client relations, project
management and the actual product. We’ve since learned that people are either
really good at building product or really good at managing the client
relationship, never both.
Now we have
separate project managers and product managers. The tension between their
different skills and priorities creates a healthy conflict that gets a quality
product delivered on-time and on-budget.
9.
Experience is valuable. Particularly in the tech world, the value of experience
is easy to overlook. We had a bias, when we started, toward young talent rather
than experience. We’ll just train them, we thought.
But we’ve
since learned that experience matters massively. Bringing in seasoned talent
and managers is absolutely critical to our success and happiness, and it’s been
worth every extra penny.
10. Think
before sleeping with your co-workers. Talented, creative human beings doing
exciting work in intense environments? Love and other pangs of the heart will
happen.
But think
about it carefully before you give in to the longings of your loins. Just how
awkward is it going to be if things don’t work out? How much time and effort
are you going to spend making it right? Do you risk losing someone valuable to
your company?
It might
also make sense to set expectations up front, about what the consequences might
be if things don’t work out. Basically, take the time to consider the
consequences before hooking up with your hot colleague.
We hope
these pro tips help you level-up your own agency’s game. But whatever you do,
don’t stop experimenting and learning as you go. We got to where we are through
constantly tweaking and iterating on how we do business.
Ultimately,
our passion for experimentation and pushing the boundaries is core to success.
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