David Hart
Meet David:
I’m David Hart and I’m a founder of an agency and several product companies, the most successful one of which, ScreenCloud, is generating over $20m in Annual Recurring Revenue.
I founded my agency, Codegent, (along with two others) in 2004 and then after experimenting with several side hustles, we made the decision a little over a decade later, to sell our agency and focus full-time on our fledgling SaaS product.
It was the best financial decision we ever made.
Shortly after launching ScreenCloud we found that most of our customers were coming from North America. This lead to us incorporating in the USA and subsequently I moved myself and my young family out to California.
Although I’m still on the board at ScreenCloud, I have stepped away from the day-to-day.
You see, I realised that what I really loved was the initial hands-on craziness of launching and scaling a SaaS product and the many challenges we had transitioning from one model to another.
I discovered that there were many other agency owners out there who were either thinking of, or who had already embarked on a similar journey.
As a result I have ended up working with agencies at different stages who want to generate the predictable revenue that SaaS can give them, diversify their income to ‘smooth out’ peaks and toughs, and ultimately create significant financial value.
A couple of years ago, a company offered to buy our SaaS business for $185m. This was when it was doing a little over half the revenue it is achieving today. Who knows what value we will ultimately get from it, but the likelihood is it will be significantly more than what we could have achieved had we just stuck with our agency.
I also write a weekly newsletter, Productize, which comes out every Saturday morning (come rain or shine) and covers a range of topics related to moving from an agency to a SaaS model.
Finally, I’ve written a book (also called Productize) which is due to be published in September 2024.
If you’re interested in moving from selling your time to selling your ideas and building significant financial value in the process, then I’d love to talk.
How To Contact David:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.davidhart.io
- Connect with David on LinkedIn here.
Useful Links:
- Sign up to my weekly newsletter here
- Get notified when my book is published by adding your email here
Testimonials
“Enjoying the (Productize) newsletter, it’s been added to my Sat morning reading which is now Times, Sun, NY Times, FT and you!”
Mark Maddox, Partner at Volume
"Working with David on understanding how we can build and launch our own SaaS products as an agency has been transformational. I believe the real reason for this is the fact that David has done this himself and has integrated his own experience shares with a coach mindset to achieve the perfect blend."
Ritam Gandhi, CEO, Studio Graphene
“David has a deeply rooted understanding of the unique challenges and opportunities that come from transitioning a business from a traditional consultancy to a recurring revenue model. For business founders looking to pivot or expand into the SaaS space, David's insights and guidance have been invaluable. He has a knack for simplifying complex concepts and strategies, making them accessible and actionable. We worked with him most recently on product validation and completely changed our approach in this area, which we will be adopting for future new products.”
Amanda Nurse, Co-Founder, Carterwood
“David’s experience not only in launching his own successful SaaS business, but doing that against the backdrop of managing his agency makes him uniquely qualified to help companies like Pixl8 as we look to build out our IP into sustainable SaaS products.”
Alex Skinner, CEO, Pixl8
