Recurring Revenue, More Freedom: Navigating the "Let's Build a SaaS" Trap, With Stephen Neville

About this Episode In this episode of the Agency Profit Podcast, Marcel is joined by Stephen Neville, CEO of BugHerd, to unpack the fantasy many agency owners entertain: trading their service-based business model for the greener grass of software. Drawing from Stephen’s journey from running a digital agency to scaling a SaaS product, they explore the often-overlooked complexities of the transition—from the challenges of saying no to feature requests, to the harsh financial realities of customer acquisition and technical debt. Marcel and Stephen shed light on why services are more flexible (and forgiving), why product-market fit is best found through doing things manually first, and how the most successful SaaS-leaning agencies start by productizing what they already do. Whether you’re software-curious or scaling a service firm and wondering what’s next, this episode offers a candid, experience-backed roadmap for navigating the leap (or not) from services to SaaS.