Dylan Ander | CRO & SplitTesting

by popular request, my peptide stack: > 8mg retatrutide > 0.5mg bpc-157 > 0.6mg ipamorelin > 1.5mg melanotan 2 > 100mg oxytocin > creatine

THE CLEAREST PATH TO A $10M+ SOFTWARE EXIT in 2 YEARS (with AI and agents) building an agency right now is one of the most interesting business moves the productized agency had its moment in 2022. it collapsed because scaling humans is a nightmare. inconsistent output, people quitting, margins getting crushed. most of the founders (and creators) who tried it got burned and moved on but the thesis was right. the labor problem is just solved now with AI, claude code, openclaw etc. here's the actual playbook i'd run today: pick one painful deliverable for one specific buyer. like SEO content for e-commerce brands doing $1M+ but not "marketing." or like ad creatives for DTC brands spending $50k/month on meta. one thing. one customer. that's it then you build the AI workflow behind it. you're selling an outcome on a monthly retainer. $3-5k/month. 80%+ margins because your cost is compute and a few hours of QA "BuT tHaT'S nOt a BiG bUsInnesS" okay but you're still swinging for the fences because the agency IS the research and development for your agent SaaS every client is paying you to figure out what to automate. you're learning what breaks, what scales, what customers actually want. by month 4 you know exactly what to productize. you build the software on top of the workflow you've already proven works and already have customers paying for agency funds the agent SaaS. SaaS scales without the agency overhead. the clients become your first software customers now let's talk about what this actually looks like financially year 1: 10 clients at $4k/month. $480k revenue. 2 people. maybe $80k in costs including compute, tools, one part time VA. you're taking home $400k between two people while building the software in the background year 2: you launch the software. your 10 agency clients are the first to convert. they already trust you. they've seen the output. you charge $800/month for the software version. now you have recurring software revenue AND the agency still running year 3: agency is winding down or running on autopilot. software has 200 customers at $800/month. that's $1.9M ARR. 2-3 person team. 85% margins. you are now a very attractive acquisition target the exit math is interesting. SaaS at $1.9M ARR with strong retention trades at 5-8x revenue. that's a $10-15M exit for something two people built in 3 years starting with zero VC CAVEAT: Startups are hard. A lot needs to go right. But from a framework perspective, I think this probably the lowest risk, highest reward option for lots of of folks and most of the businesses cost $0 to start basically this is the most capital efficient path to a software exit that exists right now happy building

My CRO guy thinks his tests are working. Profit per visitor is up. But it's also spring which is historically our best season of the year. Interestingly returns are higher. Product quality is down cause of supply chain issues and returning customer revenue is lower as a %. Is it our tests? Seasonality? Product mix? AOV randomly being higher? So many variables it's almost impossible to tell what's actually happening I feel like in ecom.

Everyone wants to talk about the leverage ai will bring brands. Here is the reality for a brands P&L: Maybe 20-30% of all revenue is the actual cogs. 10-15% is people. 3-10% is software and services. 5-15% is freight. And 30-50% is marketing. Fully embracing ai will get you 5-15% of revenue to the bottom line. But it’s not solving cogs, freight, or marketing. Meta still gets the lion share. Ai is helpful, but it isn’t going to turn the average brand into an 80% profit business.