100K MRR with a design agency

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Interview: Baked Design

Alex is one of the founders of Baked, an unlimited subscription design agency for startups

Hey Alex, Tell us more about what you are working on

Baked is a product design partner for startups. In simple words – a design agency with a subscription model, where we work with startups at any stage or agencies needing to hand off the work.

We focus on constant communication with the client. They are involved in the process and get an update every 2-3 days. Thanks to this we speed up the design process 3x from what standard agencies propose.

We work async, and clients have constant access to us and our team With the pro plan we complete 2 task at the same time, so we can work on the website and app simultaneously. We have a wide spectrum of skills (product design, ux, strategy, motion design, framer/webflow, branding, web design) thanks to the great specialists we have on the team.

Tell us More about your background, and how you came up with the idea of Baked

Baked was founded by me (Alex, UX/CX) and Nick (MrNick_Buzz on X), a Product Designer, with over 10 years of experience in startups and big companies like Meta, Hubspot, and PWC.

Before Baked I worked as Head of Strategy and Research in an agency in Spain. But my background is chaotic. I started as a front-end developer back in 2013 when I was 17. After 2 years I wanted to have more impact on product strategy so I switched to UX, and it was a great decision. I worked as UX and then became UX Lead and Head of Research and Strategy.

I’m a self-learner, I started coding in 2013 when I was 16 for fun to get my head away from beach volleyball I trained at that time. In 2014 I landed my first internship and my dad signed the contract for me. When I graduated high school I decided to study Fashion design to open my mind and have a different perspective and not close myself to the IT world only.

Back in 2020, the company I worked for was super into productizing design services in the software house, but it didn’t work pretty well as we were stuck for a few months defining scope, pricing, etc. to make it profitable for SH.

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Then I changed the company and proposed a subscription model to the next Agency – didn’t go well. 

When we started getBaked. We were roasting design on Twitter/X and got clients for quick LP roast for $50/$100. It started to work out and we got many indie hackers willing to work with us. I can’t remember the correct answer but we work with 70 or more indie hackers. Then one customer reached out to me on X they wanted an app design and we priced it at $200 per screen.

Then another customer reached out to Nick and we had another app! Then we changed getBaked to Baked and targeted startups.

In the beginning, I prepared it as a standard design agency model but there was too much stuff to explain, fit the fixed pricing, etc, so after a week of building the website and strategies around it, I was done and started to transform it to design subscription. After 2 weeks we closed the first pro client for $4317

I always wanted to help startups get good UX and UI services at profitable prices. As a former lead, I know how hard it is to find good specialists at affordable prices. So we offer our experience and skills in the price of juniors to be able to grow the agency

How did you get your first customers for Baked?

It was a smooth process I described above.

But the most important part is we keep experimenting. Yes, Baked Design is our main gig, but we also have an Indie Design Kit, Indie Design Kit Tailwind, TinyUI(failed), uncoverUX, roast.to.

This experiments allow us to get additional sources of revenue and also land clients as they see our design skills. This is what sells.

People buy with their eyes, in fact, the first subscription client contacted us because of TinyUI!

What Marketing Channels are working for you now?

Twitter/X, We never tried anything besides X

How is your business doing now?

it has been 1 year since getBaked and Indie Design Kit and 7 months since transforming to Baked

We are open business internally and externally on X, everyone knows how we grew, our marketing methods, and how we close leads, and build baked from $4k to $120k MRR in 5-6 months. But we never really focused on goals, we went with the flow and built a team accordingly. Now that you’re asking, here are some goals or thoughts I have in my “right now”

• Stable revenue and MRR ($100k MRR MoM (This is our 4 month making $100k+/m in revenue). We would like to continue doing this for at least 3-6 months and grow accordingly.

• Take care of everyone who works at Baked, both financially and mentally (workload). So we retain good talent over time as it breaks or makes as we grow baked.

• Provide excellent communication and work to existing and new clients as we grow, it will be a pain to scale but that’s where the excitement and thrill lie!

We are now working on making baked stable and preparing it for growth, also we are working on expanding to few more services. We also want to launch new products We would love to be able to grow our apps and support designers

What has been your biggest achievement in business thus far?

2 months ago I would say scaling an agency to $120k in 5-6 months, but now definitely the team we are building, since now we can focus on contacting clients, working on other stuff to keep the business profitable, and supporting the team.

A lot of people on X question our hiring process. We did a few quick hires and quick fires. But with our business model, we can see after 2 days if someone is a good fit or not.  Thanks to this we are where we are right now.

We can offer a wider spectrum of services at a very good level. Doing everything only by 2 of us would be impossible and we would be already burnt out.

What were the worst mistakes you’ve made since launching?

Hm, I don’t think we had “worst” mistakes. We iterate on a daily basis, we made a lot of communication mistakes that’s for sure!

and while that led to unhappy clients, We learned how to communicate in crisis situation and offer different solutions in those cases.

What advice would you give to new entrepreneurs?

It depends.

If you don’t have experience – go get one (yes I’m talking about a 9-5) and build things on the side.

You need to be a great specialist, to be able to give something to your potential customers or your target group on social media.

Don’t give up. 

Have a student attitude and learn every day. Don’t let your ego take over.

What resources do you recommend for entrepreneurs?

I read books that are related to architecture or music; if I need to gather some info, I do research and look for info and compare them to get some conclusion.

I use YouTube to watch dumb videos or listen to some vinyl DJ sets, not a podcast fan.

Community – I use X and follow people from #buildinpublic. But MorningMakerShow is a great initiative

Lastly, Where can we learn more about you?

@aliszu on X

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