Running an agency and a product under one roof
An agency delivers to clients every month; a product can grow for months without delivering anything to anyone. The most important thing I learned running both under one roof is to accept that they run on two different clocks.
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At PNZ Group we run two different businesses. PNZ Medya is an agency: it provides websites, software, SEO and ads for businesses. Entrobase is a product: a platform we build so that people can do the same work on their own with AI. From the outside they seem to do the same thing. From the inside, the way they work is the opposite on almost every point.
Two businesses, two clocks
The agency runs on the client's calendar. The delivery date is set, the scope is drawn by a contract, and success is measured by client satisfaction. The product's clock is uncertain: you cannot know what will work until users arrive, scope can change every week, and success shows up much later.
- Topic
- Revenue
- Agency
- Project and service fees, revenue in the short term
- Product
- Subscriptions or usage, revenue builds over time
- Topic
- Rhythm
- Agency
- Client calendar and delivery dates
- Product
- Release cycle and user feedback
- Topic
- Measure of success
- Agency
- Delivered on time and in scope
- Product
- Users come back and pay
- Topic
- Biggest risk
- Agency
- Scope growing out of control
- Product
- Building something nobody wants
- Topic
- What the team needs
- Agency
- Predictability
- Product
- Experimenting and dropping things quickly
If you try to manage both with the same team and the same meetings without accepting this difference, both suffer. An urgent agency delivery will always look more urgent than the product, so the product never moves.
Separate rhythms, shared knowledge
The setup I have arrived at is this: separate rhythms, shared knowledge. Agency work moves on its own calendar; product work on its own release cycle. But each side regularly sees what the other has learned.
- Every client request that keeps repeating at the agency is a candidate feature for the product.
- Every tool built for the product can help the agency team do the same work faster.
- Agency clients' objections are the earliest signal of where the product falls short.
- The product side's discipline (measure, test, drop) is good for agency processes too.
The founder's time is the scarcest resource
The hidden cost of running both is the founder's attention. The agency asks you for a decision every day; the product needs long, uninterrupted thinking time. What works for me is reserving fixed blocks of the week for the product only, and being able to leave agency decisions to the team during those hours. That only works if roles and decisions on the agency side are written down.
Greatness will not be given to us; we will build it ourselves.
Worth watching before you move to product
What changes most when moving from services to product is your instinct for what matters. The first lecture of Y Combinator's 'How to Start a Startup' course at Stanford is still a good starting point on ideas, teams and building something users love.
frequently asked questions
Can agency revenue fund the product?
It can, but the decision should be made deliberately. Setting in advance how much time and money moves from the agency to the product keeps both sides free of surprises.
Can the same team work on both agency and product?
At a small scale it may have to. Even then, separating which days or hours belong to which work keeps the product from being postponed forever.
Won't agency clients see the product as a competitor?
The two serve different needs: one for people who want a team to do the work, the other for people who want to do it themselves. Explaining that clearly lets clients see both options side by side.
If you are curious about what Entrobase does today, you can try it yourself.