SaaS Founder: From Client Work to a $20 Million SaaS Business

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Omer Artun is the founder and CEO of Agilone, a predictive marketing platform for business-to-consumer (B2C) brands.

AgilOne allows marketers to understand and predict customer behavior to deliver automated, personalized experiences across all customer touch points, online and offline.

What do you do if you spot a market opportunity for a SaaS product, but you don't have the money or resources to build the product?

Well, that's the situation that Omer Artun found himself in. He was working as a consultant and seeing the same recurring issues with his clients.

He knew that a machine learning based SaaS product could help these clients use customer data to improve their business strategy and deliver better customer experience.

But he didn't know where to start or how to build that product.

So he took a different path. He launched his own consulting practice and started solving these problems for clients one at a time. After a few years, he built a productized service' and started charging a subscription for his service.

It took him 7 years to finally turn his idea into a SaaS product, which he shipped in 2012. And he bootstrapped his SaaS product from the proceeds of his services business.

Today, he's raised over $50 million. His company is doing almost $20 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and he employs 115 people.

So if you've ever felt like you're being held back because you have an idea, but you don't have the money or skills to build your SaaS product, then this episode is for you.

Or if you're currently running a services business and dream about transitioning into a full-time SaaS business, then you might just get some insights to help you get closer to your goal.

It's a great story and I hope you enjoy the interview.

This episode is part of our Bootstrapping series.

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James Ashford, GoProposal

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James Ashford is the founder of GoProposal, a proposal and pricing platform for accountants which he bootstrapped and sold for an 8-figure sum. James didn't have a tech background. He wasn't an accountant. And he'd never built software before. But he noticed something broken: accountants couldn't price their services. They'd guess fees based on what the last client paid. Proposals took days. Deals fell through because people got busy. So he built a simple solution. A digital menu that let any staff member price and close deals in 15 minutes. The first version? A WordPress plugin that cost £4,000 to build. Before writing a single line of code, James did something unusual. He calculated how much money he needed to never work again (£5 million), identified the companies that might acquire his business (Sage, Intuit, Xero), and printed their logos on his wall. This wasn't optimism—it was his bootstrapped SaaS exit strategy from day one. To crack the accounting industry as an outsider, he traded 10% of his software company for 10% of an accounting firm. Instant credibility. Then he wrote a book in two weeks, made it an Amazon bestseller, and used it to build a waitlist of hundreds before launch. His marketing philosophy was simple: market like a celebrity chef. Gordon Ramsay shows you how to cook his recipes for free. You still go to his restaurant. James gave away everything—the methodology, the frameworks, the exact playbook. People still bought the software because they wanted it done faster. The bootstrapped SaaS approach forced creativity. When he realized a single conference cost £25,000, he hired a full-time videographer instead. Twelve months later, the pandemic hit. Competitors who relied on events were stuck. GoProposal dominated online. By the time he sold, GoProposal had over 1,100 customers, a 78 NPS score, and playbooks for every single process in the business. Three potential acquirers approached him within months of each other. The exit price? 8 figures. The multiple? One he still doesn't publicly share because it was "crazy."

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SaaS Founder: From Client Work to a $20 Million SaaS Business

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