I always wanted to build a software development agency. I have a team of 25+ people, having a stable Upwork Agency profile with the revenue I mentioned above, but I am having a hard time scaling the sales more.
I know if any other US or European agency Acquires us, they’ll have the benefit of getting cheaper labour, having a team which is well trained in talking to clients, closing leads and delivering projects. Plus I have rented and furnished a whole physical office where people come on daily basis to work. So they can have it all.
With the client base they can find in US and even with our already well reputed Upwork profile, they’ll be able to secure a lot more projects.
You ask, why won’t you be able to secure more projects if the profile is that good? Because it’s a Pakistani profile. Not sure how unaware you are from reality, but there exists a certain bias towards India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Nepal. They’ll create their individual US/EU profiles and be added to Agency as owners, and it’ll become a US profile, Top Rated Plus, Expert Vetted, with all good reviews.
What should I do? Should I find someone to acquire? Will anyone be interested in acquiring us and for how much?
Another fact, we have been profitable for every month. The cost is hardly $10k-$18k per month and the revenue per month ranges from $23k-$35k, and that’s in the time when there’s a lot of news of recession.
I am totally against the approach of occupying your team on in house products/projects. It just makes it look like the team is busy and you are doing a lot of work, when in fact, they are just busy on things which are not generating any revenue at all.
I keep the team members who are free, occupied on different trainings, but not on in-house products, except for a few times. I wanna make sure we are not dividing our attention on things which are not generating revenue for us.
About reducing the team size or doubling my rates, answered that a few times already in the thread, but if anyone doesn’t find that and need an answer for that, let me know and I’ll edit this one