I am working on something and I need suggestions if you think it would work... So the idea is to create a Creative support agency - What I mean is that we'll be a team of designers, video editors, Animators, UI UX designer, content writers, illustrator and a bunch of creative sills - all of them offered in a monthly flat price for 160 hours (160 hrs are the full month working hours of a an employee) Our ideal customers are marketing agencies and startups, and we want to advertise it as a replacement of your next in-house team member. As in, instead of hiring your next full time designer, why dont you work with us and get an entire creative team along with a dedicated PM for lets say a fixed monthly price of $5000 (which is already less then what you'd pay a good designer) and getting 160 hours with the entire team. I think the success would lie in making the experience as much close to your employee experience and portraying it as an extention of your team, rather then making it just another external creative agency. Thoughts? Any comments/suggestions/thoughts are most welcome. Thanks a bunch! ❤️

Hi Ahmad - my initial thought is that if the client is paying $5,000 for 160 hours, then the people doing the work have to be getting paid very little. I like the idea of it, in theory, but I feel like the price tag would need to be a lot higher to support high enough pay & the overhead of running the business.

I've talked to a couple of agencies that offer exactly this and they make the price point work basically through arbitrage, by hiring designers in regions where pay is typically lower and serving clients in regions where they would have to pay designers a higher hourly rate or salary. I've typically seen a much higher price point/minimum monthly commitment - I think $20k?

did someone say salary? here's some data that might be helpful. https://superpath.co/blog/content-marketing-salary-report

@bland-engineer-36608 Correct! I am able to find a designer for a lot less then what a same level of experience would cost you in US.

Offering all these services for 160 hours at a flat rate of $5000 is totally poor. I believe using work forces in places where you can underpay them is exploitation. While you strive to ease the burdens on companies, let's not forget that human efforts regardless of location needs to be rewarded accordingly. You can have a similar budget to what it will cost to hire a full team and offer a discount that puts you at a competitive edge. You have a nice idea here but your pricing strategy needs revisiting.

Who is your customer? If well-funded post-Series A startups, they won't go for it. They will hire internally and freelance with agencies in their niche because they need custom, high-quality creative from people who are specialized. This will only become MORE important in the future. You'll end up servicing small businesses or seed stage companies and have a lot of turnover. I just had to spend 2 hours today editing agency work and we'll likely move to more specialized (and expensive) agencies. It's not worth saving money. This could work if you charged more (and paid more) and launched the agency in an expertise niche.

@incalculable-hamburger-60092 my thoughts too!

I work at a top venture capital firm that invests in startups from seed to late stage. We get lots of requests for guidance and recommendations for agencies, bc our portfolio is large. We wouldn't refer any agency based on costs and arbitrage of labor that's poorly paid. Why not: We want our portfolio companies to have the best shots at winning, which either means they work with quality agencies or hire their own people.

@white-potato-56800 If you had to give a ballpark range, what do later stage (maybe Series B+) allocate to content/seo agencies? In my enterprise role, I help manage 3 separate agency contracts, all in the $15k-20k range per month.

It can work. This is the concept behind some pretty successful firms like: https://www.superside.com/ https://draft.co/ And several others.

@lemon-airport-97306, there's no way to answer that Q, because companies, their needs and how they go about fulfilling them vary so much.