Ask HN: How would you build a dev/design agency in 2025 alongside AI? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you build a dev/design agency in 2025 alongside AI?

11 pointsSouravInsights8 comments

I’m a developer and have worked remotely for 3-4 years with various product based companies like rabbithole.gg, paragraph.xyz, pimlico.io etc and for the past few months I’ve been working on a side-project of my own, it’s an open-source form builder platform like Typeform. Through my journey, I've discovered I really enjoy the craft of building products & open source softwares. It got me thinking about starting a small dev/design agency, but with a different approach.

The landscape today has changed dramatically. We all know AI is getting really good at churning out basic code and MVPs. But I still believe there's real value in human creativity and understanding the deeper nuances of building great products.

Here's what I'm thinking: 1. Keep it small and focused (just 3-4 of us) - engineers and designers who genuinely care about building great stuff 2. Take on meaningful client work while building our own products 3. Get involved in open source and build useful tools for the community 4. Keep working on our own products (starting with my form builder)

What I'm inspired by: 1. 37signals: Started as a web design agency, created Basecamp, and eventually built Hey.com 2. überdosis: Built products for clients and worked on an open source text editor called TipTap (tiptap.dev) which is now their primary focus

What I want to avoid: 1. Becoming yet another "digital transformation" agency (you know the type) 2. Racing to the bottom against AI-generated MVPs 3. The typical agency trap of scaling up with juniors and PMs 4. Saying yes to every project that comes along

Some things I keep wondering about: 1. How would you position an agency today with AI in the picture? 2. Anyone here managed to build their own products while running client work? 3. What kind of work should we focus on that AI won't easily replace? 4. Has anyone grown their agency through open source work?

Really want to hear from folks who: 1. Have built small but solid agencies 2. Are actually using AI in their dev workflow (not just talking about it) 3. Have juggled client work with building products 4. Have grown through open source

You've laid out the dream for a lot of developers around the world.

Agency life is probably 80% sales and 20% delivery. The agency pattern you've mentioned is common because it consistently works and everyone (myself included) fawns over the basecamp model but they're about the only ones who've made it work.

AI-generated SaaS tools just remind me of white-label SaaS products that were the hot thing however many years ago. They do about 50% of what the customer wants and a PITA to customize.

Having said that if I started again I'd still build one or more AI-centric B2B products with a focus on closed AI systems and look for agency work (ad-hoc development) as an offshoot.

You'd be able to build up a client base with your B2B products and have tangible examples to demonstrate what you're capable of while playing on the fact that the client's data is secure and never shared with third parties.

Your comment "They do about 50% of what the customer wants" made me thing, what if the agency could rapidly iterate and support the other 50% they want by leveraging AI?

I think you would have to design your code system on the idea of simplicity and good building blocks. Then iterate on top of that to customize what the customer wants.

You mentioned 37 Signals so I think its appropriate to mention the scaffolding in Rails has been there for a long time. If you can carefully articulate the data models and data types, anyone can build a base MVP structure with `rails generate scaffold`. I've asked AI to generate code and honestly, the quality from the Rails scaffold is more consistent (for now). You're better off asking AI to help you craft the scaffold commands these days than having it generate the code itself.

I would suggest getting started on the client side of things with your 3-4 people first. Clients will have problems that need solving and in solving those you may find yourself building something over and over and that would be a good candidate for an open source tool. The technical side of a digital business isn't the hard part for developers.

This may sound cynical but there is probably a need for an agency type that can take "no code" and/or AI generated apps/solutions and take them beyond what no-code or AI platforms can do. Like small companies that have some AI generated stuff and don't have staff to take that to the next level. Charge them a monthly retainer for X hours of maintenance per month so they don't have to deal with it. Quote them for projects to take their AI generated app/solution to the next level or to make changes, etc. Again, you may find patterns once you have a few clients.

> 3. What kind of work should we focus on that AI won't easily replace?

I have enough confidence to answer just this question. You should definitely leverage AI where it's good at, as a tool for improving the quality of your work. But what I noticed, since the advent of LLMs for coding, is that quality of software hasn't improved, maybe output(? but can't be sure). There's been a lot of talk in the industry about decreasing quality of software in the recent years, way before than LLMs. So my obvious answer to that is to focus on products where a great UX makes the whole difference :) Maybe a bit generic but I believe there's a great value in that. A while ago I heard Casey Muratori(search the name if you don't know who he's) claiming that a product that would focus on performance alone could be a successful product, even without coming up with anything new, just copy something and make it better. I believe that nowadays that's true and there are a lot of opportunities out there given how bad some software is. E.g. Zed editor

If you need to talk more and/or need some dev workforce feel free to contact me :) amirmani at fastmail dot com

Hey, Philip here, one of the co-founders of überdosis and Tiptap. I’ve got a lot of thoughts on this, so I’ll keep it short.

While there’s no right or wrong, my experience is that starting as a solo freelancer to cover your bills while building your product usually works better than running an agency. Even with just 3 or 4 people, you’ll spend a ton of time on sales and project management, which can quickly bury your own product work.

We nearly killed our company at überdosis when transitioning from an agency to a product company. On paper, funneling agency revenue into product development sounded perfect. In practice, juggling client deadlines (with real pressure) and the growing needs of Tiptap (maintenance, support, new features) was brutal.

Open source is also powerful. It helps you build a community and attract leads, but it demands a lot of maintenance and support. It’s worth it if you have a clear strategy.

My personal advice: keep your operation as lean as possible, handle a few selective freelance projects to stay afloat, and pour every remaining resource into your product. Once it gains enough traction, you can let go of client work without risking your financial stability. Good luck :-)

One of my first jobs was at a digital transformation agency. I swore to never work in that industry again. Even way back then the writing was on the wall with a few big problems.

1) in order to land clients you have to lie or at best overpromise. 2) They were all becoming glorified outsource teams. 3) They all tried to make themselves out to be special and ended up becoming shall we say "cultish".

Today that means you probably need your team in locale that is cheap. And then you need sales thats can close deals and still make clients feel happy when you don't deliver half of what they were sold on.

Great insights so far. I'd also love to dig deeper into the early days: What did your first 3-6 months look like? Especially curious about strategies beyond referrals - how did you directly find and land your first clients before having a strong portfolio?

Errm. Don't start an "agency". It's literally outsourcing, and cost is most often the focus for most companies.

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