Ask HN: Did your startup begin as a service?

Does anyone have a service based startup or one that started as a service? It seems these types of startups are frowned upon but it might provide a great way of seeding users and building customer funnels. Last year I worked on an actual software product but have since turned it into a service with much better results. Would love to hear you experience about your service based company and how if at all you turned it into a software company.