What Building Both a Services Firm and SaaS Taught Me About Business

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Key Takeaways

- Services provide real-world customer insight, reducing SaaS risk and improving product-market fit.

- Hybrid models fund innovation internally while creating operational leverage and long-term resilience.

Many founders believe they must choose between building a product and offering a service. You either chase the high valuations of software or rely on the steady cash flow of a consulting agency. After co-founding SaaS products alongside running a robust services firm, I learned this binary thinking is a trap.

People debating a SaaS vs services business usually miss the point: these models strengthen each other. There is a massive amount of money to be made on both sides of the fence. One isn’t naturally “better” than the other; they just serve different functions.

Mordor Intelligence projects the global IT services market will hit $1.65 trillion in 2026, while software spending continues to climb at a similar pace. Stop seeing these two models as rival camps. You gain a massive edge when you learn to bridge that gap. The most resilient companies today aren’t choosing one over the other. They are doing both.

The margin myth and the scale reality

When comparing a product company vs consulting, the core difference comes down to margins and time. Services rely on billable hours and specialized talent to generate immediate revenue. They offer client intimacy and reliable cash flow, but scaling requires constant hiring.

SaaS products are a different beast, demanding massive upfront investment with zero guarantee of return. The allure lies entirely in efficiency. Private equity firms love software because the economics are incredible, with top companies hitting gross margins north of 75%. Get your product-market fit right and adding that next user costs almost nothing.

But we know the grim survival stats for pure software plays. Operating an agency first forced me to sit down with clients and hear what was broken. That high-touch work becomes your ultimate testing lab, figuring out exactly what the wider market will buy before writing a single line of code.

Applying service empathy to SaaS

The most valuable lessons for founders came from cross-pollinating these business models. When building platforms like Innago, we targeted independent landlords historically ignored by enterprise software. We didn’t just guess what they wanted.

Using the consultative mindset developed in our services firm, we dug deep into their daily operational friction. This highlights the hidden flaw in the traditional software business model. Product teams get obsessed with features instead of outcomes, building in a vacuum and assuming a slick interface magically solves complex problems.

A services background forces you to face reality: software must solve a painful human problem. If your tool doesn’t cure a massive headache or save real money, no one is pulling out their credit card.

Funding innovation with service revenue

Financial independence is the biggest hidden benefit here. Building a SaaS product usually means begging for outside capital, diluting ownership and wrecking your timeline. Operating a services firm alongside product development creates a powerful internal funding engine.

Consulting revenue is a secret weapon. It builds the runway you need to polish a software product without begging VCs for survival. This gives you the luxury of being patient. You can iterate based on real customer feedback instead of scaling too early.

This dynamic shifts how you approach growth, forcing a level of financial discipline purely VC-backed startups rarely possess. You are investing your own hard-earned consulting dollars, meaning every single feature must firmly justify its existence.

The operational pivot: When to focus on scale

Operating a SaaS vs services business simultaneously creates a unique feedback loop. Your software ambitions eventually force your service team to care deeply about scale. Instead of building custom workarounds for every single client, consultants start hunting for repeatable frameworks.

Building CookinGenie to connect chefs with customers required the operational discipline of a service business and the highly scalable architecture of a product. You simply cannot succeed in that complex space with just one mindset.

Eventually, the product mindset streamlines your services. You start building internal tools, automating reporting and standardizing consulting frameworks. When SaaS-level efficiency starts bleeding into your service operations, your margins take a massive leap. You stop fighting for every percentage point and start seeing real, scalable profitability.

Conclusion: The best of both worlds

Founders obsess over the valuation multiples of a product company vs a consulting firm. While SaaS multiples are undeniably higher, pure software plays carry a terrifying risk of t