Masterful Founders · 2025-12-09 · 25 min
Can you build a real startup without burning your savings by funding it through your agency work? In this episode, we talk with Adam and Carmel from POS Cafe, a Shopify POS app for cafes, about what it actually looks like to run a client agency and a SaaS product at the same time. We dig into the emotional rollercoaster, the financial pressure, the slow progress, and why they still believe this path is worth it. You'll learn: *Why they started with an agency first - and how that paid for their startup *The real trade-offs between agency work (relationships) and SaaS (scale) *How working hands-on with clients gave them a sharper SaaS idea than any brainstorm *What changed in their mindset once they shipped their first version to the Shopify App Store *How they choose which features to build next (and what they regret building) *Why niching down on cafes + Shopify POS became their unfair advantage If you're an agency owner dreaming about your own product, or a founder thinking about bootstrapping through services, this conversation will give you a very honest look behind the scenes - including the moments where they almost gave up.
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