TL;DR / Key Takeaways
- A founder hit $1M in 19 months by ignoring brands and targeting an overlooked customer.
- This is the agency-first playbook for building a highly profitable SaaS.
The $1M/Year Agency Goldmine
Zac Cherin and Brendan built Hiro Analytics from zero to over $1,000,000 ARR in just 19 months. This remarkable feat, achieved with an extremely low churn rate, defies typical SaaS growth trajectories. Their success hinges on a shrewd strategic decision: targeting an overlooked customer segment.
Agencies, often dismissed as mere service providers, emerged as Hiro's dream customer. Each agency acts as a powerful distribution channel, bringing multiple brands onto the platform through a single sale. Instead of selling one subscription to brand A, then brand B, Hiro gains access to 10, 20, or 30 brands by onboarding just one agency.
Hiro Analytics carved its niche in agency reporting automation, a sector many consider 'unsexy'. This deliberate focus allowed them to avoid overcrowded markets saturated with direct-to-brand SaaS solutions. They solved a critical, unaddressed business need for email and SMS marketing agencies, offering features like consolidated client views and team performance tracking.
This strategic clarity delivered substantial ROI. By building for agencies, Hiro not only found an efficient sales model but also secured a loyal customer base with a genuine, persistent business problem. Founders must consider these 'unsexy niches' for outsized returns and sustainable growth.
One Sale, 30 Customers
Hiro Analytics masterfully leverages a Business-to-Agency (B2A) model, a strategic pivot from conventional B2B or B2C approaches. Instead of acquiring individual brands one by one, Hiro sells its analytics platform directly to marketing agencies. This means one agency subscription can instantly onboard 10, 20, or even 30 of their clients, exponentially amplifying reach and impact with a single sale. This model allows for profound efficiency in customer acquisition and scaling.
Revenue scales directly with agency success through a client-count-based subscription model. Agencies receive a 30-day free trial, then pay a monthly fee tied to their client volume: an agency with 10 clients pays $500/month, while one with 20 clients pays $600/month. Larger agencies managing 200+ clients engage in bespoke agreements, potentially reaching thousands monthly. Hiro also monetizes per-user seats, enabling agencies to provide access to strategists and their own clients, further expanding revenue per account.
Acquisition efficiency is a core advantage of the B2A strategy. Agencies are remarkably easy to identify and target, often listed in partner directories on major platforms like Shopify and Klaviyo. These directories frequently "force rank" agencies by size and influence, providing a pre-qualified lead list. Since these agencies utilize the same underlying platforms, they inherently share common operational challenges, making product-market fit predictable and sales cycles shorter.
Find Pain, Sell the Cure
Zac Cherin and Brendan didn't just identify a market; they built Hiro Analytics from the crucible of their own experience. For six years, they ran an email marketing agency, serving approximately 30 clients—a perfect proving ground for their future SaaS. This direct domain expertise allowed them to pinpoint the exact "friction points" that plague agency operations, understanding the precise tool they needed to scale.
That deep understanding revealed a universal problem: agencies must scale client work without a proportionate increase in headcount. Hiro Analytics directly addresses this, automating analytics and reporting for email and SMS marketing agencies. It offers a singular platform to oversee all client data and track team performance against goals, critical for managing growth efficiently across multiple clients.
The sales pitch resonates because it transcends mere features, focusing squarely on operational efficiency and time savings. Agency owners, burdened by managing diverse client portfolios on platforms like Klaviyo, immediately grasp the value of a tool that consolidates data, automates reporting, and reduces manual effort. This targeted approach transforms a technical solution into a clear ROI proposition, improving margins and enabling scalable growth—a language every leader understands.
Your Moat in a Niche Market
A $1M ARR business, while impressive for a startup like Hiro Analytics, barely registers for a public behemoth such as Klaviyo. These giants prioritize market segments yielding hundreds of millions, not niche solutions for specialized agencies. This creates a powerful defensibility by neglect: the market is too small to attract their competitive resources, yet large enough to build a robust, profitable enterprise.
Hiro strengthens its moat by transcending single-platform limitations. It integrates with various tools, offering agencies a unified analytics and reporting solution across all their clients and campaigns. This broader utility makes Hiro indispensable, solving a complex, multi-platform problem that no single marketing platform can address natively, securing its position as an essential operational layer.
Zac Cherin and Brendan’s "overnight success" was a decade in the making. Before Hiro, they ran a successful email marketing agency for six years, serving 30 clients—their ideal customer profile. This direct, deep-seated understanding of agency pain points, combined with an "oddly specific old background in ETL," directly informed the product built, proving that expertise, not luck, drives these wins.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Hiro Analytics?
Hiro Analytics is a SaaS platform providing analytics and automated reporting for email and SMS marketing agencies, helping them manage multiple clients efficiently.
What is the 'agency-first' SaaS model?
It's a business model where a SaaS company sells its product to agencies, who then use it to serve their own roster of clients, rather than selling one subscription at a time to individual brands.
Why is selling to agencies an effective growth strategy?
It's highly efficient. A single sale to an agency can bring dozens or even hundreds of end-users (the agency's clients) onto your platform, dramatically lowering customer acquisition costs and scaling revenue faster.
How can founders find similar business ideas?
Look for the 'agency layer' in any industry (e.g., real estate, restaurants). Identify common, repetitive tasks agencies perform for clients and build a tool that automates that friction point.