Growing a SaaS to $40,000/year while freelancing

Learn from our community entrepreneurs! In this interview, Senthu Velnayagam shares the story of building and growing Kimp, located in Markham, Ontario, Canada.

Hi! Tell us about your business and what problem are you solving?

I’m Senthu Velnayagam, and I’m the Co-Founder of Kimp. I’m mainly based in Canada - though I’m often traveling to connect with my team members who are based in different countries.

Kimp is a subscription-based design company that offers graphic design and video design for a flat monthly fee. As a Co-Founder, I wear a lot of different hats but my main focus is on growth and innovation. I’m always looking at how we can improve and optimize our service.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

Before I started Kimp I was a bit of a serial entrepreneur, launching and running a few different design startups. I started as a one-man operation, designing web banners back in 2003. Those were the early days of digital marketing and I was able to find clients on marketing forums. There was a shortage of designers for web banners, and that was fortunate for me in a couple of ways. I was a horrible designer at first. But I loved it and I was looking for work.

To make it easier to land a job I set up an eCommerce site called BannersMall.com. And pretty soon one job led to another, and I had way more work than I could handle. Including brands like HostGator, Endurance International Group, and Russell Brunson. Between 2003-2007 I partnered with an LA-based designer named Chris Hevoyan. After a few great years, Chris moved on to other projects and I partnered with my brother, Ven who is also a Co-Founder of Kimp.

Ven and I worked together to grow BannersMall and then launch Doto (a design agency so that we could take on the more complex projects that our clients kept bringing our way.) For a few years, we continued focusing on web banners for digital marketers through BannersMall. And we did this alongside more extensive design projects, motion graphics, and website design and development for other clients.

We were doing great, business was booming and we were able to hire quite a few designers as well. But then about 3 years ago a steady decline started.

On the BannersMall side of business, competitors had not only sprung up, but they’d innovated too. Meanwhile, we’d kept just things going steady. So our customers started increasingly opting for other services. On the Doto side of the business, we had that fatal flaw that a lot of agencies struggle with. Our bottom line was much too dependent on the big accounts of a few clients.

When 2017 rolled around most of our work was with clients in the real estate and property development industries. Recognizing this we’d started building out some proprietary software for them, and positioning ourselves to secure more clients as a real estate/development marketing and design specialists. But with the market’s fluctuations, our client’s marketing and design budgets also took a big dip.

And at what felt like breakneck speed we had to pivot. We had an awesome group of designers depending on us. And even with all of the upheaval we were experiencing, we knew there were a lot of other industries that would continue to need design services on an ongoing basis.

So as we started bleeding money we went through different business models and landed back on subscription-based graphic design. We’d thought about tackling it in 2015. But at the time we were already spreading ourselves pretty thin. Now with everything on the line we dove in.

I’d initially learned about unlimited graphic design when I found out about Design Pickle. The company had turned design into a productized service with huge success. And we believed we could put our twist on it. Enter, Kimp.

What’s your one biggest challenge you face and how do you overcome it?

In addition to the pivot, the early stages of the pandemic are no doubt at the top of the list. Trying to connect with team members across regions and time zones when we were used to collaborating in-person and real-time was a big challenge. Especially given how much our team members rely on and support one another.

Finding team members who are the right fit, remotely, is an ongoing challenge. It’s one we’ve overcome with some roles, but still face with others. We want to continue building a supportive, creative culture for our team, especially as we’re working remotely. But recruiting remotely can make assessing that quite a challenge.

In terms of mistakes, there’s nothing much that I would call the worst because our missteps have often led to finding new ways to do things. Like building out our CRM and productivity tools to measure and assess how we’re doing. If I had to choose I’d say it’s pushing ourselves too hard. Burnout is tough to bounce back from. And while you want to give your customers a great experience, and support your team members to the fullest of your abilities, you have to step back from time to time to rest and recharge.

To anyone looking to start or grow a business today, what three tips would you give them?

After launching Kimp, we’ve relied on a combination of social media marketing, affiliate marketing, referral marketing, and Google Ads in particular. We’ve found each of these methods to be fairly effective so far, with the caveat that at times social media marketing can be a bit tricky/unpredictable as algorithms shift.

Apart from these different marketing channels, we’ve also been very particular about our messaging and copy. We try to ensure that we’re always highlighting the aspects of our service that are unique to others in the subscription-based design space.

Where can we go to learn more about your business?