Kits and free tools for services founders
25 years as a CTO and CEO. Three services companies, each past $1m in revenue. One sold for over $30m.
The pricing, margin, utilisation and recurring revenue material I needed when I was building consultancies and managed services firms, written for the way those businesses actually work.
James Smith. CEO of Critical Cloud. Co-founder of the business that became DevOpsGroup.
Why services
Most founder advice assumes you are building software. Services businesses run on people, utilisation, pricing the work, recurring revenue that is hard to win, and margins you protect one engagement at a time.
When I started, I couldn't find anything written for us. So I wrote it.
Kits
Each kit takes one part of running a services business, sets out how I would do it now, and gives you the model and the templates to do it on your own numbers.
Price a managed service from what it costs to serve, package it in tiers, write the promises and fair use down, and keep every agreement profitable after it is signed.
Coming at an introductory £99 + VAT
A rate card that defines the day it prices, three commercial models set out as term sheets, and the audit that shows where your rates slip between the quote and the invoice.
Coming at an introductory £99 + VAT
One number to run a people business on, the four places the money leaks, and a capacity plan that releases hiring only when the work is committed.
Coming at an introductory £99 + VAT
Free tools
Calculators that run in your browser with the assumptions written down, so you can argue with them. Every one downloads as a CSV, no email needed.
Price a managed service per user, per device or in good-better-best tiers from your own cost to serve: labour hours, loaded labour cost, tool stack and overhead. Returns three tier prices, the monthly agreement value, the effective hourly rate, the agreement margin and what a price rise does. Download it as a CSV.
Turn a cost base, utilisation and margin into a graded day-rate card, with the hourly equivalent and the blended rate for the mix you actually sell. Download the card as a CSV.
Revenue per billable person against the target your own cost base demands, the revenue-per-employee figure it replaces, and the gap sized in pounds per person in four places. Download the numbers as a CSV.
Book
Two people with an idea and no customers started a blog in 2013. Eight years later the company was sold for over $30m. The book is the account of what happened in between: the cash crisis, the change of direction, the investment, the hiring mistakes and the sale process, with the decision behind each one set out so you can judge it yourself.
Newsletter
The stories and the weekly essays are on Substack. The kits, with their models and templates, are sold separately here, and founding members of the newsletter get 25% off every kit.
Read on SubstackThe decisions, the pressure and the mistakes, written from notes and diaries.
A playbook, a working model and the templates, one part of the business per kit, at an introductory price + VAT once each one launches. Nothing is for sale yet.
They run in your browser and download as a CSV, with no email needed.
Free to read
About James
We had a blog that wouldn't behave, an idea we thought was worth trying, and no customers. Eight years later, the company was sold for over $30m.
I'm James Smith. In 2013 my co-founder and I started the business that became DevOpsGroup, a services company helping other businesses build and run software. We built it in Wales, took investment, grew, made mistakes, faced a cash crisis and had to change direction. I'm now building Critical Cloud.
I draw on my notes, diaries and recollections, checking the dates and figures as I write.
Join the waitlist and you’ll hear when each kit launches, at its introductory price.