From agency to product: why I launched Letteros and how it went
For five years I built an agency. Then I realised I wanted to build products. Here is the move from a services model to a product one — honestly, mistakes included.
By 2021 Mailfit ran steadily: 50+ people on the team, hundreds of projects, growing revenue. A classic agency business. But I could not shake the feeling that I wanted to create something that works without being tied to the number of hands.
Why a product, not another agency
An agency scales linearly: more clients = more people. A product scales exponentially. Build it once — sell to thousands. That is the theory. In practice it is harder.
An email builder as the entry point
We started with an email builder. The logic was simple: at Mailfit we make hundreds of emails by hand, so we know the pain of the process. The first version of Letteros was an internal tool we opened to the market.
The first-year mistake: features instead of value
We chased functionality: drag-and-drop, templates, integrations. But we forgot the main thing — why the client comes at all. Not for features, but for the result: to make an email quickly and beautifully. We had to rebuild the UX from scratch.
Evolution: from a builder to an ecosystem
An email builder is a narrow market. We expanded Letteros into an ecosystem of visual editors: documents, presentations, banners, forms, landing pages. One technology engine — many applications. That opened international markets.
International expansion
Russia is an important but limited market for SaaS. We began entering Central Asia and South-East Asia. A different culture, different sales channels, different product expectations. Every market is like launching from scratch.
What I would do differently
- Start with customer development, not with the technical build
- Hire a product designerfrom day one
- Not spread thinacross too many features at once
- Go international earlier
An agency teaches you to understand the client. A product teaches you to understand the market. These are different skills, and both are valuable.
Today Letteros is a full product IT company. We are still learning. But this is the path I would choose again.