Hiring an Agency as a Startup Might Be a Massive Mistake

And I worked at one of them…

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

There, I’ve finally said it publicly.

As someone who has worked for an agency for over five years, I don’t believe agencies are always the right fix for the problem.

So many startups struggling with growth turn to an agency either to run a channel or support their growth.

But most agencies work with a flawed model:

• You pay a fixed / per hour amount
• They have high fixed running costs with salaries that go on even when they have fewer clients
• They are spread thin over several clients because the people saying yes to new clients are not the ones working on them

Isn’t that similar to a freelancer (am I shooting myself in the foot with this article?)

Not 100%, here are the crucial differences:

• Agencies have more time going to overhead, having to cover a lot of time between various people working on the projects
• Agencies must also cover other people’s costs in the organisation, such as sales, account manager, HR, internal marketing, finance, etc.

All in all, that adds up to higher rates with less efficiency, meaning you get…