Topliner Used an Agency as Its First Customer, QA Lab, and Distribution Channel. It Hit $10K/Mo in Months.

The Play

Arsen Ibragimov had already built and scaled products before. He had grown an e-commerce business to $1M revenue and a MarTech SaaS to $1M ARR. But when he started Topliner, an AI-native operating system for executive search agencies, he did something different: he made an agency co-founder his first and only customer.

His co-founder ran The Big Search, a boutique executive search agency in Europe. Instead of building a product and then searching for customers, Arsen built the product inside the agency's daily operations. Every feature was tested on real searches. Every bug was caught by real recruiters. Every improvement was measured against actual placements.

Why Agencies Are the Perfect Distribution Hack

Agencies are uniquely valuable as first customers for three reasons most founders miss.

First, they do the same work repeatedly across many clients. A recruiting agency runs the same search process for every client. A marketing agency runs the same campaign playbook. A bookkeeping agency runs the same month-end close. If your product improves their core workflow, you are immediately relevant to every client they serve.

Second, agency owners know other agency owners. The executive search industry, like most agency verticals, is a tight network. One agency owner telling a peer "this tool cut our research time by 85%" carries more weight than any marketing you could produce.

Third, agencies are not price-sensitive about tools that make them money. An executive search firm billing $50,000 per placement will happily pay $500 per month for a tool that lets them close placements faster. Your SaaS pricing is a rounding error in their revenue.

The Steal

Pick the right vertical. You need an industry where agencies handle repetitive, high-value work. Executive search, digital marketing, accounting, legal services, real estate, and insurance brokerages all qualify. The key test: do agencies in this vertical do the same type of work for every client?

Find your anchor agency. You do not need a large agency. A 5-15 person boutique is ideal because the owner is close to the work and can give you direct feedback. Look for agency owners who are frustrated with their current tools and technically curious enough to try something new.

Build inside their workflow, not beside it. The most common mistake is building a standalone product and asking the agency to adopt it. Instead, watch how they work today. Build your product as a direct replacement for the painful steps in their existing process. Topliner started by replacing the manual company research step, the most time-consuming part of every search.

Measure everything for the case study. From day one, track the metrics that will sell your product to the next agency. Time saved per task. Revenue per employee before and after. Error rates. Client satisfaction scores. Your anchor agency's results are your most powerful sales asset.

Use the agency's network for warm intros. After 2-3 months of proven results, ask your anchor agency to introduce you to peer agencies. Frame it as "we built this tool that cut research time by 85%, would any of your peers benefit from a demo?" Most agency owners are happy to make introductions, especially if you are not a competitor.

Who This Works For

This play is strongest when you are building B2B software for a service industry. If your target customer does repetitive knowledge work for multiple clients, an agency partnership gives you built-in distribution, instant product-market fit feedback, and credible case studies before you spend a dollar on marketing.

It works less well for consumer products, marketplaces, or tools targeting individual users. The leverage comes from the agency's position as a hub serving many clients.

Cold outreach converts at 1-2%. A warm intro from a trusted peer converts at 30-50%. One anchor agency relationship can generate more qualified leads than six months of cold email campaigns. The math is not close.