Chris Wright believes the marketing agency is dead, so he's rebuilding it as a SaaS product - on his own
The founder of London-based marketing agency Fifty Five and Five is sprinting ahead with the fundamental shift AI is bringing, transforming his agency into a leading AI-driven MarTech SaaS. And he is doing it in a way no one has been able to before.
In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends there’s this betting pool for the first year that there is a one-person billion dollar company. Which would have been unimaginable without AI and now will happen.
- Sam Altman, OpenAI
The big shift has arrived
Chris Wright, the serial entrepreneur behind Fifty Five and Five, a prominent B2B marketing firm based in London, is hailing the agency as dead. And not because his clients don’t need him. They do, more than ever. But because AI is allowing him to totally transform his business. He’s even set a countdown clock on his website, ticking down to his two year target. That’s the date his agency is over and AI powered tech takes over.
Chris is doing three really forward-looking things at his agency
- Talking openly to his staff
Employees at Fifty Five and Five, from those starting out to seasoned veterans, are having open conversations with Chris about what his vision means for their careers. He sees AI as a positive thing, replacing many jobs but creating many more and wants to train and support his staff to flourish in this brave new world. - Engaging his existing clients
Working with his clients to understand how AI changes marketing. For some it is minor, a time saver or a helpful aide. For others it is helping invent new ways of working and new ways of talking to their own clients. - Building the future
Finally, Chris is also actively working towards that future he envisions. He is looking at every aspect of his agency - the work they do, the assets they create, the campaigns they run - and thinking “how do I turn this into a scalable AI-driven SaaS app?”.
As a company founder, Chris has a drive and vision to make things happen. He's also a product person with a technical background. Chris studied Computer Science at Uni and has been building apps all his life. But until now he has needed developers and the inherent slow iteration speeds and working processes associated with that (e.g. needing functional specs, establishing timelines, and more).
Landing initial customers with an AI app developer
Back in 2022 and 2023, Chris invested a lot of time experimenting and testing every no and low code tool under the sun—even with a technical background he wasn’t interested in learning how to code again. He didn't find traditional drag & drop builders like Bubble to be intuitive, either, particularly for building out the functionality of his apps. And he didn't want the hassle or risk of hiring a dev shop to build out ideas without validating the market first.
Without a suitable low or no code tool to help him embrace the opportunities he saw, Chris remained simply pitching concepts. But writing specifications, wireframing, and working with a designer to come up with high fidelity mockups simply wasn’t enough to sell his ideas to paying customers. Communicating his vision needed more. Chris needed real applications for his clients to truly understand the benefits.
With Databutton, I can quickly take all the thinking I've already done and a set of Figma designs and turn it into an actual app within hours. Working with an AI app developer like Databutton has broken a barrier for me that I couldn't previously.
— Chris Wright, Fifty Five and Five
AI code generation changed the game for Chris, closing the gap between his idea conception and product development, giving him unprecedented control along the way. He sold his vision for Compass, a full AI content marketing suite that will ultimately replace his agency, to a large enterprise client by building out one of the modules. And hasn't looked back since.
Delivering customer value continuously
Since first selling Compass, Chris has continued to build out his vision based on real customer needs and problems in collaboration with Databutton's AI app developer.
Compass is now a fully AI MarTech SaaS that is continuously delivering enterprise value; you can request early access here. And if you follow Chris’s vision it is going to replace his agency. It might even replace all agencies. Chris is so convinced that AI will make marketing agencies redundant that his main hires now are systems thinkers to join him in validating concepts and delivering on Compass.
Join Chris and thousands of others
Chris embodies the Databutton vision – people who want to take their big ideas from zero-to-launch in days. Is that you, too? Try working with our autonomous developer today.
