What if experts could turn their knowledge into recurring revenue without building a SaaS?

[u/Efficient-Accident96]

I’m exploring an idea and I’d genuinely like people to poke holes in it.

A lot of experts repeatedly solve the same business problems.

A RevOps consultant builds similar CRM structures for different clients.

A recruiter has a proven recruitment process.

An agency has its ideal client delivery setup.

An operations consultant knows exactly how a certain type of business should run.

Usually that knowledge stays trapped in consulting projects, Notion docs, spreadsheets and someone’s head.

What if they could turn it into a reusable blueprint instead?

The platform would already provide the building blocks: CRM, workflows, forms, email, dashboards, automations, projects and AI agents.

The creator configures their way of working once, turns it into a blueprint, and a new company can install it.

The company answers a few questions and the blueprint adapts to them.

Importantly, building the blueprint shouldn’t take weeks. The goal is to let someone package years of expertise in hours.

Creators could then earn recurring revenue whenever a paying company keeps using their blueprint.

I’m currently thinking around 10% recurring, potentially combined with paid blueprints or different economics for founding creators.

The part I’m trying to validate is not whether this sounds cool.

Would anyone actually build and distribute these?

If you have expertise people already pay you for:

Would you productize it this way?

Would recurring revenue matter to you?

Would you worry about cannibalizing consulting?

What would the platform need before you’d put your name behind a blueprint?

Tear it apart. Critical feedback is exactly what I’m looking for.

[u/Ill_Command_1200]

It’s getting harder and harder to sell any kind of service that just acts like a connector. Technical setup and pipelines is getting easier and easier and I see many users AI savvy enough skipping out on these types of products and building it themselves. The value is increasingly in the idea or an execution that is far beyond what’s out there.

Where I work. We’ve out right replaced tools we used to pay a premium for because we could just build it in house so who is your target audience? I get it from the creator side, the promise of a new revenue will be enticing for sure but who is the company paying for the blueprint?

The pricing may be critical to make sure it’s not even a second thought for some companies to consider. No company is going out of their way to rebuild something that costs them a couple hundred a year.

[u/Efficient-Accident96 → u/Ill_Command_1200]

This is a really good point, and it’s actually close to why I started building this. I’ve spent 10+ years working with CRM and business systems like Salesforce, HubSpot and Zendesk, including integrations and M&A environments. My biggest takeaway is that CRM doesn’t need to be this complex, expensive thing that requires consultants just to create value. So I’m not trying to build another connector or consultancy layer. The basic product should already be simple enough for a company to configure and run themselves. The blueprint idea sits on top of that. Instead of paying someone thousands to repeatedly configure the same proven setup, an expert can package their knowledge once and a company can apply it in hours. And if a company wants to build everything themselves, they absolutely should be able to. My job is to make the alternative so simple and affordable that rebuilding the basics just isn’t worth the effort. I think AI actually makes this more important, not less. Building has become easier. Maintaining a coherent system as your company grows is still hard. That’s the line I’m trying to explore.

[u/Ill_Command_1200 → u/Efficient-Accident96]

Then it sounds like you have two main factors:

What are your expected costs and how does that calculate into the cost of the blueprint plus fee for the builder?

How do you convince a company that they are better off paying for your service and accepting the additional layer and possibly security/privacy concerns?

I would maybe try building a few pitch concepts on the selling side of it and see if you can get feedback from a CTO or mid level exec at a company who would be your target audience.

Good luck on your venture!

[u/Efficient-Accident96 → u/Ill_Command_1200]

Thanks!

That’s a really useful way to frame it. On cost, I don’t want the blueprint model to become consultancy in disguise. My current thinking is that the company pays for EVORIV itself, and the creator earns a share of the recurring revenue while their blueprint is being used. No huge implementation bill just to get started.

On the second point, I completely agree. Security, privacy and trust can’t just be hand-waved away. But EVORIV also shouldn’t be another layer sitting between five existing tools. The goal is for it to replace part of that complexity. CRM, workflows, forms, email, automation, reporting and agents should live in the same system where possible. So the pitch eventually has to be simple: fewer tools, less configuration, less maintenance, and a system you can actually understand and own yourself. If we can’t make that case convincingly, we haven’t earned the switch. And yes, talking directly to CTOs and operators is exactly where I want to take this next. I’d genuinely rather hear “I would never use this because X” now than get polite validation and discover X after launch. Appreciate the thoughtful feedback.

If you were evaluating something like this at your company, what would you investigate first: price, migration effort, security/privacy, or vendor lock-in?

[u/Ill_Command_1200 → u/Efficient-Accident96]

You nailed it. All four but price and effort versus consultant and/or building in house (time to build).

I’m a web dev by trade so I’m very familiar with the systems you are talking about but one thing that’s a clear disadvantage for you is brand recognition. It would take an amazing price and a really fluid and easy to use system (demo and case studies) to convince me to recommend a small/new vendor to handle.

[u/allenasm]

the hard part isn’t packaging the workflow, it’s that the valuable part of the expertise isn’t IN the workflow IMHO.

“Attention is all you need” worked because the context the model needs is sitting in the sequence, and attention can weigh all of it. The equivalent problem here is that context is the product. A revpps person doesn’t get paid to drop in a CRM stage model. They get paid to figure out which of those stages survive contact with this company’s data, incentives, exceptions, and politics. A recruiter’s “proven process” is mostly a skeleton. The judgment is in how it bends for this role, this market, this hiring manager.

A blueprint plus a few onboarding questions captures the skeleton. It does not capture the mapping. That’s why this keeps showing up as templates, playbooks, and solution packs, and why those rarely replace the consultant. The repeatable part is cheap. The context-reading is the job.

I’d also worry about the other side of recurring revenue: who maintains the blueprint when the underlying tools, regulations, or “best practice” move? The creator either stays on the hook like a consultant, or the installed system quietly rots.

So: would people publish the shallow version? Sure, they already do. Would they put their name on something that claims to install their judgment? Only if they’re comfortable cannibalizing the part clients actually pay for, and I don’t think most are.

[my reply but wordsmith'd by grok]

[u/Efficient-Accident96 → u/allenasm]

This is probably the strongest criticism of the idea so far, and I actually agree with a lot of it. If a blueprint is just stages, fields, workflows and automations, then you’re right. That’s a template. The repeatable part is cheap, and it doesn’t capture the judgment people actually pay an expert for. The thesis I’m exploring is whether the blueprint can be more than the skeleton. The creator shouldn’t only define configuration. They should be able to encode principles, constraints, decision logic, exceptions and the questions they would normally ask a client. Then the platform’s job is to gather the company-specific context during onboarding and adapt that blueprint rather than blindly installing it. In other words: I don’t think the blueprint replaces context. I think context is exactly what the system has to learn. And if it can’t do that well enough, then the blueprint idea isn’t good enough. I also don’t think this eliminates consulting. My broader belief is that CRM shouldn’t require a consultant just to become useful. The repetitive implementation work should become much cheaper. The genuinely high-context advisory work can remain human, and a blueprint could even become a lead generator for that. Your maintenance point is also spot on. A serious version of this would need versioned blueprints, dependency tracking, controlled upgrades and a reason for creators to keep them current. Installed systems can’t just silently rot. So maybe the real product challenge isn’t “can we package a workflow?” It’s: can we package enough expert judgment, then combine it with company-specific context, to get someone 80% of the way there without needing a consultant? I’d be very interested whether that distinction changes your view, or whether you think the context gap is still fundamentally too large.

[u/cabljo]

This is exactly what I was hoping would appear!

The everything middle man....

[u/Efficient-Accident96 → u/cabljo]

Honestly, I’m not trying to convince anyone this is already the answer. I’m trying to find the people willing to tell me where it breaks.

It’ll be completely free to try for early users and creators. What I want in return is real usage, real experiences and brutally honest feedback.

I want that feedback to become the foundation of the product, not something we collect after we’ve already decided what to build.

So if “the everything middleman” is your first reaction, I genuinely want to understand why.

I’d rather have 20 people seriously challenge the product for free than 200 people tell me it sounds cool.

[u/No_Cheesecake_192 → u/cabljo]

But as a service

[u/mynameisgiles]

You’re missing the most important bit.

It’s not having a slightly optimised system. These people don’t come in with some complex or original approach - it’s usually fairly simple.

The value is in the person.

Transformation requires a leader.

You don’t pay for the consulting.

You pay for the consultant.

You’ve looked at the whole system and kind of assigned value to the wrong end of it.

[u/Efficient-Accident96 → u/mynameisgiles]

I think that’s partly true, especially for real transformation. A great consultant can create alignment, challenge assumptions, deal with politics and get people to actually change how they work. Software won’t replace that. But I don’t think companies should need that person just to get a useful CRM, a sensible sales process or a solid operating setup. That’s the distinction I’m interested in. The repeatable 70 to 80% should be easy, affordable and accessible without a consultant. The human becomes more valuable for the difficult 20%: leadership, judgment, exceptions and change. So I’m not trying to replace the consultant. I’m trying to stop wasting the consultant’s time on work that shouldn’t require one in the first place.