How to build and run a developer-first software agency

You only make money as a freelancer or agency over the long term by focusing on the customer. In my experience customers don&#x27;t care about &quot;developer first&quot; values or the things developers say they strive for such as code &quot;quality&quot; (measured how?) or scalability (a possible future requirement). Nor do they care about async communication or remote culture or any of that, they just want to see progress and have their emails and calls answered. Your process and values don&#x27;t matter to the customer except as they deliver business value, a vague and hard to support claim. Either you and your team add business value and meet customer requirements or someone else gets the job, or you land in tedious arbitration hearings. Arguing with the customer usually doesn&#x27;t work out, unless you already have a strong trust relationship and domain expertise.<p>I keep my freelancing focus on the customer. My process and ideas about quality and scalability have to fit customer requirements, and I have to back up my talk about quality and scalability with evidence. The agency that represents me also maintains a strong focus on the customer.<p>&quot;Growth hacking&quot; the freelancer and agency models has led to lots of failed projects and customers with a bad taste for agencies. When getting new projects takes priority over delivering value and keeping customers happy you only grow by churning projects, and the industry has more than enough of that already.