How We Transitioned from Service Agency to AI Product Launch: 10 Things We Wish We Knew

You don’t wake up one day and find yourself running a product company.

For us at Big Pixel, this started as a classic dev agency: build for others, deliver, collect the check. The pivot to “AI dev shop” was messy and exhilarating—suddenly every conversation circled around machine learning, LLMs, and hype cycles.

And then came the next leap: building and launching our own thing. Not a client’s roadmap, but our product.

Frankly, it’s new ground. And it’s not always graceful.

So, what does it take to launch a product in the age of AI, when you’re not a startup darling or a VC-backed behemoth, but a real team used to doing the work behind the scenes?

Where do you start?

Here’s what we’re learning in the trenches.

1. The Real Pain Is Found in the Support Tickets

‍We built Teela because our clients—operations leads, supply chain folks, financial controllers—kept emailing us “Can you pull this report?” Finding the real pain wasn’t in a vision board. It was buried in a backlog of small, nagging requests no analyst wanted to write another script for.

2. Your First Setup Will Be Ugly, and That’s OK‍

The onboarding for your first few users isn’t scalable. We spent hours—days sometimes—cleaning up data, mapping field names, debugging. But those early calls gave us the step-by-step we now automate.

3. Why, Why, Why—in Every Demo‍

Our first pilot users kept asking: “How is this different from my BI tool?” Turns out, answering that is your sacred duty. For us, it was: “Teela speaks ops. It learns your business language inside a week. It’s not just charts. It’s what you ask the second you get stuck.”

4. Your Human Touch is Worth More Than Any AI Model‍

When Teela had a rough day, we called. We explained. We fixed pilot bugs on the weekend. That’s when people realized they weren’t buying software—they were buying “a team that gives a damn.”

5. If the Pricing Slide Hurts, You’re Not Ready‍

We tried to skip the conversation about money. Every time, it bit us. The moment we spelled out why we charge, and how we see value, prospects leaned in instead of ghosting.

6. Broad Use Cases = No One Cares‍

Every company wants to build “the AI that does everything.” The wins came when we picked one job (urgent ops questions, no SQL) and became the best at that. Niche first, scale later.

7. Lessons Come Dressed as Problems‍

When a pilot user finds a bug, that’s your product meeting reality. Our best features are things that broke first.

8. Community Isn’t Optional‍

One client brought in their whole ops team for a feedback session. That call shaped our roadmap for months. Users will teach you what to build—if you invite them.

9. Simpler Always Wins in the End‍

We built code that could handle “anything.” Users wanted three buttons: question, save, fix mistake. The more human and less clever we made it, the happier they were.

10. Launch Day Isn’t Glory, It’s the Start Line‍

When we shipped Teela’s first pilot, some celebrated; we felt sick. Then came the real work—supporting, fixing, learning. Turns out, the “launch” changes nothing. It’s just the day you go from plan to reality.

We’re still figuring it out—like you probably are.

There’s no map for going from a behind-the-scenes service shop to a product builder in an industry where even the rules keep changing.

But if you’re on a similar path?

Welcome.

Be honest, stay close to the problem, treasure your early users, and never forget that launch is a commitment, not an escape.

If you need a hand or a horror story, reach out—we’re building in public, and our inbox is wide open.