B2B SaaS MVP: Sales Pipeline Tool for Agencies
A lightweight CRM and pipeline management tool built specifically for creative agencies, with proposal tracking, client health scores, and revenue forecasting.
Client: PipelineHQ (Bootstrapped)
Kanban-style pipeline board with deal cards showing company logos, deal values, and probability percentages. Sidebar shows revenue forecast chart and client health score indicators (green/yellow/red).
The Challenge
The founder ran a design agency and used Airtable to track deals, Google Sheets for revenue forecasting, and Notion for client notes. Every Monday, she spent 2 hours copying data between tools to build a weekly report for her business partner. HubSpot was too complex and expensive ($800/mo for her team), Pipedrive didn't support project-based revenue or retainers, and none of them had a client health score that flagged at-risk accounts before they churned. She wanted something simple that her 5-person team could adopt in a day.
Our Approach
We focused on three core views: pipeline board, client health dashboard, and revenue forecast. The pipeline was a Kanban board with customizable stages (Lead, Proposal, Negotiation, Won, Lost) and deal cards showing value, probability, and expected close date. Client health scoring was a composite metric based on response time, meeting frequency, project delivery status, and NPS survey responses. Revenue forecasting used a weighted pipeline model: deal value multiplied by probability, summed across time periods. The architecture was standard Next.js with PostgreSQL. We added multi-tenant support from day one since agencies would have team access. Invitations used email-based team invites with role-based permissions (Admin, Sales, Viewer). Data import from Airtable was a CSV mapping wizard that the founder ran herself during onboarding.
What We Built
Delivery Timeline
Day 1-3: Foundation
Multi-tenant schema, team auth with invites, role-based permissions, CI/CD setup.
Day 4-7: Pipeline Board
Kanban UI with dnd-kit, deal CRUD, stage customization, deal card details.
Day 8-10: Health Scores + Forecasting
Client health algorithm, dashboard, revenue forecast with weighted probability.
Day 11-12: Import + Billing
CSV import wizard for Airtable, Stripe per-seat billing, upgrade flow.
Day 13: Hardening
Security audit, tenant isolation tests, Playwright E2E tests.
Day 14: Launch
Production deployment, seed data, founder training, landing page.
Tech Stack
Architecture
frontend
Next.js App Router with drag-and-drop pipeline (dnd-kit).
backend
Next.js API routes with Drizzle ORM on multi-tenant PostgreSQL.
auth
Better Auth with email invite flow and team workspaces.
data
PostgreSQL with tenant isolation via organization_id foreign keys.
payments
Stripe per-seat billing ($29/seat/month).
Security
rbac
Organization-level isolation with Admin, Sales, and Viewer roles.
secrets
Railway environment variables.
monitoring
Sentry error tracking. Weekly usage analytics.
qa
Playwright E2E tests for pipeline CRUD and deal movement.
The Results
“I was paying $800/month for HubSpot features I never used. PipelineHQ does exactly what my agency needs for $145/month. The health score alone saved two client relationships.”
Key Takeaways
Agency CRMs need project-based revenue tracking, not just deal values. Retainers, one-off projects, and hourly billing are different revenue types that generic CRMs ignore.
Client health scoring is the killer feature for agency SaaS. Aggregating engagement signals into a single score gives founders visibility they've never had.
CSV import is the most underrated onboarding feature. If users can't bring their existing data, they won't switch from Airtable no matter how good your UI is.
Deliverables
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
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