Building a B2B SaaS from Scratch: The Pepino Brand Story

The Opportunity

Branding agencies manage hundreds of digital assets for every client: logos, color palettes, typography files, brand guidelines, social media templates, and more. Most agencies were using a chaotic mix of Google Drive folders, Dropbox links, and email attachments to share these assets with their clients. Files got lost, outdated versions circulated, and agencies spent hours every week fielding requests for assets that already existed somewhere.

The problem was clear. Agencies needed a purpose-built tool to organize, present, and distribute brand assets to their clients in a professional way. Existing DAM solutions were enterprise-grade, expensive, and designed for internal teams rather than the agency-client relationship. There was a gap in the market for a lightweight, agency-first platform.

The Solution

I co-founded The Pepino Brand as CPTO (Chief Product and Technology Officer). We rebuilt the product from scratch, designing a platform where agencies could upload, organize, and share brand assets through beautiful, client-facing portals. Each client got a branded space where they could browse and download the latest approved assets without ever needing to ask the agency.

I owned the full product lifecycle: defining the vision, building the roadmap, leading a team of 3 through development sprints, and iterating based on direct feedback from agency users. On the business side, I shaped the go-to-market strategy and monetization model, pricing the product for the agency workflow rather than per-seat enterprise licensing.

The technical challenge was balancing simplicity with flexibility. Every agency had slightly different workflows and branding needs. We built a system that was opinionated enough to be easy out of the box but configurable enough to handle diverse use cases without becoming bloated.

The Impact

We closed 7 marketing and branding agencies as paying clients, including notable names like Credo and BBK Foundation. For a bootstrapped product built by a team of 3, that validation was significant. Each agency brought multiple end-clients onto the platform, creating a natural expansion loop.

Over 1.5 years, I learned the full spectrum of what it takes to build a B2B SaaS from nothing: product discovery, user interviews, technical architecture decisions, hiring, pricing experiments, and the relentless grind of early-stage sales. The experience shaped how I think about product-market fit. You do not find it in a spreadsheet. You find it in the moment a customer starts using your product without being asked to.

The Pepino Brand taught me that the hardest part of building a startup is not the code. It is making something that people will pay for, and then making sure they keep paying.