Jovan Miljevic, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of N8N Lab, is our guest in this edition of our Ace Founder Series.
With a track record of building and successfully exiting businesses—including a boutique travel portal and a B2B digital marketing agency—Jovan is now at the forefront of the AI revolution.
His latest venture, n8n Lab, is an AI-native agency that builds sophisticated workflow automations and agentic systems for professional services, e-commerce, and tech companies.
I sat down with him for the podcast to discuss the realities of selling an agency, how to navigate the hype surrounding AI tools, and why artificial intelligence won't kill software, but will fundamentally change how we interact with it.
*Both questions and answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
The Conversation
Could you tell us a little bit more about you and the work you do?
I classify myself as an agency builder. As you mentioned, I founded Bounty Hunter, sold that agency, and now co-founded N8N Lab, an AI automation agency.
Before that, back around 2016, I founded a boutique travel portal called Domino Villas. I created partnerships with property managers in Greece and Spain, ranked very well on Google search, and built a great audience.
I sold those assets to a tour operator after one year, then founded Bounty Hunter for B2B SaaS, sold it, and right now I am co-founding my third agency.
What was the process of selling your previous agency like?
I think you need to feel the momentum when the timing is right for selling. At the end of 2023, I had the best quarter ever. I had stabilized the offering, the team, the lead inflow, and client retainers—all our clients were under commitments for three months to a year.
When I listed the agency for sale, I was getting constant back-to-back calls with potential buyers. I picked one of the first prospective buyers, stuck with them, and after a couple of months of iterations and negotiations, I officially sold and exited.
I stayed in that merger for one year as a vertical leader to make the transition smooth. Selling a business requires massive work while you still have to manage your current operations, but it is a great journey.
How do you come to a valuation number when selling an agency?
Buyers don't just look at revenue numbers or the client portfolio; they look heavily at your team's capability.
Building a team of capable AI operators is a very lucrative asset because acquiring companies don't need to spend time onboarding or training them.
Buyers also look at brand assets—like your website ranking and visibility—and internal frameworks or technology that make your operations sustainable.
I believe the valuation for AI-native agencies will be closer to software multiples. If you are doing one million in revenue with low churn, you can definitely value your agency at two or three million, depending on how your internal systems work.
Could you give us an overview of the N8N platform and what your new agency does?
N8N is a workflow automation and AI orchestration platform. You can build automations that connect with your databases, implement AI agents that do different types of work, and write custom code.
For example, an AI agent can grab data from your database, pull it into a project management or email outreach software, transfer it to another agent to use that information, and then push it to another database.
We do this for marketing operations, sales operations, voice agents, and internal business ops.
How did you get your first customers for such a new, highly specialized agency?
I am a marketer by nature, and believe it or not, our first customers came entirely through our website. We launched officially in October of last year, and starting in November, we got a lot of lead flow.
People found us online through search—probably via LLMs—typing in queries for the best AI or n8n automation agency, and we popped up. That provided immediate validation for us to nail down our focus.
What is the biggest challenge you face building this new AI agency?
The biggest challenge is battling the slop and hype around AI. People will come to us asking for a specific technology—like a Claude code agent—because they read about it, and we have to push back and explain that it isn't the best tool for their specific use case.
There is a lot of buzz confusing people. Still, the most essential part of business operations is understanding your client's actual needs. You have to go very deep into scoping and assessment to classify what they actually need versus what they think they need.
Some people say AI is going to kill traditional software. What are your thoughts?
No, because AI is software. What AI will do is change the way we use software. Instead of logging into a dashboard and clicking around 20 different tools to set up a campaign, you will use AI as a layer to chat and prompt the software to execute those tasks.
You will be much more productive. AI might replace some smaller commodity software, but massive platforms with deep data and user bases like HubSpot or Salesforce won't be replaced; people will just be more capable using them.
What is one final tip regarding AI and business you would leave our audience with?
Develop your human capabilities. Work on yourself, be consistent, be present, and see how you can best fit into this newly shaped world.
If you can use AI to help you, go do it. Don't be resilient or resistant to this new technology because it is the future, and hopefully, it will make us better. All of the human skills—like clarity, emotional stability, and transparency—are not replaceable.
Closing Thoughts
Jovan’s insights highlight the evolving landscape of digital agencies and the pragmatic implementation of AI. My key takeaways include:
Focus on Internal Assets: When selling a business, buyers highly value trained operational teams, internal systems, and brand equity just as much as recurring revenue.
Proper Scoping is Crucial: Don't just implement AI for the sake of hype. Deeply assess your workflow to apply the right technology to the right problem.
AI Enhances Software, It Doesn't Erase It: AI will become the conversational layer we use to interact with complex software, drastically improving our productivity and efficiency without replacing the underlying tech.
Double Down on Human Skills: As AI automates technical execution, distinctly human traits like emotional intelligence, strategic clarity, and transparency become a founder's biggest differentiators.
Connect With Our Guest
Follow Jovan Miljevic on LinkedIn
Visit the N8N Lab website
