We have reason to celebrate on both the revenue and the cost side: our total revenue exceeds the CHF 30 000 mark and Stefan can pay himself a salary for the first time. Welcome to our Open Startup Report for April 2024.
Contents
April at Friendly in Numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 19 134 CHF (+2%)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 11 556 CHF (+8%)
- 💰 Total revenue: 30 690 CHF (+4%)
- 💸 Costs: 25 704 CHF (-0.1%)
- 🧾 Profit: 4 986 CHF (+32%)
- 👩 Active customers: 126 (-)
- 💔 Churn rate (lost customers): 3.2% (+95%)
- 👋 New trials: 6 (-25%)
- 🔎 Website visits: 3 672 (+15%)
These were the key developments in April:
Revenues: Total revenue breaks the CHF 30 000 barrier
In April, our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions rose by around CHF 350 or 2% to CHF 19 134. This means that our software revenue has not fallen in a single month since June last year.
The increase is gentle, but as we have reported several times, this helps us to keep pace with the development of our company. We can plan new areas of responsibility properly and select new employees carefully.
Our consulting revenue rose by 8% to CHF 11 556 in April. This is the second-highest figure in our company’s history. The biggest projects in April were Analytics training for a Swiss bank, programming and design of an event solution for a pharmaceutical company and Analytics consulting for a hotel chain.
The number of active customers remained stable at 126, while our churn rate was slightly higher at 3.2% with four cancellations. At the same time, we gained four new customers.
Our total revenue is cause for celebration. For the second time in our company’s history, it has broken the CHF 30 000 barrier! After the first time was a positive outlier due to particularly high consulting revenue, we are now really there. Compared to the previous month, we have recorded an increase of 4%, bringing our total revenue for April to CHF 30 690.
Costs: Stefan pays himself a salary for the first time, while total costs even fall slightly
The second reason to celebrate: our CEO Stefan Vetter had waived his own salary since the company was founded as an investment in the company. Today, we are proud to announce that Stefan can pay himself a salary for the first time!
At CHF 500, it is still in the symbolic range. Of course, Stefan plans to gradually increase his salary in line with our financial resources.
There was less work for our freelancer Peter Boehlke in April, meaning that salary costs only increased by just over CHF 100 in total.
In the areas of product, marketing, events, administration and donations, we recorded only minor fluctuations compared to the previous month. As a result, our total costs actually fell slightly by 0.1% to CHF 25 704 in April.
Here are all our costs including salaries for April 2024 in detail:
We welcome our competitors – Stefan at Wisdom Wednesday
We recently reported that the online magazine Founded wrote about Friendly (in german language).
Now the Entrepreneur Club Winterthur has published a quote from it on LinkedIn for Wisdom Wednesday (also in german language).
In it, Stefan talks about the positive role of our competitors: They inspire us to improve.
Conclusion
This was a great month for us: the very good revenue and stable expenses resulted in a nice “profit”* of CHF 4 986, an increase of 32% compared to the previous month and the third highest profit in our history (after September and November 2023).
After the loss in January (due to a miscalculation), we have thus achieved three “profitable”* months in February, March, and April 2024.
And we have finally realised our goal of paying Stefan a salary, albeit a modest one for the time being. This is a major milestone for us.
* “Profit” and “profitable” are put in quotation marks because Stefan has not yet paid himself a full salary for his work and, as the sole founder without investors, still has to make up for the loss so far.
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