Major consulting projects are boosting our revenue and costs – at the same time, we made an important business decision. Welcome to our Open Startup Report for April 2025.
Contents
April at Friendly in numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 24 758 CHF (+5%)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 14 608 CHF (+39%)
- 💰 Total revenue: 39 366 CHF (+15%)
- 💸 Costs: 34 798 CHF (+13%)
- 🧾 Profit: 4 568 CHF (+39%)
- 🍰 Profit margin: 11.6% (+20%)
- 👩 Active customers: 168 (+4%)
- 💔 Churn Rate (lost customers): 2.5% (+1%)
- 👋 New trials: 6 (-45%)*
- 🔎 Website visits: 2 345 (-17%)
* From the next Open Startup Report onwards, we will no longer include new trials in this list, as this KPI currently seems to us to be less meaningful.
These were the key developments in April:
Revenues: MRR & Consulting strong, record-high total revenue
Our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions grew by a solid +5% in April, reaching CHF 24 758. This was driven by several new customers as well as upgrades to higher contact or hit limits in existing Automate and Analytics subscriptions.
Meanwhile, our consulting revenue reached CHF 14 608 – the second-highest value in our company’s history and an increase of 39% compared to March.
This strong result in consulting was driven by larger projects for an insurance company, a pharmaceutical company, a software firm, a cultural foundation, a business association from French-speaking Switzerland, and a Swiss hospital.
As a result, we achieved a record-high total revenue of CHF 39 366.
Costs: Sharp rise in salary costs, other costs stable
In April, our salary costs rose sharply once again. Already in March, personnel costs had increased due to the hiring of Lukas Frei and the promotion of Lukas Sigel.
In April, we again paid over CHF 4 000 more in salaries. Most of this increase was one-off and directly paid off for us: there was an exceptionally high consulting volume for our analytics consultant Peter Boehlke.
In this case, Peter supported a business association and a hospital with their analytics setup, and was heavily involved in the preparation of an enterprise analytics instance for a private bank.
In addition, we increased Stefan’s salary from CHF 1 000 to CHF 1 725. Until March, we had treated Stefan’s (still symbolic) compensation as a repayment of his investment. As of April, Stefan is officially employed at Friendly as managing director – initially at a nominal 15% workload, which we plan to gradually increase over the coming months.
Our other expenses developed unspectacularly compared to March: costs for administration, product, training, events, donations, and memberships stayed mostly the same, while our advertising costs for search engine advertising decreased slightly.
Due to the high salary costs, our total expenses rose by a full 13% in April to CHF 34 798.
Here are all our costs for April 2025 in detail:
A drastic business decision
In mid-April, we had an in-depth internal discussion about how to best allocate our resources at Friendly. As part of this, we also took a closer look at Friendly Automate. The result of these considerations was significant: for the time being, we will no longer offer new Starter or Professional subscriptions for Friendly Automate.
The main reason for this is that email marketing and marketing automation is an area requiring intensive supervision – both for our customers and subsequently for us. It requires not only substantial technical know-how but also ongoing individual support.
In addition, the extensive upgrade from Mautic 4 to Mautic 5 has created more effort than expected – both for our customers and for us. (Mautic is the open-source software behind Friendly Automate.)
To ensure continued quality for all our customers, we are currently focusing on supporting our existing clients, carefully implementing the Mautic 5 upgrade, and growing with selected enterprise customers. In return, we are accepting a possible short-term slowdown in growth.
Friendly Analytics is not affected by this decision, and new subscriptions at all price levels remain available.
We are continuously monitoring the situation and will reassess whether and when we can offer new Automate subscriptions again.
Conclusion
April was a good and intense month for us. The consulting projects were exciting and demanded a great deal of commitment. The resulting profit* of CHF 4 568 with a profit margin of 11.6% confirms our commitment.
With regard to our two financial goals for 2025, we are on a good track: we currently expect that we will be able to raise Stefan’s salary to CHF 4 000 over the course of the year.
A stable profit margin of 12% also seems within reach. The coming months will show how our recent business decision will affect this outlook.
* “Profit” with the restriction that Stefan does not yet pay 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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