This year, in August, we already managed to exceed the entire annual profit of 2023 – despite an increase in working percentages: Welcome to our Open Startup Report for August 2024.
Contents
August at Friendly in Numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 19 141 CHF (+2%)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 10 532 CHF (+50%)
- 💰 Total revenue: 29 673 CHF (+15%)
- 💸 Costs: 26 013 CHF (+2%)
- 🧾 Profit: 3 660 CHF (+684%)
- 👩 Active customers: 135 (–)
- 💔 Churn rate (lost customers): 1.5% (-51%)
- 👋 New trials: 11 (+38%)
- 🔎 Website visits: 3 506 (-36%)
These were the key developments in August:
Revenues: Summer slump over thanks to high consulting revenue
In August, our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions rose slightly by 2% to CHF 19 141. We are thus continuing our solid, slow growth.
Meanwhile, the number of our active customers remained constant: with 2 lost and 2 gained customers, we have 135 active customers, as in the previous month.
Our consulting revenue achieved an excellent result in August: at CHF 10 532, we recorded an increase of 50% compared to the previous month.
Larger consulting projects included individual programming with Friendly Automate for a pharmaceutical company, the implementation of a test phase for an Analytics enterprise customer and the creation of newsletter templates for a Swiss non-profit organization.
After three weak months, we can therefore declare the summer slump over in August: Our total revenue increases by 15% to a good CHF 29 673.
Costs: Higher salary costs due to increased workloads
From August, both our CMO and CISO Kathrin Schmid and our CCO Lukas Sigel have been able to increase their workload at Friendly from 40% to 50% each. (See their new employment contracts, which we shared on this occasion a few weeks ago.)
Their salaries have increased by just over CHF 900 each as a result, making a total increase of over CHF 1 800.
We were able to offset most of these additional costs by eliminating part of the amortization of our ISO certification costs this month. Until July, we had written off CHF 1 250 per month for this.
The expenses for administration, marketing and donations remained stable.
A new cost item is our team retreat in Ticino in July. This year’s retreat cost us twice as much as last year’s retreat. However, amortized over 12 months, this amount is not very significant.
This means that our costs in August rose only slightly by around CHF 600 or 2% to CHF 26 013.
Here are all our costs including salaries for August 2024 in detail:
We exceed the annual profit for 2023
We announced it back in June, and we actually made it – from January to August of this year, we have already generated more profit than in the whole of 2023.
We are very proud of this. Everyone in the team has contributed significantly to this with their creativity and commitment. And we would like to thank all our customers who place their trust in us every day.
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 until August* | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ARR | 26 823 CHF | 117 391 CHF | 156 327 CHF | 188 691 CHF | 229 688 CHF* |
| Consulting | 0 | 0 | 18 385 CHF | 90 313 CHF | 72 246 CHF* |
| Total Revenue | 26 823 CHF | 117 391 CHF | 174 712 CHF | 279 004 CHF | 222 669 CHF* |
| Costs | -52 672 CHF | -133 038 CHF | -205 736 CHF | -266 038 CHF | –206 757 CHF* |
| Annual Profit/Loss | -25 849 CHF | -15 647 CHF | -31 024 CHF | +12 966 CHF | 🎉 +15 912 CHF* |
We are therefore well on the way to achieving sustainable profitability. Our primary financial goal is not to drive up revenue, but to achieve a healthy profit margin (20%+) through careful scaling.
Conclusion
Thanks to strong consulting, we closed August with one of the highest profits of the current year: CHF 3 660, an increase of a full 684% compared to the previous month of July.
The struggle of the last few months to stay in the “black figures”* has thus come to an end for the time being.
We are all the more satisfied with this result in view of Kathrin and Luke’s increased working hours. And we have gained additional human resources that will expand our options for the coming months.
Now we can start thinking more tangibly about gradually increasing Stefan’s salary too.
* “Black figures” is 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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