A year, and an era, are coming to an end: this is the final monthly Open Startup Report – but we’ll continue in a new format. Welcome to our Open Startup Report for December 2025.
Contents
December at Friendly in numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 34 526 CHF (-0.2 %)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 9 305 CHF (-5 %)
- 💰 Total revenue: 43 831 CHF (-1 %)
- 💸 Costs: 41 794 CHF (-3 %)
- 🧾 Profit: 2 037 CHF (+43 %)
- 🍰 Profit margin: 4.7 % (+45 %)
- 👩 Active customers: 186 (+1 %)
- 💔 Churn Rate (lost customers): 0.5 % (-75 %)
- 🔎 Website visits: 3 079 (+9 %)
These were the key developments in December:
Revenues: longer sales cycles, MRR slightly down
As we increasingly work with privacy-sensitive enterprise customers, our sales cycles tend to be longer. In this segment, closing a contract usually involves extensive legal reviews: both sides exchange and refine documents, complete questionnaires, discuss and revise proposals, and walk through concrete use cases.
These steps are essential for a long-term, successful collaboration, and we approach them with care and responsibility. As a result, we do not close a new enterprise subscription every single month.
In December, no larger new subscription started. Due to two smaller new customers and one churn, our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions temporarily declined by -0.2 % to CHF 34 526.
(Spoiler: a major enterprise subscription starts in January — and we are very much looking forward to it.)
Our consulting revenue came in at CHF 9 305 in December, which is a very strong result given vacation absences and the holiday season.
Overall, our total revenue declined slightly by -1 % in December to CHF 43 831.
Costs: new expenses for brand protection
Our salaries remained unchanged in December. However, since the consulting workload of our Analytics freelancer, Peter Boehlke, fluctuates from month to month and was a bit lower again in December, our total salary costs decreased by around CHF 1 400.
This month, we are reporting salary costs for Lukas Frei for the last time. Lukas had been working with us since March 2025 on a small workload, and we truly valued our collaboration with him.
Starting in January 2026, Lukas wants to simplify his life. Even without his work at Friendly, he balances multiple jobs alongside family life and personal time. We wholeheartedly support his decision and wish him all the very best.
We’re growing our team
To support our growing company, we’re hiring a Customer Success Specialist (Marketing Automation & Analytics, 50–100%).
Our marketing costs increased slightly again in December, this time for a less pleasant reason. A young Swiss software company has been using the term “Friendly” in its company name for several months. We engaged in direct conversations but were ultimately unable to agree on a solution that seemed fair to both parties, which is why we are now taking legal steps to protect our brand. Most of the resulting costs are covered by our legal expenses insurance. The remaining costs will be amortized over the coming months.
Expenses for product, administration, and donations remained unchanged. We recorded slightly lower costs in the area of events and team culture.
As a result, our total expenses decreased by -3 % compared to the previous month, amounting to CHF 41 794 in December.
Here are all our costs including salaries for December 2025 in detail:
The next chapter of our Open Startup Reports
As mentioned in the teaser, this is the final Open Startup Report in its current format.
Let’s be clear right away: we will remain transparent. What will change is the format — and that change reflects how our business has evolved.
In Friendly’s early years, we were fully in startup mode. Every month brought a crisis, a success, a change, or a new idea.
Our finances fluctuated significantly, and month after month we reported on new highs and lows.
By now, things have stabilized. We are growing slowly and steadily, improving our internal structures, gradually expanding our team, and planning further product development.
The months no longer feel like a roller coaster. And what happens to our finances from one month to the next no longer feels like the most interesting story to tell.
We therefore decided to continue the Open Startup Report in a new quarterly format called Open Startup Quarterly.
With a quarterly cadence, we can provide a clearer overview and a better interpretation of Friendly’s long-term financial development.
We also plan to expand the reports in terms of content and share more behind-the-scenes insights — for example into our teams, ongoing projects, strategic considerations, and key learnings. We are currently working on the exact format.
To stay up to date and not miss the first edition of the new Open Startup Quarterly, feel free to follow Stefan on LinkedIn or sign up for our newsletter here:
The first Open Startup Quarterly for Q 1 2026 will be published in April.
Conclusion
We close the month of December with a profit* of CHF 2 037 and a profit margin of 4.7 %.
Despite the tight margins of the past two months (see November), our overall profit margin for 2025 came in exactly at 12.0 %, precisely meeting our annual target.
With Stefan’s salary at CHF 4 025, we also exacly met our annual target. We would have liked to increase it further this month, but decided against it in order to reach our targeted annual margin.
With that, an eventful year comes to an end. We will soon share more in our Open Startup Year in Review 2025. We are looking forward to a friendly 2026 together!
* Friendly has fully recovered its early-stage losses as of June 2025. Our monthly profit now only comes with the caveat that Stefan, our founder, still isn’t paying himself a full salary for his work – we’re working on it.
