Things can continue like this: Almost all KPIs are developing positively and we are back in the black. Welcome to our Open Startup Report for February 2024.
Contents
February at Friendly in Numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 18 428 CHF (+1%)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 9 453 CHF (+14%)
- 💰 Total revenue: 27 881 CHF (+5%)
- 💸 Costs: 25 007 CHF (-9%)
- 🧾 Profit and loss: 2 874 CHF (-431%)
- 👩 Active customers: 123 (+1%)
- 💔 Churn rate (lost customers): 2.4% (+195%)
- 👋 New trials: 16 (+14%)
- 🔎 Website visits: 3 691 (-13%)
These were the key developments in February:
Revenues: Software sales and consulting sales increase
The positive trend of recent months continued in February. Our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions rose slightly by 1% to CHF 18 428.
Our consulting turnover also grew by +14% to CHF 9 453. This puts us slightly above the average for the last 6 months. The largest projects in February were assignments for a pharmaceutical company, a hotel group, a construction machinery dealer and an insurance company.
We acquired four new customers and currently have 123 active customers. Our churn rate was within normal range at 2.46%.
As a result, our total revenue in February rose by 5% to CHF 27 881. We are very satisfied with this month’s outcome.
Costs: Lower than in the previous month, slight overall increase due to salary increase and sponsoring
Compared to the previous month, our costs fell by -9% to CHF 25 007 in February.
In January, however, we had an outlier on the cost side due to a miscalculation. If we compare the February costs with December, we see an increase of +7%.
This increase is primarily the result of a pay rise that we were able to make possible for our CTO Joey Keller. We increased his salary from EUR 5 500 to EUR 6 000 per month.
Even with this pay rise, Joey’s salary is still lower than that of Kathrin and Lukas, adjusted for working hours. As Joey works from Hungary, this difference is acceptable to us. In the long term, however, we plan to bring all salaries in line with Swiss pay levels.
Another moderate increase in costs is due to higher sponsorship for Mautic, the open source project on which Friendly Automate is based. Previously, we supported the further development of Mautic with USD 130 per month. From February, we are increasing this amount to USD 220.
Here are all our costs including salaries for February 2024 in detail:
Conclusion
Our revenue increased more strongly than costs again this month, and we therefore posted a profit of CHF 2 874 in February.
Even if this figure still looks modest, this is the third-best result in our company’s history, after the successful months of September and November 2023.
Having been largely “in the black”* over the last 6 months, we are very confident about the coming months.
* “In the black” is deliberately put in quotation marks because Stefan has not yet paid himself a salary for his work at Friendly and, as a sole founder without investors, he has yet to make up for the loss so far.
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