We are moving into safe waters. Although we recorded another loss after three “profitable” months in a row – our software revenue and customer numbers are growing steadily. Welcome to our Open Startup Report for July 2023.
Contents
July at Friendly in numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 15 712 CHF (+9%)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 4 355 CHF (-58%)
- 💰 Total revenue: 20 067 CHF (-19%)
- 💸 Costs: 21 529 CHF (-9%)
- 🧾 Profit and loss: -1 462 CHF (–222%)
- 👩 Active customers: 100 (+5%)
- 💔 Churn rate: 0% (-100%)
- 👋 New trials: 12 (-25%)
- 🔎 Website visits: 3 320 (-5%)
This is what moved us in July:
Revenue: Software revenue rising, consulting fluctuating
Our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions increased in July, even by a significant +9% to a record 15 712 CHF.
We owe this to some upgrades as well as five new customers, most of them with Friendly Analytics. Here we clearly benefited from the forced shutdown of Google Analytics 3 / Universal Analytics, and of course from the increasing data protection awareness in Switzerland, accelerated by the new Federal Act on Data Protection (nFADP).
As a result, our customer numbers also increased by +5% and we are celebrating our 100th customer.
Our revenue from consulting, on the other hand, fluctuated and fell by -58% to 4 355 CHF. Our Consulting revenue has not been this low since November 2022.
We explain this with the holiday season and the absence of some of our contact persons. In any case, the demand for consulting is of course always dependent on many factors and is a volatile source of income for us, especially when billing on an hourly basis.
Our goal therefore remains to get into profitablity with the more consistent software revenue alone, and to see consulting only as a “bonus”. And perhaps also to sell consulting with more predictable billing models – for more predictability and stability on both sides.
The total of our income thus amounted to 20 067 CHF in July.
The costs: decreased due to savings on freelancers and advertising
Our costs decreased by -9% to 21,529 CHF in July. The largest decreases were in freelancer expenses and marketing.
Since we had fewer consulting assignments, we were able to cover more with our permanent employees and had to purchase fewer services from freelancers.
This compensated for the fact that we increased Lukas’ workload from 30% to 35%, while also slightly increasing his salary in recognition of his strong performance and as part of his promotion to “Chief Customer Officer”.
Given the continuing tight financial situation, we reduced our spending on advertising by more than a third.
Here are all our costs including salaries for July 2023:
Conclusion
After three profitable months in a row for the first time, we recorded a loss of -1 463 CHF in July. This is painful, but not dramatic in view of the good development in software revenue and customer numbers.
Our goal remains to achieve sustained profitability and to expand the margin to such an extent that I will be able to pay myself a salary this year if possible.
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