The summer slump is here. While our sales have been falling for the third month in a row, we are experiencing an unexpected success: Welcome to our Open Startup Report for July 2024.
Contents
July at Friendly in Numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 18 846 CHF (+1%)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 7 023 CHF (-6%)
- 💰 Total revenue: 25 869 CHF (-1%)
- 💸 Costs: 25 402 CHF (+0.2%)
- 🧾 Profit: 467 CHF (-34%)
- 👩 Active customers: 135 (+3%)
- 💔 Churn rate (lost customers): 3.1% (+97%)
- 👋 New trials: 8 (-33%)
- 🔎 Website visits: 5 468 (+85%)
These were the key developments in July:
Revenues: Software sales are rising again, but total revenue declines
In July, our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions rose again, by just over 1% to CHF 18 846. This is encouraging after the decline in revenue in June. However, we are still below the level we had previously (CHF 19 295 in May).
At the same time, we have managed to increase the number of our active customers from 131 to 135.
Consulting revenue remains stable at CHF 7 023, but is down 6% compared to the previous month. We are feeling the effects of the summer slump, which will probably continue into August.
As a result, our total revenue has fallen for the third consecutive month to CHF 25 869, a further small decline of –1% compared to the previous month.
Costs: Slightly higher costs for salaries and hosting, optimisations in advertising
Our salary costs rose slightly in July, as we allocated a few more consulting hours to our “permanent freelancer” Peter Boehlke. Peter has been supporting our customers for years with his outstanding Analytics expertise but works on a freelance basis.
We also had slightly higher costs for Swiss hosting. We increased server capacity to improve our performance.
In July, for the last time, we charged the external initial costs for setting up ISO certifications 27 001 and 9 001, which we wrote off over 12 months. This will have a positive impact on our budget from August onwards.
Meanwhile, we were able to reduce our advertising costs thanks to optimisations. Expenditure on training and events, administration, and donations remained constant.
This means that our costs rose by just 0.2% to CHF 25 402.
Here are all our costs including salaries for July 2024 in detail:
A few weeks ago, at the end of July, our CEO Stefan Vetter published our latest employment contracts on LinkedIn.
We did not expect such a viral success: the contracts attracted almost 1 million views. Two days later, even the popular Swiss news magazine Blick reported on it.
Of course, it is unusual to share employment contracts publicly. And ours are so short that they fit on one page.
The topic has struck a nerve and provoked controversial reactions. Here are a few examples:
“Best employment contract I’ve ever seen 🌟
in every respect.”
“And that’s enough? That’s unthinkable.”
“Transparent, yes, but cheap and dubious. What about accidents, illness, 13th month’s salary, pension fund?”
(Spoiler: in Switzerland, all of this is regulated by the legally binding Swiss Code of Obligations.)
“In Germany, everyone would be up in protest.”
“I’ll never be able to get a CMO AND CISO in one person for that price.”
“That’s why I’ve loved working in Switzerland 🇨🇭 for more than 20 years ❤️.”
“I also like the transparent salary structure, I haven’t seen anything like it.”
“In the end, it’s always about trust.”
Since then, we have received a number of proactive job applications and the traffic on our website has increased massively for a short time.
Will this translate into more new customers? We will report back.
Conclusion
In recent months, we have only recorded very small profits – after CHF 316 in May and CHF 711 in June, we now have CHF 467 in July.
We recorded slightly fewer consulting hours in these months, had holiday absences and engaged a freelancer to help us implement the ISO standards 27 001 and 9 001.
But: we remain in the “black figures”, and we see that our commitment to quality and trust is worth it.
Now we are curious to see what impact our LinkedIn post will have on the figures for the next few months.
* “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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