We did it – without investors: For the first time, Friendly has a positive overall financial result. Welcome to our Open Startup Report for June 2025.
Contents
June at Friendly in numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 27 754 CHF (+12%)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 19 403 CHF (+80%)
- 💰 Total revenue: 47 157 CHF (+33%)
- 💸 Costs: 33 559 CHF (+4%)
- 🧾 Profit: 13 598 CHF (+316%)
- 🍰 Profit margin: 28.8% (+213%)
- 👩 Active customers: 191 (+1%)
- 💔 Churn Rate (lost customers): 1.1% (n/a)
- 🔎 Website visits: 2 550 (+6%)
From red to black: Friendly reports first cumulative profit
June 2025 marks a milestone in the history of Friendly: for the first time since our founding, our total result over the entire business period is in the black. While we’ve been consistently profitable month after month for more than a year now, the losses from our early days hadn’t yet been fully offset.
To make Friendly possible during those initial, loss-making years, our founder Stefan Vetter had invested not only his time but also personal funds and borrowed money from friends. That makes this moment all the more meaningful – for the company, and also for Stefan personally.
Closing the chapter on early losses means a lot to me. The trust and patience have paid off. I’m proud of what we’re building together.
Stefan Vetter, Founder and CEO of Friendly
Here’s a full overview of our business figures from 2020 until today:
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 until June | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TRR | 26 823 CHF | 117 391 CHF | 156 327 CHF | 188 691 CHF | 234 589 CHF | 146 885 CHF |
| Consulting | 0 | 0 | 18 385 CHF | 90 313 CHF | 122 191 CHF | 70 089 CHF |
| Total Revenue | 26 823 CHF | 117 391 CHF | 174 712 CHF | 279 004 CHF | 356 780 CHF | 220 974 CHF |
| Costs | -52 672 CHF | -133 038 CHF | -205 736 CHF | -266 038 CHF | -321 850 CHF | -190 368 CHF |
| Annual profit/loss | -25 849 CHF | -15 647 CHF | -31 024 CHF | +12 966 CHF | +34 930 CHF | +30 606 CHF |
| Total profit/loss | -25 849 CHF | -41 496 CHF | -72 520 CHF | -59 554 CHF | -24 625 CHF | 🙌 +5 981 CHF |
It was the record-breaking numbers in June that made us cross that line.
Revenues: Record results in MRR and consulting
After our major business decision in April to pause new Automate subscriptions, our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions initially plateaued, just as expected.
In the meantime, we used part of the freed-up capacity to focus on acquiring new enterprise clients – and it paid off. In June, our MRR jumped by 12% – the highest growth rate we’ve ever recorded – reaching CHF 27 754.
This positive momentum also affected our consulting revenue, which rose by a remarkable 80% to a record high of CHF 19 403.
Major projects included setting up an enterprise instance, developing custom solutions for an insurance company, and hosting several analytics training sessions.
Our total revenue thus increased from CHF 35 515 in May by 33% to CHF 47 157 in June.
Costs: Another salary increase for Stefan
Thanks to the strong revenue development, we increased Stefan’s salary again in June – now CHF 2 875 gross for a 25% nominal workload. We’re on a solid path to reaching our goal of CHF 4 000 per month for Stefan by the end of the year.
His increased salary, along with higher compensation for our freelancer Peter Boehlke, led to increased personnel costs.
In marketing, commission payments were higher, and we continued the amortization for our upcoming Friendly rebranding (here’s a small preview).
Our hosting costs also rose slightly due to an upgrade in server capacity. On the other hand, a major amortization ended in June, so overall product-related costs went down slightly.
Since we held this year’s team retreat in Lavaux a bit earlier than last year’s, the amortizations for both retreats overlap for two months. Still, overall expenses for events and team culture decreased slightly.
Administration and donations remained unchanged.
This brings our total costs for June to CHF 33 559, an increase of 4% compared to the previous month.
Here are all our costs including salaries for June 2025 in detail:
Conclusion
June closed with the highest monthly profit* in our company’s history: CHF 13 598, a 316% increase compared to May.
Our profit margin reached 28.8%.
We’re aware that this level of performance won’t necessarily be sustainable in the coming months – consulting volume tends to fluctuate, and several team members have vacations planned in July.
Still: we’re enjoying this moment.
And finally! We can’t fully retire our disclaimer just yet – but we can shorten it:
* “Profit” with the restriction that Stefan does not yet pay himself a full salary for his work and, as the sole founder without investors, still has to make up for the loss so far.
