Our revenue is now high enough that we can give more to others. Welcome to our Open Startup Report for October 2024.
Contents
October at Friendly in Numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 19 845 CHF (-2%)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 11 960 CHF (+10%)
- 💰 Total revenue: 31 805 CHF (+5%)
- 💸 Costs: 28 055 CHF (+4%)
- 🧾 Profit: 3 750 CHF (-9%)
- 👩 Active customers: 150 (+3%)
- 💔 Churn Rate (lost customers): 0.7% (-8%)
- 👋 New trials: 9 (+29%)
- 🔎 Website visits: 4 276 (+10%)
These were the key developments in October:
Revenues: Software revenue falls again to just under CHF 20 000, Consulting remains excellent
In October, our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions fell slightly by -2% to CHF 19 845.
This means that we are briefly below the CHF 20 000 threshold again, which we finally exceeded in the previous month of September. However, we expect to surpass it again by next month.
Meanwhile, our consulting revenue remains at an excellent level. With an increase of 10% compared to September, consulting revenue this month stands at a strong CHF 11 960.
In October, we successfully reached 150 active customers. We are very satisfied with the low churn rate of 0.7% because we know that our customers are too.
Thus, our total revenue increased by 2% to CHF 31 805 in October.
Costs: Higher costs due to advertising, events and donations
In October, our costs increased in several areas.
In addition to higher advertising costs for Google Ads and a slight increase in license fees, our participation in two events resulted in one-off higher costs.
Stefan, Luke and Kathrin ran a booth at the Startup Nights in Winterthur in the last week of October. Kathrin and Stefan also attended a cyber security event in Zurich.
In October, we were also finally able to fulfill a long-standing promise: to donate 1% of our revenue to non-profit organizations and projects. From now on, we will donate CHF 394 per month. More on this below.
This means that our expenses increased by just over CHF 1 000 in October and now stand at CHF 28 055. Given that the 4% increase in costs, which is quite high for us, is partly due to one-off expenses for events, it is well manageable for us.
Here are all our costs including salaries for October 2024 in detail:
We donate 1% of our revenue
The promise to donate 1% of our revenue goes back a long way: we made it back in 2020.
Since our foundation, we have already made contributions, but we have not yet fulfilled our donation promise in full because our finances were so tight.
Now that our budget is consolidating, we can finally fully implement our promise. In addition, over the next 24 months we will also eliminate the amount that we have so far donated too little.
You can find the complete cost breakdown and all donation recipients in our blog post.
Conclusion
October is now the ninth month in a row in which we have been “in the black”*: We achieved a profit of CHF 3 750.
The financial development of the last few months confirms our direction. With our Exist strategy, we believe we are well on the way to creating a good and friendly environment for our customers, for ourselves and also for the people around us.
* “In the black” 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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