We carefully onboarded two new team members — and now Mona is leaving us after just three months. We also discuss how far transparency should go when it involves people, and whether AI is changing our Open Startup approach.
Welcome to our Open Startup Quarterly for the second quarter of 2026.
Contents
Plans and reality
We make good plans, do our best, and start with plenty of energy. And then things turn out differently.
That is what our founder and CEO Stefan experienced last year. He gave up his apartment and much of his belongings and traveled to Asia, planning to spend a year on the road. Tages-Anzeiger had already reported on his plans before he left.
Six weeks later, Stefan was back.
A new article has now been published about his return and the reasons behind it. You can find the link — and read why he does not see his change of plans as a failure — in Stefan’s LinkedIn post.
At Friendly, too, things turned out differently this quarter. While we were still in the middle of onboarding and seeing the first achievements, one of our two new team members told us she would be leaving again — raising questions that go beyond this one position.
The second quarter was also busy in many other ways: We attended the Swiss Software Festival, where Stefan gave a talk, supported the rebranding of visavis (formerly Branchen Versicherung), developed our own plugins for Friendly Automate — including a Captcha solution, two-factor authentication, and Content Blocks — and worked on several larger sales proposals.
In this report, we share our financials, the story of our new team members, and how we’re moving forward.
The numbers
Here are our figures for the second quarter of 2026:
- 🤖 Software revenue: 124 114 CHF (+3 %)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 30 534 CHF (+52 %)
- 💰 Total revenue: 154 648 CHF (+10 %)
- 👩🦰 Personnel costs: - 124 540 CHF (+34 %)
- ⚙️ Product & admin costs: - 17 557 CHF (+6 %)
- 📣 Marketing & events costs: - 14 424 CHF (-10 %)
- 💛 Donations: - 1 611 CHF (+0.4 %)
- 💸 Total costs: - 158 132 CHF (+24 %)
- 🏆 Loss: - 3 484 CHF (-126 %)
- 🍰 Profit margin: - 2.3 % (-124 %)
Our recurring revenue from software subscriptions rose only slightly in the second quarter of 2026, increasing by 3 % to CHF 124 114. In addition to several new customers, growth among existing subscriptions also contributed to the increase.
At the same time, consulting revenue rebounded after a weaker Q1, reaching a very strong CHF 30 534. Among other projects, we delivered custom development work for a pharmaceutical company and a hospital, helped customers optimize their analytics tracking, and supported our customer visavis (formerly Branchen Versicherung) through its successful rebranding.
This brought our total revenue for the second quarter of 2026 to a solid CHF 154 648.
Our personnel costs rose sharply in the second quarter due to the hiring of our two new team members and an increase in the workload of our senior developer, Matic Zagmajster — from CHF 92 799 in Q1 to CHF 124 540. We also increased Stefan’s paid workload further, from 45 % to 55 %.
Costs for our products, events, and donations remained stable. Marketing costs fell because our partner commissions were slightly lower this quarter. Our accounting costs, however, rose a bit.
Taken together, these smaller items almost canceled each other out. This means that the increase in total costs of more than CHF 30 000 — or a full 24 % — to CHF 158 132 is entirely due to higher personnel costs.
At the end of the quarter, this leaves us with a loss of CHF -3 484, for the first time since Q1 2023.
We had budgeted for the investment in our team to temporarily push us into the red, and our previous profits can comfortably absorb the loss. Over the coming months, we need to show that we can turn this investment into higher revenue.
Here is an overview of all figures from the second quarter of 2025 through the second quarter of 2026:
| Q2 2025 | Q3 2025 | Q4 2025 | Q1 2026 | Q2 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MRR | 77 249 CHF | 90 906 CHF | 102 595 CHF | 120 085 CHF | 124 114 CHF |
| Consulting | 44 789 CHF | 35 584 CHF | 32 796 CHF | 20 134 CHF | 30 534 CHF |
| Total revenue | 122 038 CHF | 126 490 CHF | 135 391 CHF | 140 219 CHF | 154 648 CHF |
| Personnel costs | - 73 633 CHF | - 81 944 CHF | - 93 758 CHF | - 92 799 CHF | - 124 540 CHF |
| Product & admin costs | - 16 196 CHF | - 16 379 CHF | - 16 647 CHF | - 16 564 CHF | - 17 557 CHF |
| Marketing & events costs | - 9 607 CHF | - 9 439 CHF | - 12 396 CHF | - 16 094 CHF | - 14 424 CHF |
| Donations | - 1 166 CHF | - 2 378 CHF | - 1 609 CHF | - 1 605 CHF | - 1 611 CHF |
| Total costs | - 100 602 CHF | - 110 140 CHF | - 124 410 CHF | - 127 062 CHF | - 158 132 CHF |
| Profit/Loss | + 21 436 CHF | + 16 350 CHF | + 10 982 CHF | + 13 157 CHF | - 3 484 CHF |
| Profit margin | 17.6 % | 12.9 % | 8.1 % | 9.4 % | - 2.3 % |
A strong start — and an early farewell
In January 2026, we advertised a position for a Customer Success Specialist. During the recruitment process, however, the combination of two applications impressed us so much that we decided to hire two team members in a job-sharing arrangement.
In April 2026, Mona Sorcelli and Ágota Dimén joined Friendly.
Mona Sorcelli
Mona brings 17 years of experience in project management, online marketing, and design. She is also familiar with software testing, HTML and CSS and has previously worked in customer support.
Mona also runs her own company and helped found a coworking space in Dietikon. Most recently, she spent three years at Cyon, where she worked extensively with Matomo — the open-source software behind Friendly Analytics.
Mona was not new to us personally either: She and Stefan have known each other for many years, and Stefan respectfully describes her as “one of the leading figures in digital marketing in Switzerland.”
Ágota Dimén
Ágota’s application reached us on the final day of the submission phase — in the form of an “Open Applicant Report.” In it, Ágota promised a resolution time of under four hours, provided a seven-step hiring guide, and explained what her motivation had to do with baby ads.
Ágota has worked in customer service for around 15 years and also brings several years of marketing experience. Some readers may also know her from her late-night show or as a sidekick on Deville — Ágota combines humor and professionalism in an impressive way.
Luke prepared a careful onboarding program for both of them, supported by training sessions from Kathrin, Joey, and Peter: Joey gave our new team members an initial introduction to Friendly Automate, Peter introduced them to Friendly Analytics, and Kathrin met Mona and Ágota in person in Bern to introduce them to our company culture, which is particularly important to us.
On this occasion, we also published the foundations of our company culture on our website.
Mona soon took on the role of Customer Support Lead, wrote a playbook for our support team, and — after only a short onboarding phase — took responsibility for supporting our customer visavis (formerly Branchen Versicherung) through its rebranding.
Ágota covered support together with Mona, began writing guides for our knowledge base, and took over some of Stefan’s administrative tasks related to accounting and customer management — significantly lightening his workload after only a short onboarding time.
Then, after around three months, Mona told us that she would be leaving Friendly for personal reasons.
The news came unexpectedly. After the long recruitment process and intensive onboarding, we had just begun to feel that our new setup was starting to work. Mona’s departure therefore came as a small shock at first — organizationally, but also personally.
At the same time, we understand and respect her decision. We wish Mona all the very best for her health and her family, and we look forward to seeing her again.
During her short time at Friendly, Mona took responsibility and left a visible mark. She established new structures in customer support and contributed valuable ideas.
With Mona’s departure, we are losing a valued colleague and have to redistribute responsibilities. In the weeks that followed, however, our management team also discussed intensively what Friendly really needs in its next phase — and the change of plans opened up promising new perspectives.
For now, we can share this much: We will not immediately fill the vacant position. We will share more about the broader changes to Friendly’s direction in the next Open Startup Quarterly.
How transparent should we be?
Mona’s departure and the rapid advances in AI have prompted us to revisit a familiar question: How transparent should we be?
Transparency has been part of Friendly since day one. But transparency is not an end in itself for us. It has limits — especially when it concerns not only our company, but individual people.
We discussed openly with Mona, without any predetermined outcome, whether to keep the section about her entirely anonymous or to mention her name and describe what happened. Mona herself decided that we could tell her story.
“For me, transparency is only credible when it is voluntary. Our team members decide for themselves what we share about them — and we accept a no just as readily as a yes.”
Kathrin Schmid, CMO and CISO at Friendly
Anyone who works at an Open Startup naturally knows that more is discussed publicly than at many other companies. But transparency should build trust. As soon as it comes at the expense of individual people, it achieves the opposite.
The second question concerns transparency in the age of AI: Is it still wise to report so openly about our company?
This question was prompted by a blog post by Arvid Kahl, who was an important role model for Stefan when he founded Friendly. Arvid built his previous software company, FeedbackPanda, in public and shared, among other things, its recurring revenue figures. That visibility attracted financial interest and ultimately contributed to the lucrative sale of the company.
Today, he warns against making too much information public. AI, he argues, makes it easier to clone successful business models and can therefore threaten a company’s success.
Every piece of information made public should therefore pass the following filter:
«Interesting to participate in. Not easy to clone.»
Arvid Kahl, The Bootstrapped Founder
Public reports should make it interesting to follow the journey without revealing the information someone would need to set up a competing company with little effort.
From our perspective, our reports pass this test. We give leads and customers insight into Friendly’s financial stability and share interesting background information, but we do not provide a blueprint for our company.
What sustains Friendly is not just our products. It is also our customer relationships, our company culture, and a solid technical and organizational infrastructure shaped by years of experience and continuous development. A blueprint can be copied — stability cannot.
We will therefore remain transparent. Should the risks change fundamentally, we will reassess that decision.
Looking ahead
The next few months will be exciting. First, our annual retreat is just around the corner — we are looking forward to three days together as a team in Bern, with plenty of in-person time and several highlights.
After that, we will continue working on Friendly’s next stage of development. New ideas are being discussed, and we are already automating several internal processes.
We’ll share more about what’s next for Friendly — and whether we were truly able to turn the setback caused by Mona’s departure into an opportunity — in our next Open Startup Quarterly for Q3 2026.