Our MRR has reached the next big milestone – faster than ever before. In response, we’re increasing our donation percentage. Welcome to our Open Startup Report for September 2025.
Contents
September at Friendly in numbers
- 🤖 Software revenue: 33 620 CHF (+14%)
- 🧠 Consulting revenue: 13 471 CHF (+15%)
- 💰 Total revenue: 47 091 CHF (+15%)
- 💸 Costs: 39 086 CHF (+8%)
- 🧾 Profit: 8 005 CHF (+58%)
- 🍰 Profit margin: 17% (+38%)
- 👩 Active customers: 189 (+2%)
- 💔 Churn Rate (lost customers): 0.0% (-100%)
- 🔎 Website visits: 2 466 (+7%)
These were the key developments in September:
Revenues: MRR surpasses CHF 30 000, consulting on a high plateau
In September, our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions reached CHF 33 620, representing growth of +14% compared to August.
That means our MRR has now passed the CHF 30 000 mark – faster than ever before.
It took us 16 months to reach our first CHF 10 000 in MRR (May 2021). Growth then slowed: it took another 40 months to pass the CHF 20 000 mark (September 2024). Now, just 12 months later, we’ve exceeded CHF 30 000.
We’re proud of this progress – made possible by bold and thoughtful decisions from our leadership, the creativity and dedication of our team, and the trust and satisfaction of our customers.
The number of active customers increased from 186 to 189 in September, with a churn rate of 0%.
Consulting revenue reached a strong CHF 13 471. In consulting, we’ve now hit a (high) plateau that we can only expand with additional team resources. That’s something we’re planning – although our main strategic focus is on growing our software revenue and partnering with reliable agencies.
Total revenue in September was CHF 47 091 – up +15% from the previous month.
Costs: Increasing our donation percentage
We paid higher salary costs again in September. Our freelance Analytics consultant Peter Boehlke was involved in several projects and billed more hours this month.
(A small correction to last month’s report: Stefan’s gross salary has not yet reached CHF 3 862, as previously stated, but is currently CHF 3 450. The CHF 3 862 shown in the far-right column of the cost table includes our employer contributions.)
In the product area, we added a new backup server. Costs related to team culture, events, admin, and marketing changed only slightly.
September also marked the final write-off from our rebranding project – and our new website is almost ready to go live! We’re excited to share it soon. You can already see a small preview from our outstanding designer Nicolas Previdoli on LinkedIn.
As our revenue has grown significantly over the past year, we’ve recalculated our donation percentage and increased our monthly contributions from CHF 391 to CHF 535.
We now donate CHF 130 each (up from 80 CHF) to SWISSAID, Swiss Food Bank, and the Swiss Refugee Council.
In our early years, we weren’t yet able to fully meet our 1%-of-revenue donation commitment. That’s why our current donation percentage includes a small monthly amount to reduce this historical deficit. To accelerate the process, we’ve also decided to provide one-time, larger support for Mautic, the open-source project behind Friendly Automate.
Total expenses in September were CHF 39 086 – up +8% from August.
Here are all our costs including salaries for September 2025 in detail:
Conclusion
We closed September with a strong profit* of CHF 8 005 and a profit margin of 17%. Our average monthly margin for 2025 now stands at 12.8%.
Thanks to this steady growth, we’re planning a round of salary adjustments in October – more on that in our next Open Startup Report.
And we’re preparing to expand our team – keep an eye on our career page, where we’ll soon publish a new opening.
* Friendly has fully recovered its early-stage losses as of June 2025. Our monthly profit now only comes with the caveat that Stefan, our founder, still isn’t paying himself a full salary for his work – we’re working on it.
