Friendly
Software for companies who want their data to remain in Swit
I've been so busy lately that I haven't managed to translate the German language blogposts for Friendly into English.
I'm trying to catch up now.
Here's our #OpenStartup report for July. Aug and Sep will follow soon.
For the first time in Friendly's history, our monthly recurring revenue exceeded our costs in June. It took us 16 months to get there since our founding in February 2020.
More milestones we celebrated in June:
- Our customers sent over 1 million emails 🤯
- We released the first open source software of our own 💻
Read more about this and get all the numbers in our 🗓️ June 2021 Open Startup Report:
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A lot of companies are open about their MRR, but very few are open on their costs/expenses.
Great job guys.
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Congratulations!
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This comment was deleted 5 years ago
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Congratulations for the milestone.
I wish you more success before end of 2021-
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Thank you!
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KABOOM!!! Congrats Stefan!!
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Thank you so much Daniel for your ongoing support! 🙏
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Ive always wondered, for these indie startups that center around sending emails, do you build out your own email service or do you just build it on top of something like Sendgrid?
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Right now we are using Amazon SES for email sending but we want to create our own sending infrastructure eventually – mostly for privacy reasons. For everything else we already use own servers at local providers in the EU and in Switzerland.
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Congratulations Stefan!
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To be honest, I still can't figure out what friendly really does. I have just visited your website and instead got more confused.
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Thanks for the feedback. Then we'll need to communicate it better. What we'll do is offering software for marketing automation and web analytics with focus on privacy.
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It took us 1 year, 1 month and 25 days to get there.
Here are my 10 most important learnings from growing to 10k MRR. Would love to hear your thoughts:
Friendly's revenue has crossed the next threshold and is now $7,142.
And we set a new record for usage of our software: customers of our marketing automation software Friendly Automate sent nearly half a million emails with our software in one month. More than ever before.
For more numbers and updates, check out our January Open Startup Report:
We are celebrating our first anniversary. One year ago, I founded Friendly.
I would never have dreamed where we are just 12 months later. Nearly 60 customers rely on our software and we generate close to $85,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
So we are (almost) profitable – our next goal is to break even and pay out at least a small salary for yours truly. So far, my work for Friendly is still a pure investment.
I’d like to take this opportunity to look back at the highlights of Friendly’s first 12 months – here they are:
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Nice congrats! Any tips/tricks for getting such an amazing amount of ARR?
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Consistency. I was only able to acquire as many customers because I built up trust in the market by building an agency for several years and investing heavily in my personal network.
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Wow, this is awesome, Stefan! Congratulations.
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Thank you so much, Jonas!
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When I launched Friendly just under a year ago, I wanted to get started as quickly and easily as possible, in line with the lean startup philosophy.
That’s why I deliberately didn’t set up an own company for Friendly yet, but initially handled all sales through my existing company – the agency Wortspiel.
In the meantime, Friendly has “grown up” and stands on its own two feet financially. For me, it is an important signal to reflect this in the legal status as well.
Since last week Friendly LLC is registered in the Swiss commercial register. By the end of this quarter, we will transfer all contracts from Wortspiel to the new Friendly LLC.
Many thanks to all customers who have already put their trust in us and made this step possible!
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Don't forget to file a trademark in Europe as well. It's a good move to protect your brand from stealing by your competitiors (aka brand search in google)
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Congrats! That's amazing. Good luck with your LLC and wish you at least 2× the MRR 🔥
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help, ? why swiss registration, im in pennsylvania usa, suggests please , can i do doman name website , later register as LLC
We are very thankful: in November the MRR of https://Friendly.is has risen to the next threshold.
It increased by +18% to $6,041 thanks to seven new customers. Our costs remained at the level of the previous month, thus our loss decreased by over -32% to “only” -$3,025.
You can read all the numbers in our latest Open Startup report – together with some fresh videos on email marketing best practices and tips for complying with the privacy regulations in the European Union:
It took us 94 days to go from 0 to $1,000 MRR. Here's all about how we did it: https://baremetrics.com/blog/friendly-growth-study
Both from $1k to $2k MRR and from $2k to $3k it took us about 2 months.
From $3k to $4k however, it took "only" 30 days, from $4k to $5k even only 18 days!
(Please note that the currency of that chart is CHF)
You can find all the numbers in our public revenue dashboard: https://friendly.baremetrics.com/
Read more about our recent developments in our Open Startup report October:
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Sounds like exponential growth :D Good job!
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Thank you, Jonas. Not exponential yet, but nicely steady linear :)
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Congratulations !! coincidentally I was reading your 1000$ journey on Baremetrics and stumbled upon your post on IH. Great work man !!
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Nice work, congrats!
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Thank you!
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That's amazing! Congrats!
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Thanks!
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Great work, Stefan - impressive results! Are you doing manual (cold) sales outreach? What are the sales tactics that brought you from 1k to 5k?
Keep the good stuff going.
Chris
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Thank you, Chris. So far no cold outreach at all (except for some friends I asked to become affiliate partners). Our main acquisition channels are affiliates / partners , my personal network, SEO and ads (in this order).
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Congratulation, nice work! I had a look to you service and I am wondering what the difference between your software and original open-source one: Matomo, Mautic? Why people should choose your service instead of open-source?
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Thank you! Great question. Our added value is that we host Mautic and Matomo securely on dedicated servers in the EU (Germany) and Switzerland. So our customers can use open source (with the advantages like no lock-in effect) without having to worry about the technical complexity of hosting.
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@StefanVetter, i want to know more about the journey in a video podcasting.
I am kickstarting my 'The Startup Show' yearbook 2020 edition and would love to hear more about your challenges and strategies that worked. Would you love to be part?-
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Thank you, I feel humbled :) Unfortunately not at the moment, because I am too busy.
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago
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Thank you Dinesh!
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Friendly Automate is based on the open source software Mautic. The Mauticast is the most important podcast on Mautic.
In episode 18, our Joey Keller shares his extensive knowledge of e-mail marketing. The episode is worthwhile for anyone who wants to learn more about how good e-mail campaigns should be designed.
Listen now: https://friendly.is/en/mauticast-joey
Recently we crossed the special threshold of $3,000 MRR.
It took us 94 days to go from 0 to $1,000 MRR. Here's a detailed breakdown on how we did it.
Both from $1k to $2k MRR and from $2k to $3k it took us about 2 months.
This means that our growth is not exponential, but steady linear. We are okay with that.
Read more about our recent development in our Open Startup report September:
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Very impressive in such a time frame, congrats Stefan! Thanks for sharing the approach
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Thank you!
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Nice!
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Thank you Jonas! Great to meet the 🇨🇭 Swiss community here! 😀
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Indeed. I was surprised to see you here :)
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Same here! Is your IH project (ValueTime) still alive?
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It's alive and in use, but I stopped working on it a year ago… Tried something else in the construction industry (and failed) and currently looking for a new idea, but can't find anything promising...
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I see. This guide from @arvidkahl helped me a lot with coming up with ideas (spoiler: start with the audience first):
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Congrats Stefan
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Thank you Tahseem :)
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Congrats. And Grüezi from somewhere out there :-)
Btw. Just another nice proof, that at least for B2B products there is no relation between Producthunt upvotes and the chance to get a nice MRR-
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Thanks Stefan. That's right. There are surely many products which perform great on Product Hunt and make not a single dime. And then there is the opposite, like us (although our launch on PH was not bad, just okay-ish) 😉
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Congrats Stefan! Love the mission behind your company, wish you the best of luck!
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Thank you Justin!
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Congratulations. What marketing channel works best for you?
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Thank you.
Partners and affiliates. This has not changed since the early days: https://baremetrics.com/blog/friendly-growth-study
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Congrats. Just visited your Friendly IH page and it says the actual revenue is 7k/mo. So where the true is ? 😉
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Thanks. Strange, our actual MRR is $3,972 (CHF 3,613) and NOT 7k as our IH profile says (which gets pulled automatically from Stripe).
Here you can see our live metrics: https://friendly.baremetrics.com/
I'll ask the IH team about it!
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Thanks. No pressure here. Just noticed.
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