Friendly
Build stronger customer relationships with ethical marketing
Friendly offers ethical marketing tools that help SMEs strengthen their customer relationships. This leads to more trust and increases leads and sales at lower advertising expenses. All our tools are based on open source
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:
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:
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!
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:
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:
