March's Maths
After a disappointing February, I’d been starting to wonder if growth would be in decline. After all, as revenue grows, it takes more and more new customers to achieve my 10% month-on-month growth target. Thankfully March proved that fear to be unfounded.
In fact, in terms of dollar revenue increase, March 2016 was my best month ever! Sadly, it wasn’t quite my best month in growth, but that’s simply because starting revenue was so much higher than my previous best month.
March also marked the first time I ever had two people sign up to the top level ‘Corporate’ plan in one month. Unfortunately I also lost a corporate subscriber, so net increase was only 1. Still, no matter how you look at it, March was a great month. And look at it we shall:
The Figures
| This Month (March 2016) | Last Month | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Savings (end of month) | £10,917.99 | £13,094.22 | 16.6% |
| Monthly Recurring Revenue | $1,577 | $1,290 | 22.3% |
| Income | £913.49 | £770.28 | 18.6% |
| Average Month on Month Growth | 14.3% | 13.0% | 10.0% |
| Paying customers | 30 | 27 | 11.1% |
| - Personal Plan | 14 | 13 | 7.7% |
| - Startup Plan | 11 | 10 | 10.0% |
| - Corporate Plan | 5 | 4 | 25.0% |
| Unique users on landing page | 2,277 | 1,560 | 46.0% |
| New Free Trial sign ups | 64 | 34 | 88.2% |
| Free Trial sign up rate | 2.81% | 2.18% | 28.9% |
| New Paying customers | 6 | 4 | 50.0% |
| Lost Paying Customers | 3 | 1 | 200.0% |
| Free Trial to Paying conversion | 12.5% | 5.88% | 212.6% |
| Monthly Burn Rate | £886.26 | £1029.72 | 13.9% |
| Runway | 12.3 Months | 12.7 Months | 3.1% |
I’ll be honest here, I knew March was a good month, but it wasn’t until I compiled that table that I realised just how good! In fact, March 2016 was my best month ever in the following metrics:
- Monthly recurring revenue
- Dollar increase in MRR
- Total number of paying subscribers
- Number of paying subscribers in all plans
- Total number of free trial sign ups
- Free Trial sign up rate
- New paying customers
- Free trial to paying conversion rate
- Average subscription value
March was another month in which I put very little effort into traffic generation, so unique hits has organically increased, which is awesome to see. This also means they’re a better quality of lead, as demonstrated by my highest ever sign up conversion rate of 2.81%. Even better, 12.5% of those free trials converted to paying subscribers! 12.5%! When I started my average conversion was 5%, and my best until now was 8.82% in December 2015, so discovering March reached 12.5% has blown me away!
I’ve been able to add a couple of new rows the table, Monthly Burn Rate and Runway. I actually had figures for these last month, it just didn’t occur to me to include them. On the plus side it means I can already compare to last month, and see things are pretty damn healthy.
My savings dropped quite significantly in March, decreasing by £2,176.23. This was because I had to pay my accountant for preparing my end of year accounts, as well as pay the employer contribution of my income tax. It’s nice to see that even with such an uncharacteristically large drop in savings, my runway didn’t drop much at all, and I’ve still got over 12 months - I can keep my office :)
Half Way Point!
This is what I’m most excited about - I’m half way to profitability!
When I started this mission last September, I estimated that I’d reach profitability at $3,000 MRR. It looks like this estimate was right on the money, as I’m spending £1,800 per month, and in March MRR passed $1,500 while income passed £900!
Revenue Growth
After last month’s slight plateau, it’s nice to see the graph resuming that healthy upward trend. And of course, by Paul Graham’s vital metric, BugMuncher is still default alive.
Based on March’s figures, if growth can continue at 14.3%, I’ll hit profitability in less than 5 months, and it will only use £2,500 of my savings. Even better, growth could slow down to just 3.1% and I’d still hit profitability before my savings ran out! BugMuncher isn’t just default alive, it’s default Chuck Norris.
Marketing Monday
I’ve mentioned in a couple of recent posts that I’m going to be putting more effort into marketing, and developing a new marketing plan. Part of this plan is to implement ‘Marketing Monday’, so from now on, Mondays are a development free zone, and will instead be devoted 100% to marketing.
I’ve also found someone to help me with with the marketing side of things, which is great, as let’s be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to marketing. This “throw shit at the wall and see what sticks” method has had some success, but it’s time to knock it up a notch, Bam!
Because it's been a while since I used a Futurama meme
- Matt