164 - Progress, Problems, Plans - F38
The last two weeks have seen a huge step change for us as a company. We put our new website and rebrand live. It’s a huge transformation. We launched Balancer on Tuesday, our third product. It completes and unifies our suite of multi-entity functionality. Such a great an exciting foundation to kick on from now. Here’s the latest progress, problems, plans (PPP) post. It covers progress and problems from building Mayday over the last two weeks. And plans for the coming two.
Goals For the Last Two Weeks
These were the goals set in the previous PPP post:
Successfully deliver on the two big milestones with the new website and Balancer launch - met
Kick off new demand generation initiative(s) - met;
My big focus will be fundraising and as many calls/as much progress across the 3 vectors of the plan as possible - met
Progress
Balancer launched on Tuesday. It is the third product in our suite of products for multi-entity businesses, alongside Recharger and BRAG. It ensures loan accounts between entities stay in balance. It completes the multi-entity suite. It also unifies it. Loan accounts are the constant. A multi-entity business may have need for just one of Recharger or BRAG. But they will likely always need Balancer. If we were starting from a blank canvas today, it is the product we would build first in the suite. Balancer had a successful beta period. We learnt the lessons well from Recharger last year, which we left it too long to launch. Claudio has done a brilliant job of leading Balancer as a project since he joined 3 months ago. With some great work from Pauline on the front-end. It’s been a great team effort;
I’ve had 3 demos since Balancer launched, demo’ing the full suite. I’m struck by how effusive the feedback has been. How wowed the people I’m demo’ing to have been. We’re in a great position to get the product suite in front of more people;
Speaking of team efforts! Am so thrilled with our rebrand and new website. It feels like such a proper pro-step up. Josh has done an incredible job leading the design. And Zoe has done fantastic work project managing the launch from a marketing and copy side. It acquits us so well as a company. Now to kick on with go to market channel experimentation;
Fundraising has been good. A couple of new small commitments. I’ve got 5 potential larger commitments that properly break the back of the round. Fingers crossed things are progressing well. We’re starting to see a decent bit of virality from investors introducing other investors. I quickly bottomed out that the VC channel is not worth proactively pursuing. I’m pleased with how efficiently I did this;
Our big focus for this quarter is developing our revenue recognition product. This is a big step for us as it marks us developing products that are also relevant for single entity businesses. This considerably increases our addressable market. We are building this for Xero as the accounting system where our users will post their revenue recognition adjustments. In doing so, we also have the exciting opportunity to partner with a subscription platform. We will use their customers’ sales data to inform the revenue recognition treatment that applies in Xero. The partnership is moving really well. I had two calls with design partner customers of the subscription platform this week that went really well.
Problems
We had a customer churn this week. It was one of our smallest customers. We contacted them post cancellation. They were happy with the product, but it was an accounting firm using Mayday for one of their clients. That client had left them, so they cancelled the subscription. We don’t have any way of contacting the client so we’ve likely lost the customer. It’s a shame but occupational hazard. The vast majority of our customers subscribe to us directly for their own use, so this isn’t a risk we’re exposed to that much;
I wanted to have our 2022 accounts and R&D tax claim submitted by now. But bank holiday plus the day at Accountex, plus Balancer and website launch have meant I’ve not got there yet. I need to carve out some time next week.
Plans
Goals for the next two weeks:
We’re all set to experiment from a go to market perspective over the coming weeks, testing different channels to acquire customers. Run our first two experiments;
Fundraising will continue to be my big focus. I’m not going to set targets on things I can’t control. But I’m optimistic I can make significant progress over the next two weeks;
Have our spec finalised for revenue recognition.
Look forward to updating in two weeks!