Update #5 – December 2022
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Update #5 – December 2022
sup,
It’s kinda scary how the older you get, the faster time seems to accelerate. Each successive year is an increasingly smaller percentage of your life – and I’ve recently found myself seeking out experiences that subjectively slow down the passage of time.
Well, I’m pleased to report that starting a company is absolutely one of them.
So much happened in December that it feels like we publicly launched an eternity ago. Meanwhile, it’s been exactly 23 days…
Metrics
Revenue (cash basis): $22,686
MRR: $2,106
Customers: 127
December Updates
- We had a really fun launch week (some highlights) – immensely proud of what the team was able to ship on a tight timeline. We welcomed 100+ new customers without much incident, which is a good thing for largely untested software.
- I’m not 100% sure what to make of our numbers yet. Two months ago, I hoped for 200 customers – at some point, I revised downward to 100 customers, and we ended up with 127. These all seem equally arbitrary, tbh. We had a special launch price, our launch press and the December 31 Solo401k deadline to move things along this month.
- Coming out of the launch excitement, I am expecting the next few months to be much slower on the solo401k side. That’s kinda ideal since we pushed hard to get this out, and have a reasonable amount of work to do on the product side to elevate quality and build out the investing platform in Q1.
- One thing that is abundantly clear is while the solo401k product is an interesting wedge, that’s all that it really will be — a wedge to much more. Once we build out a solid investing experience, we will go after another adjacent product before the end of 2023 (likely IRA’s).
- Not thrilled with how much we burnt in December with a burn # approaching $200K. As we ramp up this year, I’m going to use the $200K number as a ceiling and keep us right around or below that number for at least the first half of the year, if not the entire year.
- Still feels kinda good to make $20K+ in “revenue” in our 4th month in biz. Revenue in quotations because I’m taking the leniency of reporting on a cash vs accrual basis.
What’s Happening This Month
It’s time to launch the second pillar of our business, our education product, Carry Money. Carry Money is “training to level up your finances as a business owner”, and will include a library of recorded courses we produce, bi-weekly live sessions and an active community featuring lots of personal finance experts.
This is a key part of our strategy for two reasons:
1 – It’s a top of funnel product with a much larger TAM. As such, it will be the outlet for the majority of our marketing activities and will give us a place to collaborate with the top fintech creators. All while building a very important product to demystify the rather obtuse tax code and fitting in nicely with our mission.
2 – This product has the potential to contribute revenue and margin much faster than the fintech side, which while ultimately being more valuable just takes foreverrr to ramp up.
We recorded three courses in December, and we’re gearing up to publicly launch them as a unified product at the end of this month at an introductory $199 / year price point. We’ll continue to add courses through the year, and will likely increase the price mid-year once the value justifies it.
How You Can Help
Just one ask – I’d love to talk to General Counsels / Heads of Compliance type people at fintech companies.
The ideal person we’re looking for is someone who can balance us not getting sued out of existence while also knowing where exactly we can & should push boundaries. I know it sounds oxymoronic to look for an aggressive Head of Compliance, but if people like that exist, I’d love to know them.
In an ideal case, this is a full-time hire in the next 6 months – but even if not, we could likely use part-time help or an advisory role from someone who has a full-time job elsewhere. And even if they aren’t looking, I’d love to just starting talking to more people in this role so I can benchmark what an amazing candidate looks like.
Bisous and HNY,
Ankur