Celebrate Your Wins 🥂

Every time someone asks for or shares ten pieces of advice for start-ups, one of them will surely be “Celebrate your wins!”.

I’ve tried doing it over the years, but honestly never quite enough or heartfelt enough. As soon as we’d high-fived and said, “Well done, guys!” my mind was racing to the next goal, target or task.

I also want to do that better this time.

It took 7 months and 14 days…

… to reach our first target: € 1.000 MRR!

MRR is short for Monthly Recurring Revenue – the total value of all subscriptions monthly.

This is a huge milestone for me. It shows to me that:

• There is an upward curve of companies choosing Herodesk as their customer service platform
• People are willing to pay for the product (I mean - how awesome is it that someone is willing to pay for the thing I built?! 😃)

When you build and run a software business (any kind of business, really), there are a thousand things to count and measure to help you see if the business is moving in the right direction. Those are called KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

I have lots of numbers I’m looking at all daily, weekly and monthly, but the KPIs I’m using to measure if we’re moving in the right direction are:

1. New signups and conversion rate from free to paid.
2. MRR development
3. Product usage/adaption

The first two are obvious: financial KPIs. The last one, product usage and adoption, is product-specific, but actually the most important one in my view. It tells me if people are actually using the product after they sign up.

This is a clear indicator of whether new signups will adopt the product if paying customers will churn or stick, and if the product meets their expectations and requirements.

The other week, this KPI broke a record, too:

If you’re running a business yourself, try not to focus solely on your financial KPIs. Find one or two value- or product-driven KPIs, like the above, that tell you something about your product or service's adoption or usage among your customers.

That’s often the prerequisite for good financial performance.

Celebrating the first € 1.000 MRR

When going from Zero to One, hitting the first € 1.000 MRR is a huge thing that calls for celebration! It’s not a “let’s throw a big party”-thing, but like a “let’s stop up for a moment, consider how awesome it is, and celebrate the moment”-thing.

So I did that with my wife on the night we hit € 1.000 MRR, in a way we like: a nice glass (or two) of bubbles, take-out dinner, and the evening together.

This is also the right time to thank all the people who helped me get to this point. You know who you are: Thank you! 🙏

Now we’re back on track, and the next goal is € 7.500 – cash-flow positive!

Let’s go !!!