hi folks! jae here, back with a new financial update.
you'll probably remember that the last financial update was fairly dire. this wasn't hyperbole; we were in an extremely tenuous position at the time.
fortunately, it turns out being honest about the issues you're facing is a good way to get help with those issues. since the last financial update, we've seen a huge bump in subscriber numbers, short-term revenue, and MRR. this has been huge for us! we are no longer in the position we were.
it's important to note, though, that it is not all from the financial update. while we got a big bump after that was published, it tapered off fairly quickly. our most sustainable growth has come from the large wave of new and returning users we gained from twitter's most recent Bad Decision. we're happy you're all here! thanks for using cohost.
i'd like to try and keep this installment short, so let's get on with it. if you need help on terms, check the past financial updates.
Revenue, Expenses, and Users
| Category | As of 7/11 | As of 6/15 | Change |
| Previous month revenue | $31.5k | $4.4k | +609.7% |
| Expenses (since 6/15) | $26.5k | n/a | n/a |
| Net income (since 6/15) | $5k | n/a | n/a |
| Active Subscribers | 2531 | 1900 | +33% |
| Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) | $14k | $9k | +56% |
| Subscriber churn rate | 3.76% | 4.6% | -18.2% |
| Revenue per subscriber | $5.55 | $4.72 | +17.5% |
| Total users | 162k | 130k | +24.6% |
| Monthly active users (MAU) | 22.4k | 12k | +87% |
| MAU → subscriber conversion rate | 13.9% | 17.69% | -21.4% |
so! a few things:
- we are no longer in dire straits
- (almost) every single good number is up, every single bad number is down or stable
- we had positive net income last month, so despite not having closed additional funding yet we still have more money in the bank than last time
- our per-subscriber revenue is over $5; a lot of subscribers have increased their quantity of subscriptions
- we're planning on, once the gift subscription system is in place, converting multiple subscriptions to gift subscriptions so that users who aren't able to afford cohost plus can still take advantage of the benefits
- our conversion rate is down from the ludicrously high 17.69% to a (still ridiculous but more reasonable) 13.9%. this is still an excellent conversion rate; it's down because MAU is up, but it's not falling in-line with MAU increases; there is still overall subscriber growth.
- we have gained 32k users since the last financial update, most of which are within the new twitter wave.
Looking forward
in the last update, we talked about a new round of funding. this is still in progress; we will have more to report here once it's completed, and to be totally clear, the hold-up is on our end, not our funder’s. the ball is in our court. fortunately, the revenue situation has changed enough that a lot of the Immediate Urgency has reduced, letting us be more considered about how much we're raising. (again, our goal is to minimize debt.)
now that we have finished launching Asks, I am moving on to start on user tipping. as we've said before, we do not consider tipping to be a revenue source for the company (the default platform fee is 0%, and we do not expect most users to diverge from the default). the infrastructure for user tipping is also required for us to launch user subscriptions, which we do view as a revenue source.
the rollout for user tipping will be a bit different from our standard rollouts. we're planning to open to a limited set of users initially so that we can ensure there aren't problems. anything involving money needs to be tested carefully and, while we will have formal validation, there are some issues that only pop up in real life. we'll have more to share here as we get closer.
the response to our thoughts about ads was very different than we expected; we did not think so many of you would be supportive of untargeted, unobtrusive advertising. we have nothing to announce here, but we're thinking about it, and will continue to think about it. we don't intend to ship anything until after user subscriptions are live. (for more context, read the last financial update.)
In Conclusion,
things are looking better than they were last time. the path to some form of sustainability is becoming clearer to us. we're all still exhausted trying to make it happen, but we're glad we're trying and we're glad you're all here with us.
also, if you want to support the site, please consider subscribing to cohost plus.
that's all for this installment, we'll be back in a month-ish with more. thanks for using cohost!
~jae
