Road to 1M ARR - June update
We’re halfway! And I turned 30 🎉
👋 Hi, I’m Iron from Simple Analytics, and welcome to my newsletter, The Road to 1 Million ARR. Sign up for weekly insights, growth strategies, and playbooks on how we are growing our business to 1 Million ARR. Fully transparent.
Let’s start with a bang: We reached 500K/year in recurring revenue. Feels surreal to be halfway... now let’s get the other half!
The Road to 1M ARR continues. With this month:
- Numbers
- We hired our first engineer!
- Netlify integration is live.
- AI SEO
- I turned 30.
Let’s dive in!
Numbers
💰 $41.819 MRR (+2.3%)
📊 7.0K Google visitors (-23%) (AI coming for us 😱)
❣️ 1346 new accounts (-4%)
👏 37 New Customers
😥 31 Churn
We hired our first engineer.
We finally hired our first engineer. Long overdue, but I couldn’t be happier with the result. For me and Adriaan this was our first experience running a full hiring process. Here’s how it went:
1. Getting applicants
The goal was to stand out and create a vibe that would attract our ideal candidate. We decided to create a career page with a quirky video about us and the role.
We posted the video on our socials and sent it to our users (many of whom are engineers).
2. Quality applications
The first step for an engineer to apply was to send a video about themselves and their projects. We wanted to raise the barrier to filter out low-quality applications.
We ended up with 55 videos of applicants interested in the role.
3. Vetting criteria
From 55 applicants, Adriaan created a selection of 15 for me to review. I selected 8 to proceed to a real-life coding test.
This wasn’t made up thing, but a feature we wanted to build for Simple Analytics. After the coding test, we had 4 candidates with the right fit and skills.
4. Vibe check
In the last round, Adriaan spoke with four candidates to discuss the coding tests and get a feel for team fit. One candidate clearly stood out, so we made an offer (which was accepted 🥂).
I think the video application criteria was a great move. It weeds out low-quality applications and gives you a feel for the candidate. I’m really happy with the structure and the candidate we hired.
Netlify Integration is live
I’ve been discussing integrations and partnerships lately, but now I have something to show.
Our Netlify integration is live!
We’re seeing the results immediately! Almost 10% of new signups is a direct integration on the Netlify platform. More signups than our social efforts. Just from one integration!
This gives me the confidence to push for more integrations like these. It’s easier for users if we’re natively integrated into their website platform. We’re working on the next ones!
AI SEO
While checking our Netlify signups, I saw another booming channel: AI search.
Traffic from chatGPT accounts for X%, while Google traffic is Y%, but chatGPT signups are already half of that of Google. That’s insane!
It’s already our second biggest signup source.
My friend Klaas is building Promptwatch to improve AI search rankings visibility.
We can assess our performance and optimize it. The gap analyses is a feature that makes a comparison between Simple Analytics and our competitors to identify improvements.
It’s similar to using Ahrefs/Semrush for “regular” SEO. See what’s working and analyse how you can improve.
Definitely try it if you’re interested in AI search.
I turned 30.
Lastly, some personal news: This young chap turned 30 a few weeks ago. I don’t have 30 life lessons or whatever, but it’s a moment to reflect just a little bit.
So what happend until 30:
- I graduated exactly 6 years ago from university.
- Started my first business (Fiks) then.
- Fiks is still live and making around 100K a year, but I moved on 3 years ago.
- I joined Adriaan at Simple Analytics as a late co-founder.
- We got a big office, so we invited more people. One of them was Dries.
- Two years ago, Dries, Adriaan, and I decided to start UniHosted.
- Simple Analytics just passed 500k/year, UniHosted is around 140k/year (and growing fast!)
My main learning is that my career has been a string of random events:
I studied finance, but ditched that to start a business. I met Adriaan at a weird developer meetup, and Dries through Twitter and invited him to join our office.
I’m lucky to have met Adriaan & Dries, but I believe I created this luck to some extend. I took matters into my own hands to increase my chances of getting lucky.
- I went to those weird developer meetups.
- I tweeted about our office for Dries to join.
- I took a chance and started my first company in university.
- Also, our Netlify integration is only live because I dm’ed its billionaire founder, and he was nice enough to respond.
So, if you’re reading this and want that promotion, or start a company, or meet that person, you need to create your own opportunity. Send that email. Make that call, or join that event. Create your own luck.
But that’s with regard to business. The real actual luck I was given, is that I was born in a loving family and having a carefree youth. That’s just pure luck.
Luck you make: people you meet, risks you take.
Luck you're given: loving family, carefree youth.
On my 30th birthday, we gathered in my parents’ garden to celebrate with all my friends and family.
That’s really how lucky I am.
Life is good ✌️
Cheers,
Iron
👏
Integration play is so good.
We are looking to integrate with niche payment providers that competitors overlook. Especially EU ones