Road to 1M ARR - March Update
March was big. EU Momentum, Integrations, and a new focus on Sales
👋 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.
This year, I’ve told myself to write more. Like all new habits, it works for a week and then something comes up and you skip it.
I’ve been tracking my writing since this year to be more consistent. As you can see, I started strong in January (in Cape Town), but then my friends visited in February and March, so I was less consistent. Now I’m back at it.
Every morning, I sit down and write. Doesnt matter about what. Mostly about stuff that happens around me, business stuff, or random topics. For example, My next piece is about Anthony Bourdain (the chef) because I’m reading his book.
I like writing and the more I write, the better I get. So stick with me; it’ll get better.
Well then, let’s talk business. What happened in March?
It was a big month! The numbers have been slow for a while, but March was great. Other than that, we are surfing a European tech renaissance and are figuring out a new growth strategy.
Let’s get it!
Numbers
EU tech renaissance
Integrations
Events and meetups
Sales
Numbers
Let’s start with the numbers. March treated us well. Before this month, we saw a monthly growth rate of around 2-3%. March did 6.2%!
💰 $39.120 MRR (+6.2%)
📊 10K Google visitors (+3%)
❣️ 1530 new accounts (+32%)
👏 63 New Customers
😥 55 Churn
Here are our last month’s growth rates. Growing a business is never linear.
Eu tech renaissance
Calling it a revolution is a stretch, but something’s happening in Europe since Trump’s presidency. I feel Europe finally woke up and concluded it can’t blindly rely on the US anymore.
From buying tanks for defence to investing in its tech-scene, Europe is making moves. While we still have to see what actually comes of it, we feel the “Europe first” movement at Simple Analytics.
It’s great for us in two ways.
First, EU companies want less dependence on US tech, so they’re looking for EU alternatives.
We’re listed on european-alternatives.eu and saw a big traffic spike here. Companies are rethinking their tech stack. A big boost for us.
A second, less obvious reason is that more organisations are open to partner up.
For example, I used to do some outreach to big platforms, website builders, or hosting companies to integrate or partner up with. The usual response was “oh cool, but not super important for us now”, the response now: “Lets do it! Europe first! 🇪🇺”
Doors are opening left and right. If we hit it right, this could be big for us!
Integrations
As I said, we’ve been reaching out to integrate with bigger platforms. With the EU-first momentum, we see this working!
The idea behind integrations is as follows: We’re a small company with two founders serving 1300+ paying customers. We have limited resources to market ourselves. Integrating with platforms that are 100x bigger, gives us massive exposure.
Take Netlify for example, a multi-billion dollar company that lets you deploy websites. It’s used by 3 million developers. We’re working on an integration with them. The goal is that when one of those 3 million developers deploys a new website, they can easily add our analytics through the Netlify platform.
Leveraging giants like Netlify could be the next big growth lever for Simple Analytics. Let’s see how it plays out.
Events & Meetups
Go to events more! In March, I attended an event by The Growth Syndicate. The founders Ferdinand, Clement and Joline are the best Growth people in Amsterdam in my book, so when they host something, I go.
This event was about B2B Sales and going upmarket. Not normally an event I’d attend. I prefer my “nerdbubble” on Twitter. But man im so glad I went.
It reminded me to go out there more, meet people who view my business from a different angle. I was all fired up when I left.
I got a completely different view on pricing, sales, and the value we deliver for companies.
Moral of the story is to get out there more. It can change your perspective on things (even your own business), you get to meet nice people, and it’s fun.
This week (today) we’re hosting our own nerd meetup again, called “Internet friends”. Feel free to join. Yes you! Even if you’re not in tech or a developer. It’s refreshing to talk with interesting people you wouldn’t normally meet.
Sales
Lastly, I’m going to try a new sales angle. The meetup influenced my thinking here. Normally, we position ourselves next to Google Analytics. And since Google Analytics is free, we can’t be too expensive.
Wrong!
Why? Because we can do things that Google Analytics can’t, putting us in a league of our own. and we found a perfect use case for this.
The use case: If you use Google Analytics, you need a consent banner. You know those annoying pop-ups you have to click away before navigating a website.
If you click “no, I reject”, websites can’t run the Google Analytics script and won’t know you visited. With Simple Analytics you can!
We don’t use any cookies, trackers, or store any personally identifiable information, so we can collect information on your visit, even if you reject the consent banner.
We see more and more companies using us alongside Google Analytics to get the complete picture. They don’t want to get rid of Google Analytics, because it’s a really powerful analytics tool, but they want the pre-consent data. So they use us together.
Here’s how that looks (DIDOMI is a cookiebanner company):
If we crack this code, we’ll take a big step ahead.
Final Thoughts
March was a big month in terms of numbers. It’s a great morale boost and a reminder that growing a business isn’t linear. You’ll have slow and big months. Nothing you can do about that.
If we can crack the sales-code in combination with the “EU renaissance” wind in our sails, we can take the next leap.
We’ll still ship product updates. Adriaan & I will be leaving next week for founder week in a cabin in the woods. That’s a great recipe for epic new stuff. Stay tuned!
Life is good.
Cheers ✌️✌️
Iron
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