We work fully remotely and do occasionally meet in person during the year – but usually only two or three of us at a time. Some team members also live and work abroad. That makes it all the more special when almost the entire team gets to spend a few days together in the same place.

With seven participants, our sixth retreat in August 2026 was also our biggest so far: Luke, Stefan, Ágota and our freelancer Nico travelled from within Switzerland, while Joey flew in from Hungary and Matic from Slovenia.

This time, our destination was Bern, the hometown of Kathrin. For the weekend, she had chosen both some interesting places with local significance and a few of her personal favourites – and of course, the Aare had to be part of it.

Friday: Plenty to celebrate

Our Friday lunchtime welcome in front of Bern train station was a special one: until then, most of the team had only ever met Matic and Nico in our online meetings.

We started our time together with a light lunch in the shady courtyard of the Generationenhaus. With organ music drifting down to us from a window, we eased into the weekend, were soon chatting away, and wished Ágota a belated happy birthday.

“I was genuinely surprised to be invited because I’m not actually a permanent member of the team. But it’s the perfect example of Friendly’s values in action. At first, I was a little worried that I might feel out of place. But the moment we all sat down for lunch, that feeling disappeared. It felt as though I already knew you.”

Nicolas Previdoli, freelancer at Friendly

Our first activity of the afternoon was a coffee workshop at Blasercafé with Giuliano Bartoli.

We deepened our knowledge of the characteristics of Arabica and Robusta beans and their flavour profiles, learned about Switzerland’s surprisingly important role in the international coffee market, and discovered just how much artistry goes into turning a good coffee bean into a fantastic flavor through precisely timed roasting and careful brewing – and how little it takes for a perfectly roasted bean to turn into undrinkable lemon water in the cup.

Blasercafé – Bernese coffee history with an international reputation

Blasercafé is a long-established, independent family-owned coffee roastery from Bern. The company was founded in 1922 by Walter Blaser and his wife Cécile. It remains entirely family-owned to this day and is now run by the fourth generation.

Blasercafé’s reputation extends far beyond Bern: it is also an important hospitality partner throughout Switzerland and an influential player in training and quality within the coffee industry.

Through its sister company Blaser Trading, Blasercafé is also involved in the international green coffee trade. Blaser Trading sources green coffee directly from producing countries, carries out quality checks, organises trading, logistics and storage, and supplies roasteries in Switzerland and internationally. In this way, Blaser Trading contributes to Switzerland’s position as one of the world’s five largest coffee exporters.

The workshop culminated in our very own roast blend, and we each got to take several packages home with us – we’re really curious to trying our very own Friendly Blend.

There was another reason to celebrate during the workshop: Matic has now been with Friendly for three years. His development skills have been a huge asset to our technical team. We especially appreciate how thorough and friendly he is in his work. And because Matic is a big Korea fan, we gave him a selection of Korean sweets and snacks along with a voucher.

After the workshop, we walked through Bern’s Old Town to the Nydegg Bridge and on to the small Pêle-Mêle restaurant, almost directly by the river. In its cosy garden beneath shady trees, we raised a glass to our time together. The menu was small, the food was excellent – and the long waits between courses also had an upside: plenty of time for conversations.

“My favorite moments were actually the simple ones – enjoying meals together, sharing our origin stories and talking about personal experiences.”

Joey Keller, CTO at Friendly

There was something else to celebrate that evening: Kathrin has now been with Friendly for five years. She has grown significantly since she started at Friendly and currently manages not only our marketing but also our information security and quality processes.

Luke had come up with something special for her gift. Along with a voucher, he had put together an excellent selection of board games. And before the retreat, he had even created a small congratulatory website especially for Kathrin, which had really touched her.

We ended the evening with an ice cream from Eiswerkstatt at Altes Tramdepot by the Bear Park.

Saturday: Aare River Swim and Circus

Saturday began with a shared breakfast at the hotel and the presentation of this year’s retreat goodie.

Each of our retreats comes with a small keepsake. This year’s fit the program perfectly: a hand-printed, personalised swim bag made in Bern – in Friendly yellow, of course. And we could put it to use straight away.

We took the bus to the Enge peninsula and walked from there through the forest along the Aare to Zehndermätteli.

“At one point I almost went flying through the bus because our driver was taking the corners pretty enthusiastically. Several of my teammates immediately jumped up and caught me. Apparently, our teamwork works pretty well outside Slack too.”

Ágota Dimén, Customer Support Specialist at Friendly

At Zehndermätteli, we made ourselves comfortable under the trees with camping chairs, hammocks, snacks and drinks.

With the summer heatwave still going strong, the obvious next step was to jump into the Aare.

Equipped with life jackets and our new swim bags, we let the cool, turquoise water carry us downstream. We enjoyed the scenery, chatted – and, above all, laughed a lot.

We had so much fun that one round was obviously not enough. For the second one, we also brought along two small boats, which made the whole thing even more entertaining.

“My favorite moment was Matic finally saying, ‘Okay, f*** it,’ and joining us on the Aare. When he eventually ended up in the water with everyone else, he had this huge smile on his face. I was right next to him, and that’s a picture I won’t forget.”

Lukas Sigel, COO and CCO at Friendly

Swimming in the Aare definitely became one of the highlights of our retreat – and during the heatwave, it was about the best way imaginable to cool down.

On our way back from the river, we made a quick stop at Kathrin’s home nearby before setting off for our final big activity: a visit to Circus Knie.

It was a perfect fit for our weekend in more ways than one: Knie is a Swiss institution with a special historical connection to Bern. And with its event venue “Zauberhut” and the children’s zoo, Knie AG is also a customer of Friendly.

Read our case study with Knie here.

We were lucky that Circus Knie happened to be stopping in Bern on its tour during the exact weekend of our retreat.

Circus Knie – Swiss circus history with beginnings in Bern

The history of the Knie family of performers dates back to 1803. That was when Friedrich Knie abandoned his medical studies in Innsbruck and joined the world of travelling performers. Over several generations, the family then travelled throughout Europe.

The Swiss National Circus Knie in its present form was established in 1919. For the first time, the family bought a large circus tent – and gave its first performance on 14 June of that year on the Schützenmatte in Bern.

Rapperswil-Jona later became the family’s headquarters and winter base; Knie’s Children’s Zoo also opened there in 1962.

Over more than 100 years, the family circus has become an established part of Swiss popular culture. Its annual tour through different regions and language areas, its collaborations with well-known Swiss artists and performers, and its long family tradition continue to make Knie an exceptional Swiss institution.

The performance was a fitting finale to our Saturday.

We particularly remember Alyona Pavlova’s aerial hoop acrobatics, clown Matute “No Problem” Alvarez, the motorcycle globe, the Chinese lion dance and, of course, Knie’s famous horses.

Sunday: Until the next retreat

On Sunday, there was only enough time left for one final long breakfast together before we all headed home again.

Our retreats are increasingly becoming something we look forward to all year.

At our retreats, we get to know each other better, understand more about what matters to one another and appreciate each other even more as a result. And we notice that these personal encounters continue to have an impact on our day-to-day collaboration for many months afterwards.

“After the retreat, working together always feels a little different. You know the people behind the screens better – and for me, that makes a real difference.”

Lukas Sigel, COO and CCO at Friendly

That’s why we’re already looking forward to retreat no. 7.

Curtain up: The costs

As every year, we’re also publishing the cost of our retreat.

With seven participants, this was our biggest retreat so far – and, at a total of CHF 4 480, also our most expensive.

Viewed over the course of an entire year, however, our retreat remains a small expense (CHF 53 per person per month). At the same time, we see a significant impact on our team and the way we work together. For us, it is therefore an investment that pays off again every year.

Der Beitrag Friendly in the Federal Capital: Our 6th Team Retreat in Bern erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

Welcome to our Open Startup Quarterly for the second quarter of 2026.

Plans and reality

We make good plans, do our best, and start with plenty of energy. And then things turn out differently.

That is what our founder and CEO Stefan experienced last year. He gave up his apartment and much of his belongings and traveled to Asia, planning to spend a year on the road. Tages-Anzeiger had already reported on his plans before he left.

Six weeks later, Stefan was back.

A new article has now been published about his return and the reasons behind it. You can find the link — and read why he does not see his change of plans as a failure — in Stefan’s LinkedIn post.

At Friendly, too, things turned out differently this quarter. While we were still in the middle of onboarding and seeing the first achievements, one of our two new team members told us she would be leaving again — raising questions that go beyond this one position.

The second quarter was also busy in many other ways: We attended the Swiss Software Festival, where Stefan gave a talk, supported the rebranding of visavis (formerly Branchen Versicherung), developed our own plugins for Friendly Automate — including a Captcha solution, two-factor authentication, and Content Blocks — and worked on several larger sales proposals.

In this report, we share our financials, the story of our new team members, and how we’re moving forward.

The numbers

Here are our figures for the second quarter of 2026:

• Software revenue: 124 114 CHF (+3 %)
• Consulting revenue: 30 534 CHF (+52 %)
• Total revenue: 154 648 CHF (+10 %)

• Personnel costs: - 124 540 CHF (+34 %)
• Product & admin costs: - 17 557 CHF (+6 %)
• Marketing & events costs: - 14 424 CHF (-10 %)
• Donations: - 1 611 CHF (+0.4 %)
• Total costs: - 158 132 CHF (+24 %)

• Loss: - 3 484 CHF (-126 %)
• Profit margin: - 2.3 %  (-124 %)

Our recurring revenue from software subscriptions rose only slightly in the second quarter of 2026, increasing by 3 % to CHF 124 114. In addition to several new customers, growth among existing subscriptions also contributed to the increase.

At the same time, consulting revenue rebounded after a weaker Q1, reaching a very strong CHF 30 534. Among other projects, we delivered custom development work for a pharmaceutical company and a hospital, helped customers optimize their analytics tracking, and supported our customer visavis (formerly Branchen Versicherung) through its successful rebranding.

This brought our total revenue for the second quarter of 2026 to a solid CHF 154 648.

Our personnel costs rose sharply in the second quarter due to the hiring of our two new team members and an increase in the workload of our senior developer, Matic Zagmajster — from CHF 92 799 in Q1 to CHF 124 540. We also increased Stefan’s paid workload further, from 45 % to 55 %.

Costs for our products, events, and donations remained stable. Marketing costs fell because our partner commissions were slightly lower this quarter. Our accounting costs, however, rose a bit.

Taken together, these smaller items almost canceled each other out. This means that the increase in total costs of more than CHF 30 000 — or a full 24 % — to CHF 158 132 is entirely due to higher personnel costs.

At the end of the quarter, this leaves us with a loss of CHF -3 484, for the first time since Q1 2023.

We had budgeted for the investment in our team to temporarily push us into the red, and our previous profits can comfortably absorb the loss. Over the coming months, we need to show that we can turn this investment into higher revenue.

Here is an overview of all figures from the second quarter of 2025 through the second quarter of 2026:

A strong start — and an early farewell

In January 2026, we advertised a position for a Customer Success Specialist. During the recruitment process, however, the combination of two applications impressed us so much that we decided to hire two team members in a job-sharing arrangement.

In April 2026, Mona Sorcelli and Ágota Dimén joined Friendly.

Mona Sorcelli

Mona brings 17 years of experience in project management, online marketing, and design. She is also familiar with software testing, HTML and CSS and has previously worked in customer support.

Mona also runs her own company and helped found a coworking space in Dietikon. Most recently, she spent three years at Cyon, where she worked extensively with Matomo — the open-source software behind Friendly Analytics.

Mona was not new to us personally either: She and Stefan have known each other for many years, and Stefan respectfully describes her as “one of the leading figures in digital marketing in Switzerland.”

Ágota Dimén

Ágota’s application reached us on the final day of the submission phase — in the form of an “Open Applicant Report.” In it, Ágota promised a resolution time of under four hours, provided a seven-step hiring guide, and explained what her motivation had to do with baby ads.

Ágota has worked in customer service for around 15 years and also brings several years of marketing experience. Some readers may also know her from her late-night show or as a sidekick on Deville — Ágota combines humor and professionalism in an impressive way.

Luke prepared a careful onboarding program for both of them, supported by training sessions from Kathrin, Joey, and Peter: Joey gave our new team members an initial introduction to Friendly Automate, Peter introduced them to Friendly Analytics, and Kathrin met Mona and Ágota in person in Bern to introduce them to our company culture, which is particularly important to us.

On this occasion, we also published the foundations of our company culture on our website.

Mona soon took on the role of Customer Support Lead, wrote a playbook for our support team, and — after only a short onboarding phase — took responsibility for supporting our customer visavis (formerly Branchen Versicherung) through its rebranding.

Ágota covered support together with Mona, began writing guides for our knowledge base, and took over some of Stefan’s administrative tasks related to accounting and customer management — significantly lightening his workload after only a short onboarding time.

Then, after around three months, Mona told us that she would be leaving Friendly for personal reasons.

The news came unexpectedly. After the long recruitment process and intensive onboarding, we had just begun to feel that our new setup was starting to work. Mona’s departure therefore came as a small shock at first — organizationally, but also personally.

At the same time, we understand and respect her decision. We wish Mona all the very best for her health and her family, and we look forward to seeing her again.

During her short time at Friendly, Mona took responsibility and left a visible mark. She established new structures in customer support and contributed valuable ideas.

With Mona’s departure, we are losing a valued colleague and have to redistribute responsibilities. In the weeks that followed, however, our management team also discussed intensively what Friendly really needs in its next phase — and the change of plans opened up promising new perspectives.

For now, we can share this much: We will not immediately fill the vacant position. We will share more about the broader changes to Friendly’s direction in the next Open Startup Quarterly.

How transparent should we be?

Mona’s departure and the rapid advances in AI have prompted us to revisit a familiar question: How transparent should we be?

Transparency has been part of Friendly since day one. But transparency is not an end in itself for us. It has limits — especially when it concerns not only our company, but individual people.

We discussed openly with Mona, without any predetermined outcome, whether to keep the section about her entirely anonymous or to mention her name and describe what happened. Mona herself decided that we could tell her story.

“For me, transparency is only credible when it is voluntary. Our team members decide for themselves what we share about them — and we accept a no just as readily as a yes.”

Kathrin Schmid, CMO and CISO at Friendly

Anyone who works at an Open Startup naturally knows that more is discussed publicly than at many other companies. But transparency should build trust. As soon as it comes at the expense of individual people, it achieves the opposite.

The second question concerns transparency in the age of AI: Is it still wise to report so openly about our company?

This question was prompted by a blog post by Arvid Kahl, who was an important role model for Stefan when he founded Friendly. Arvid built his previous software company, FeedbackPanda, in public and shared, among other things, its recurring revenue figures. That visibility attracted financial interest and ultimately contributed to the lucrative sale of the company.

Today, he warns against making too much information public. AI, he argues, makes it easier to clone successful business models and can therefore threaten a company’s success.

Every piece of information made public should therefore pass the following filter:

«Interesting to participate in. Not easy to clone.»

Arvid Kahl, The Bootstrapped Founder

Public reports should make it interesting to follow the journey without revealing the information someone would need to set up a competing company with little effort.

From our perspective, our reports pass this test. We give leads and customers insight into Friendly’s financial stability and share interesting background information, but we do not provide a blueprint for our company.

What sustains Friendly is not just our products. It is also our customer relationships, our company culture, and a solid technical and organizational infrastructure shaped by years of experience and continuous development. A blueprint can be copied — stability cannot.

We will therefore remain transparent. Should the risks change fundamentally, we will reassess that decision.

Looking ahead

The next few months will be exciting. First, our annual retreat is just around the corner — we are looking forward to three days together as a team in Bern, with plenty of in-person time and several highlights.

After that, we will continue working on Friendly’s next stage of development. New ideas are being discussed, and we are already automating several internal processes.

We’ll share more about what’s next for Friendly — and whether we were truly able to turn the setback caused by Mona’s departure into an opportunity — in our next Open Startup Quarterly for Q3 2026.

Der Beitrag Setback or Opportunity? Open Startup Quarterly Q2 2026 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

What’s going on

Welcome to the new Open Startup Quarterly! With the Open Startup Report for December 2025, we ended our monthly format to make room for something new: fewer reports, with more room for insights. In addition to our numbers, we will now also share developments and learnings, and offer a look behind the scenes.

The first quarter of 2026 was shaped by recruiting. For the first time, we advertised a position at this scale, reviewed applications, and made many, many decisions – whom to invite, whom to turn down.

We held first, second, and third interviews, learned a lot along the way, and ended up hiring not one, but two new team members.

At the same time, we invested a lot of energy into preparing the new role – Luke did fantastic work here. He prepared a structured onboarding month with introductions and trainings, and also designed the expanded Customer Success setup.

This new setup will take pressure off our tech team and create the conditions for us to focus more strongly on automation and scaling.

Already now, the tech team is continuously developing our infrastructure, as security requirements keep changing. Among other things, we are currently working on improving our bot detection measures, so that malicious automated actions such as website visits, form submissions, and email opens can be filtered out more reliably. We are also working on our own captcha for Friendly Automate.

In this report, as always, we share our finances – but we also share what we learned from recruiting and what worked well for us.

The numbers

Until now, we shared our finances monthly. From now on, we will share them in a quarterly overview, which makes the business development easier to see.

These are our numbers for the first quarter of 2026:

• Software revenue: 120 085 CHF (+17 %)
• Consulting revenue: 20 134 CHF (-39 %)
• Total revenue: 140 219 CHF (+4 %)

• Personnel costs: - 92 799 CHF (-1 %)
• Product & admin costs: - 16 564 CHF (-1 %)
• Marketing & events costs: - 16 094 CHF (+30 %)
• Donations: - 1 605 CHF (-0.3 %)
• Total costs: - 127 062 CHF (+2 %)

• Profit: 13 157 CHF (+20 %)
• Profit margin: 9.4 %  (+16 %)

Our recurring revenue from software subscriptions grew by a pleasing +17 % in the first quarter of 2026, reaching 120 085 CHF. A new enterprise subscription from the Swiss Federal Administration made a significant contribution to this growth.

Our consulting revenue was lower this quarter, at 20 134 CHF. This development is intentional in principle: we are increasingly working with agency partners who take on consulting and implementation tasks for us. In the medium term, we want to become profitable on MRR alone, meaning that we finance ourselves exclusively through subscription fees. In the short term, however, we still depend on consulting revenue.

This brings our total revenue for the first quarter of 2026 to 140 219 CHF.

Our largest cost item remains personnel, which fell slightly to 92 799 CHF compared to Q4 2025, even though we were able to increase Stefan’s nominal workload from 40 % to 45 %. Our goal for the year is to raise Stefan’s paid workload to 80 %, so that he can finally pay himself a fair salary.

Expenses for product, admin, and donations remained stable, while our marketing costs increased. The main reason is our ongoing spending on brand protection, which we briefly reported on in December. In addition, we continue to amortize the costs of our rebranding.

Our total costs in the first quarter of this year therefore amounted to 127 062 CHF – an increase of only 2 % compared to Q4 2025.

At the end of the quarter, we achieved a profit* of 13 157 CHF, with a profit margin of 9.4 %.

*Our profit comes with the caveat that Stefan has not yet been paying himself a full salary for his work – as mentioned above, we are working on it.

Here is an overview of all figures from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026:

Recruiting

At the beginning of January 2026, we advertised a position widely for the first time in Friendly’s history – on LinkedIn, Jobs.ch, Jobscout24.ch, and on our own Friendly career page.

The response surprised us: we received more than 100 applications, including many from truly interesting people. After three selection rounds, we ultimately decided to split the role between two new team members in a job-sharing setup.

We would like to share our two most important learnings from this process.

The value of kindness

Paul English’s “Hiring Religion” was an important inspiration for us – we highly recommend the (short) read. Based on his approach, our stated goal was to fill every interaction in the application process with appreciation.

We thanked every applicant and, when asked, explained the reasons for a rejection with care (something that requires particular sensitivity when you do not want to fall back on generic phrases).

Whenever possible, we sent initial replies no later than the next business day and organized most interviews within one week. We were as transparent as possible with all applicants and tried to give them a clear perspective as quickly as we could.

We conducted the interviews as conversations between equals and made sure they did not feel like an exam, but like an interesting opportunity to get to know each other.

“In my view, a good job interview is not an interrogation. It was important to me to conduct every conversation the way I would want to be interviewed myself: with respect, honesty and mutual curiosity.”

Lukas Sigel, COO and CCO of Friendly

We are proud of the two new team members we were able to win over this way. But we are just as proud of the positive feedback we received, including after rejections.

Feedback like this is the clearest reflection of our culture of kindness, and we want to continue building on it.

Structure, but also gut feeling

We are big fans of Notion – especially because it lets us create extensive databases, connect them with each other, and create tailored views for different purposes.

Our recruiting database in Notion was a valuable tool for keeping track of the most important applications and their status.

Originally, the plan was to rate candidates systematically and sort them by their overall score. That, however, did not work well for us. We realized that gut feeling and the team’s exchange right after the interviews were our most reliable guide.

This was especially true because kindness and appreciation are so central to our company culture. When selecting new team members, we therefore pay very close attention to character.

“We can train skills – we have little influence over character. I would rather surround myself with people who have an outstanding personality and a strong willingness to learn than with experienced experts who are difficult on a human level.”

Stefan Vetter, founder and CEO of Friendly

We have now successfully completed the recruiting process, and our two new team members have been settling in with us for several weeks. We will introduce them in the next Open Startup Quarterly for Q2 2026, which will be published in July.

What’s next

We are on track — and curious to see what the next few months will bring.

One question that has come up for us again is this: should we still be transparent in the age of AI?

Arvid Kahl, previously a strong advocate of the open startup philosophy and a role model for Stefan when he founded Friendly, has changed his mind since the widespread adoption of AI:

“Building in public once helped me sell my company. Today, that same transparency could destroy yours.”

Arvid Kahl, The Bootstrapped Founder

And yet, we are still choosing transparency. We’ll explain why in the next Open Startup Quarterly.

Der Beitrag Recruiting, the Friendly way: Open Startup Quarterly Q1 2026 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

Our customers

In 2025, we further sharpened our market positioning. Today, we present ourselves even more clearly as a company that consistently stands for data privacy, Swiss security and quality – while also providing friendly, accessible, and competent support. This clarity has strengthened our brand and is increasingly visible externally.

This became evident in the new customers we were able to welcome last year. They include a Swiss private bank and a large Swiss health insurance provider, as well as Gebäudeversicherung Luzern, Theater Chur, and the municipality of Riehen. We also welcomed several healthcare organizations, an electrical wholesaler, a continuing education provider, a youth organization, a law firm, and several IT companies.

We are especially pleased by the diversity of these organizations – it shows that our approach works in very different contexts.

We were never completely satisfied with the privacy provisions of Google Analytics. We decided to use Friendly Analytics because the data is hosted entirely in Switzerland. We find the transparent, competent and above all personal advice very positive. We were particularly impressed by the short response time for individual inquiries.

Martin Niederberger

Head of Communications

We would like to thank all our customers for the trust they place in us.

A particular highlight for us is that Mautic itself has become one of our customers. Mautic is the open-source software that powers Friendly Automate and thus forms a central foundation of our work. Since December 2025, we have been the official host of Friendly Analytics for the Mautic project.

Companies are not required to give back to the open-source projects they benefit from. For us, however, we choose to show our appreciation. That is why we provide Friendly Analytics to the Mautic community free of charge – as a small contribution to the ecosystem that makes our work possible.

Finances: Moving toward MRR profitability

2025 was a year of growth for Friendly, particularly in terms of MRR, the recurring revenue from our software subscriptions.

After strong growth in 2020 and 2021, MRR growth slowed considerably between 2022 and 2024. We continued to grow, but step by step. In 2025, that dynamic changed noticeably: our MRR increased from CHF 22 171 at the end of 2024 to CHF 34 526 at the end of 2025 – a growth rate of 46%.

A key factor was the strategic decision in spring 2025 to offer Friendly Automate only to new Enterprise customers. In the short term, this led to stagnation in MRR. After a few months, however, it became clear that this move sharpened our positioning and strengthened our long-term growth.

Since launching consulting services in 2022, that part of the business has played an important role in stabilizing our finances. In 2025, consulting revenue reached a natural plateau, limited by our available capacity.

This development aligns with our strategy. Our goal is to become fully MRR-profitable soon, meaning consulting revenue will no longer be required to cover fixed costs but will instead be additive.

In the medium term, we plan to handle larger customer implementation projects increasingly through agency partnerships, allowing us to focus on our core business: reliably operating our software and providing direct support.

In 2025, we also reached an important milestone in our overall business development. We have posted a positive annual result since 2023, and since February 2024 we have been profitable every single month.

In June 2025, we were finally able to offset the accumulated losses from our early years. Since then, our cumulative result over the entire history of the company has been positive. As of the end of 2025, our total cumulative profit stands at CHF 33 313.

“I’m proud of what our team achieved in 2025. Our finances and structures have developed more positively than ever before. I’m looking forward to 2026.”

Stefan Vetter, our CEO

Taken together, these developments show that our model is increasingly standing on its own. Recurring revenue is gaining weight, fluctuations are decreasing, and we are moving closer to our goal of building Friendly as a stable and independent company for the long term.

Products: Major upgrade, growing interest

Our product portfolio remained stable in 2025. We continued to focus on our two core products: the marketing automation software Friendly Automate and the web analytics platform Friendly Analytics.

For Friendly Automate, 2025 was defined by a major and important upgrade. The underlying open-source software, Mautic, was updated from version 4 to version 5. This was more than a typical version update – the entire codebase was fundamentally reworked.

Due to the depth of this transition, the upgrade required significant resources over an extended period. It was demanding, but necessary. We managed the process well, and the upgrades are now largely complete.

Read more about the technical background and all new features of Mautic 5 in our blog post.

At the same time, we further refined the Friendly Automate design. Our goal is to provide customers with an optimized and even more cohesive user experience.

While Friendly Automate was shaped by this major technical step, demand for Friendly Analytics continued to grow steadily in 2025 – from the affordable and feature-rich Essential plan to the Professional plan for growing companies and the highly customizable Enterprise configuration.

Explore all Friendly Analytics plans and pricing here.

Digital sovereignty and data privacy continue to gain importance. As data breaches and security incidents at major tech companies regularly make headlines, awareness is growing. Swiss-hosted open-source software offers clear advantages in this context. This positioning continues to open up a relevant and growing market for us.

Our Team: Shared Leadership and Growth

In 2025, our team evolved noticeably.

After many years in which the primary business responsibility rested with Stefan, we were finally able to broaden the management structure. As of March 2025, Lukas Sigel took on the additional role of COO (Chief Operating Officer) alongside his existing role as CCO (Chief Customer Officer). Since then, Stefan and Luke have worked closely together on strategic, operational, and organizational matters.

“It was an important step for us to distribute responsibility more broadly. I’m pleased to be contributing more actively to shaping and further developing Friendly for the long term.”

Lukas Sigel, our COO & CCO

This has been a significant relief for Stefan and had an immediate, long-overdue effect: for the first time since founding Friendly, he was able to take a full vacation and truly switch off.

In March 2025, Lukas Frei also joined our customer team. He quickly found his footing and soon took on his own projects and customer responsibilities. At the end of 2025, he will leave Friendly again. We explained the background in our Open Startup Report for December 2025 and wish Lukas all the very best.

A highlight each year is our Friendly Retreat. In June 2025, we met for the fifth time – this time in the Lavaux region – celebrating Friendly’s fifth anniversary. We enjoyed the conversations, the hike through the vineyards, and the shared experiences. We look back on it fondly and are already looking forward to the next retreat.

From summer 2025 onward, we were also able to expand capacity in our technical and Analytics teams. We intensified our collaboration with Peter, who is involved in several new Analytics Enterprise projects. In October 2025, Matic increased his workload with us. His strong programming skills are already making a visible impact.

Looking ahead to 2026, we are especially pleased that Matic will make Friendly his primary employer and further increase his workload. We’re proud to have him take on this expanded role with us. His focus on automation continues to move us forward operationally and qualitatively.

«Let’s make 2026 the strongest year Friendly has seen so far!»

Matic Zagmajster, our talented developer

At the same time, we are preparing a significant expansion of our customer team. The new Customer Success Specialist role is close to being filled.

Partnerships: Expanding our network

Our stronger focus on Enterprise customers brings specific requirements. Enterprise clients often need individual customizations, complex setups, or prefer to outsource implementation to experienced experts.

Although we do offer consulting ourselves, our core focus remains clear: we want to position ourselves as a SaaS company built on recurring revenue (MRR). We see our primary role in providing a reliable, secure, and sustainable software environment and maintaining it technically over the long term. Becoming a traditional agency is not the path we intend to pursue.

With this in mind, we expanded our agency partnerships in 2025. We were especially pleased to begin collaborating with Vass (Liestal) and Unic (Bern, Zurich, and further offices in Germany and Poland), who have already referred valuable customers to us. The collaboration delivers real value for all parties involved.

Depending on the project, we support the technical implementation, while the agency handles strategic and operational execution. We plan to continue strengthening this network in 2026.

Here you can find all our partner agencies.

We are also closely connected to the open-source communities behind our products. In the Matomo ecosystem (Friendly Analytics), Peter has been part of the core team for over ten years.

In the Mautic community, Joey and Matic are actively involved. In November 2025, Joey, Luke, and Matic attended the Mautic World Conference in London, where they engaged in in-depth discussions, contributed to talks, and participated in the community sprint.

These events help us stay close to the software’s development and contribute meaningfully.

Another important part of our partnership approach is the active exchange with other commercial Mautic providers. We deliberately foster knowledge sharing and mutual support rather than competition. In some cases, we refer customers to one another when a project is a better fit elsewhere. We maintain a particularly close professional exchange with the German Mautic provider Leuchtfeuer.

These partnerships help us deliver sustainable, high-quality solutions without losing sight of our focus.

Marketing: Substance over noise

In 2025, our marketing continued to prioritize substance over volume.

“I hold myself to the standard of not publishing interchangeable, AI-generated content that already exists everywhere. I only write when I’ve taken the time to think things through and can provide real value that I stand behind.”

Kathrin Schmid, our CMO & CISO

Thoughtful content requires time and focus – these are limited, especially since Kathrin combines marketing responsibilities with her role as CISO and ISO lead.

We published three new case studies in 2025: with bofrost* suisse (for Friendly Analytics), Arbeitgeber Banken and ANAXAM (both for Friendly Automate).

These insights into real customer projects are central to our communication because they show how our software works in practice – and how personal support makes a difference.

One customer put it this way:

The other day I called Lukas with a problem and he informed Peter directly. The problem was solved within two hours – that’s never happened to me before. That’s very special. Try to reach someone at Google, have fun.

Livia Schwander

Digital Marketing Manager

You can find the three new case studies here.

We also published two in-depth blog articles: one on the release of Mautic 5 and another on Swiss alternatives to Google Analytics.

In 2025, we continued publishing our monthly Open Startup Reports. In fall, however, we decided to discontinue the monthly format by the end of the year.

As our business has matured and financial fluctuations decreased, the value of monthly reporting declined.

Starting in 2026, we will publish quarterly reports instead. This will also free up capacity for other meaningful content.

More on this in our Open Startup Report for December 2025.

Finally, in December 2025, our new website went live – thanks to the initiative and outstanding creativity of Nicolas Previdoli, who surprised us in spring with a compelling open sales pitch.

Annual goals: Visible progress

As part of our ongoing quality improvement under ISO 27 001 and ISO 9 001 – alongside many other internal initiatives – we defined a series of clearly measurable annual goals for 2025. We achieved several of them and partially achieved others. All of them served their purpose: helping us prioritize, make progress visible, and regularly reflect on what we are working toward.

One particularly meaningful milestone was increasing Stefan’s monthly salary to just over CHF 4 000 by year-end 2025. After years without a salary – and still only a symbolic CHF 1 000 at the start of the year – this marks an important step toward a sustainable structure.

The development of our profit margin is equally encouraging. In 2025, we reached our targeted annual margin of 12% exactly as planned.

Additionally, we improved support quality, slightly expanded consulting capacity, and maintained uptime of over 99.9% across our products.

One goal we deliberately postponed was the launch of a new product. Expanding our product portfolio remains a clear mid-term objective for us. In 2025, however, this was not realistic – primarily due to the unexpectedly high workload surrounding the upgrade to Mautic 5. As a matter of principle, we prioritize serving our existing customers reliably before launching new products or offerings. For that reason, we consciously moved this priority to a later stage.

Looking ahead to 2026, this objective remains in place – complemented by new initiatives. These include internal salary increases, further automation, and targeted team expansion.

Financially, we are targeting a profit margin of 10% for 2026 – a figure we have adjusted downward from the previously communicated 15% due to the upcoming investments in our team. At the same time, we plan to increase Stefan’s paid workload to 80%. We aim to grow our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by at least another 30% in 2026 in order to comfortably cover the targeted margin and the anticipated costs.

Financial growth is not an end in itself for us. Our primary focus remains having satisfied customers and satisfied team members who enjoy working with us. We grow so that we have the resources to achieve that even better.

One final important goal concerns our infrastructure: in 2026, we aim to end our dependency on Amazon AWS, which we currently use for email delivery. The development of our own email infrastructure is already underway.

Outlook

We are entering the new year with good energy. As mentioned, we are currently in the middle of a recruiting process – something new for us in this form and a process that has required significant focus. We received more than 100 applications for our open position, many of them highly compelling. Kathrin invested considerable effort in building up her expertise in recruiting and, together with Luke, designed and implemented a structured selection process.

The process is now close to completion, and we look forward to welcoming a new team member soon.

Beyond that, we are looking ahead to 2026 with anticipation. We are excited about new customers, further partnerships, and the continued development of our product portfolio.

We also welcome the surprises and challenges that each year brings. They are making business life dynamic and engaging.

We genuinely enjoy working in the company we have built together. That sense of enjoyment is present in our daily work. As Joey put it:

“I’m looking forward to a great 2026 – with the most amazing team I’ve ever worked with!”

Joey Keller, our CTO

With that mindset, we step into the new year.

Der Beitrag More focus, clear impact: Open Startup Year in Review 2025 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

December at Friendly in numbers

• Software revenue: 34 526 CHF (-0.2 %)
• Consulting revenue: 9 305 CHF (-5 %)
• Total revenue: 43 831 CHF (-1 %)
• Costs: 41 794 CHF (-3 %)
• Profit: 2 037 CHF (+43 %)
• Profit margin: 4.7 %  (+45 %)
• Active customers: 186 (+1 %)
• Churn Rate (lost customers): 0.5 % (-75 %)
• Website visits: 3 079 (+9 %)

These were the key developments in December:

Revenues: longer sales cycles, MRR slightly down

As we increasingly work with privacy-sensitive enterprise customers, our sales cycles tend to be longer. In this segment, closing a contract usually involves extensive legal reviews: both sides exchange and refine documents, complete questionnaires, discuss and revise proposals, and walk through concrete use cases.

These steps are essential for a long-term, successful collaboration, and we approach them with care and responsibility. As a result, we do not close a new enterprise subscription every single month.

In December, no larger new subscription started. Due to two smaller new customers and one churn, our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions temporarily declined by -0.2 % to CHF 34 526.

(Spoiler: a major enterprise subscription starts in January — and we are very much looking forward to it.)

Our consulting revenue came in at CHF 9 305 in December, which is a very strong result given vacation absences and the holiday season.

Overall, our total revenue declined slightly by -1 % in December to CHF 43 831.

Costs: new expenses for brand protection

Our salaries remained unchanged in December. However, since the consulting workload of our Analytics freelancer, Peter Boehlke, fluctuates from month to month and was a bit lower again in December, our total salary costs decreased by around CHF 1 400.

This month, we are reporting salary costs for Lukas Frei for the last time. Lukas had been working with us since March 2025 on a small workload, and we truly valued our collaboration with him.

Starting in January 2026, Lukas wants to simplify his life. Even without his work at Friendly, he balances multiple jobs alongside family life and personal time. We wholeheartedly support his decision and wish him all the very best.

Our marketing costs increased slightly again in December, this time for a less pleasant reason. A young Swiss software company has been using the term “Friendly” in its company name for several months. We engaged in direct conversations but were ultimately unable to agree on a solution that seemed fair to both parties, which is why we are now taking legal steps to protect our brand. Most of the resulting costs are covered by our legal expenses insurance. The remaining costs will be amortized over the coming months.

Expenses for product, administration, and donations remained unchanged. We recorded slightly lower costs in the area of events and team culture.

As a result, our total expenses decreased by -3 % compared to the previous month, amounting to CHF 41 794 in December.

Here are all our costs including salaries for December 2025 in detail:

The next chapter of our Open Startup Reports

As mentioned in the teaser, this is the final Open Startup Report in its current format.

Let’s be clear right away: we will remain transparent. What will change is the format — and that change reflects how our business has evolved.

In Friendly’s early years, we were fully in startup mode. Every month brought a crisis, a success, a change, or a new idea.

Our finances fluctuated significantly, and month after month we reported on new highs and lows.

By now, things have stabilized. We are growing slowly and steadily, improving our internal structures, gradually expanding our team, and planning further product development.

The months no longer feel like a roller coaster. And what happens to our finances from one month to the next no longer feels like the most interesting story to tell.

We therefore decided to continue the Open Startup Report in a new quarterly format called Open Startup Quarterly.

With a quarterly cadence, we can provide a clearer overview and a better interpretation of Friendly’s long-term financial development.

We also plan to expand the reports in terms of content and share more behind-the-scenes insights — for example into our teams, ongoing projects, strategic considerations, and key learnings. We are currently working on the exact format.

To stay up to date and not miss the first edition of the new Open Startup Quarterly, feel free to follow Stefan on LinkedIn or sign up for our newsletter here:

The first Open Startup Quarterly for Q 1 2026 will be published in April.

Conclusion

We close the month of December with a profit* of CHF 2 037 and a profit margin of 4.7 %.

Despite the tight margins of the past two months (see November), our overall profit margin for 2025 came in exactly at 12.0 %, precisely meeting our annual target.

With Stefan’s salary at CHF 4 025, we also exacly met our annual target. We would have liked to increase it further this month, but decided against it in order to reach our targeted annual margin.

With that, an eventful year comes to an end. We will soon share more in our Open Startup Year in Review 2025. We are looking forward to a friendly 2026 together!

* Friendly has fully recovered its early-stage losses as of June 2025. Our monthly profit now only comes with the caveat that Stefan, our founder, still isn’t paying himself a full salary for his work – we’re working on it.

Der Beitrag The last monthly report: Open Startup Report December 2025 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

November at Friendly in numbers

• Software revenue: 34 602 CHF (+3 %)
• Consulting revenue: 9 816 CHF (-28 %)
• Total revenue: 44 418 CHF (-6 %)
• Costs: 42 995 CHF (+9 %)
• Profit: 1 423 CHF (-81 %)
• Profit margin: 3.2 %  (-80 %)
• Active customers: 185 (-1 %)
• Churn Rate (lost customers): 2.1 % (+1 %)
• Website visits: 2 835 (+12 %)

These were the key developments in November:

Revenues: Our TRR surpasses CHF 1 million

Our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions increased by +3 % in November, reaching CHF 34 602.

This brings our total recurring revenue (TRR) to over one million Swiss francs, landing at CHF 1 029 681. A quiet milestone we’re genuinely happy about.

Behind this number lies a lot of patience, thought, ideas, and careful day-to-day work. As a bootstrapped company, we’ve earned every single franc ourselves – and that feels good.

Our consulting revenue declined this month to CHF 9 816. This is within the range of normal fluctuations and remains at a solid level overall.

The number of active customers also declined slightly. Two new customers were offset by four churns, mainly smaller customers from our early days. As our customer profile continues to shift toward larger enterprise clients, we are still gaining more MRR than we lose.

Overall, total revenue in November fell by -6 % to CHF 44 418.

Costs: Higher expenses for salaries, marketing, and events

In November, our payroll costs increased again by more than CHF 1 000. While salaries for almost all team members remained unchanged, our Analytics freelancer Peter Boehlke worked more consulting hours for our customers.

He supported customers with setting up Friendly Analytics, configuring tracking parameters, assisting with data exports, and providing valuable training on how to use the software effectively.

Our marketing costs also increased. As previously announced, we are paying the designer of our new website, Nicolas Previdoli, a substantial voluntary additional bonus for his outstanding work. In total, we are paying him three times the originally agreed amount. We are amortizing this bonus over the coming months.

In the area of events and team culture, we recorded a higher one-off expense: we supported Joey, Matic, and Luke in attending Mautic World Conference 2025 in London, which took place in early November.

Engaging with the Mautic community – the open-source software behind Friendly Automate – is a given for us and enriching for both sides. At the conference, we shared our knowledge in a talk, contributed to the community sprint, deepened partnerships, and had many inspiring conversations.

Expenses for product development, administration, and donations remained unchanged.

As a result, our total costs for November amounted to CHF 42 995, an increase of 9 % compared to the previous month.

Here are all our costs including salaries for November 2025 in detail:

A new storefront for Friendly

It’s finally here: our long-awaited new website has been live since December 8, 2025. We’re very happy about it and proud of the result.

Read more about it in our blog post.

Conclusion

At the end of the month, we’re left with only a small profit of CHF 1 423, resulting in a slim profit margin of 3.2 %.

On both the revenue and cost sides, this tight result is driven by one-off events, which means we can treat it as an outlier.

We remain profitable and have a stable growth outlook – that’s what matters to us.

* Friendly has fully recovered its early-stage losses as of June 2025. Our monthly profit now only comes with the caveat that Stefan, our founder, still isn’t paying himself a full salary for his work – we’re working on it.

Der Beitrag One Million in TRR! Open Startup Report November 2025 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

What started with a sales pitch from copywriter and web designer Nicolas Previdoli turned into a genuinely great collaboration over the past few months.

We don’t usually respond to sales pitches – but this one immediately stood out. It was clear from the start that Nico had put real thought into it. His first draft was already so well developed that large parts of it made their way almost unchanged into the final version.

Working with Nico over the past months has been a real pleasure. We’re impressed by his ability to clearly identify and communicate our USP, as well as by his friendliness, clarity, speed, and team mindset.

The result is a new virtual shop window that reflects our mindset, our products, and our value proposition far better than before. Clear, calm, and focused on what matters.

Our company logo and product logos have also been refreshed, giving them a new look that we like a lot.

We’re very happy with the result – and, of course, always glad to hear your feedback.

Der Beitrag A new shop window for Friendly: Our new website is live erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

October at Friendly in numbers

• Software revenue: 33 467 CHF (-0.5%)
• Consulting revenue: 13 675 CHF (+2%)
• Total revenue: 47 142 CHF (+0.1%)
• Costs: 39 620 CHF (+1%)
• Profit: 7 522 CHF (-6%)
• Profit margin: 16.0%  (-6%)
• Active customers: 187 (-1%)
• Churn Rate (lost customers): 2.1% (n/a)
• Website visits: 2 532 (+3%)

These were the key developments in October:

Revenues: MRR flat, consulting strong

Our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions remained flat in October at CHF 33 467.

Since shifting our focus more toward enterprise customers, the pace of customer growth has slowed – but each new enterprise customer brings in significantly more revenue. As a result, overall our MRR has grown faster in 2025 than in previous years.

At the same time, we increased our consulting revenue by another +2% to CHF 13 675.

This result was driven by custom setups and onboarding projects, training sessions, in-house development, and newsletter creation. Our October clients included a bank, a hospital, a nonprofit organization, several insurance companies and online retailers, and a public sector entity.

As mentioned before, our consulting business has reached a high plateau. The trend lines in this chart reflect that:

Total revenue in October rose slightly by +0.1% to CHF 47 142.

Costs: Salary increases for Luke, Joey, Kathrin and Stefan

Personnel costs increased by over CHF 2 000 in October due to salary increases for Luke, Joey, and Kathrin – in recognition of their contributions to Friendly’s recent growth.

We also increased Stefan’s salary to CHF 4 025 – meaning we’ve already reached our 2025 goal of paying him CHF 4 000 per month, two months earlier than planned.

Additionally, our developer Matic expanded his capacity from 10% to 30% as of October, allowing us to further strengthen our technical team.

Product, events, and admin costs remained mostly unchanged.

Our marketing expenses declined in October, as we completed depreciation of our Friendly rebranding project (reveal coming soon!). That said, we’ll continue to recognize related expenses over the coming months, as we’ve decided to award a bonus to our designer Nicolas Previdoli in appreciation of his outstanding work on the rebranding.

In September, we had made a one-time larger donation to Mautic. Excluding that, our monthly contributions to nonprofit causes and memberships have returned to their usual level.

All in all, our October expenses amounted to CHF 39 620 – up only 1% from the previous month, despite the salary increases.

Here are all our costs including salaries for October 2025 in detail:

Conclusion

In October, we recorded a solid profit* of CHF 7 522 with a profit margin of 16%.

That marks 21 consecutive months of positive results. We’re now in a position to build reserves and invest in new team members – more info coming soon on our career page.

* Friendly has fully recovered its early-stage losses as of June 2025. Our monthly profit now only comes with the caveat that Stefan, our founder, still isn’t paying himself a full salary for his work – we’re working on it.

Der Beitrag Annual goal reached – and pay raises for the team: Open Startup Report October 2025 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

September at Friendly in numbers

• Software revenue: 33 620 CHF (+14%)
• Consulting revenue: 13 471 CHF (+15%)
• Total revenue: 47 091 CHF (+15%)
• Costs: 39 086 CHF (+8%)
• Profit: 8 005 CHF (+58%)
• Profit margin: 17%  (+38%)
• Active customers: 189 (+2%)
• Churn Rate (lost customers): 0.0% (-100%)
• Website visits: 2 466 (+7%)

These were the key developments in September:

Revenues: MRR surpasses CHF 30 000, consulting on a high plateau

In September, our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions reached CHF 33 620, representing growth of +14% compared to August.

That means our MRR has now passed the CHF 30 000 mark – faster than ever before.

It took us 16 months to reach our first CHF 10 000 in MRR (May 2021). Growth then slowed: it took another 40 months to pass the CHF 20 000 mark (September 2024). Now, just 12 months later, we’ve exceeded CHF 30 000.

We’re proud of this progress – made possible by bold and thoughtful decisions from our leadership, the creativity and dedication of our team, and the trust and satisfaction of our customers.

The number of active customers increased from 186 to 189 in September, with a churn rate of 0%.

Consulting revenue reached a strong CHF 13 471. In consulting, we’ve now hit a (high) plateau that we can only expand with additional team resources. That’s something we’re planning – although our main strategic focus is on growing our software revenue and partnering with reliable agencies.

Total revenue in September was CHF 47 091 – up +15% from the previous month.

Costs: Increasing our donation percentage

We paid higher salary costs again in September. Our freelance Analytics consultant Peter Boehlke was involved in several projects and billed more hours this month.

(A small correction to last month’s report: Stefan’s gross salary has not yet reached CHF 3 862, as previously stated, but is currently CHF 3 450. The CHF 3 862 shown in the far-right column of the cost table includes our employer contributions.)

In the product area, we added a new backup server. Costs related to team culture, events, admin, and marketing changed only slightly.

September also marked the final write-off from our rebranding project – and our new website is almost ready to go live! We’re excited to share it soon. You can already see a small preview from our outstanding designer Nicolas Previdoli on LinkedIn.

As our revenue has grown significantly over the past year, we’ve recalculated our donation percentage and increased our monthly contributions from CHF 391 to CHF 535.

We now donate CHF 130 each (up from 80 CHF) to SWISSAID, Swiss Food Bank, and the Swiss Refugee Council.

In our early years, we weren’t yet able to fully meet our 1%-of-revenue donation commitment. That’s why our current donation percentage includes a small monthly amount to reduce this historical deficit. To accelerate the process, we’ve also decided to provide one-time, larger support for Mautic, the open-source project behind Friendly Automate.

Total expenses in September were CHF 39 086 – up +8% from August.

Here are all our costs including salaries for September 2025 in detail:

Conclusion

We closed September with a strong profit* of CHF 8 005 and a profit margin of 17%. Our average monthly margin for 2025 now stands at 12.8%.

Thanks to this steady growth, we’re planning a round of salary adjustments in October – more on that in our next Open Startup Report.

And we’re preparing to expand our team – keep an eye on our career page, where we’ll soon publish a new opening.

* Friendly has fully recovered its early-stage losses as of June 2025. Our monthly profit now only comes with the caveat that Stefan, our founder, still isn’t paying himself a full salary for his work – we’re working on it.

Der Beitrag 30 000 CHF MRR! Sharing the Growth: Open Startup Report September 2025 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.

August at Friendly in numbers

• Software revenue: 29 452 CHF (+6%)
• Consulting revenue: 11 677 CHF (+12%)
• Total revenue: 41 129 CHF (+7%)
• Costs: 36 063 CHF (+3%)
• Profit: 5 066 CHF (+55%)
• Profit margin: 12.3%  (+44%)
• Active customers: 186 (-3%)
• Churn Rate (lost customers): 2.6% (n/a)
• Website visits: 2 303 (-7%)

These were the key developments in August:

Revenues: Strong growth in software and consulting

In 2025, we’ve been able to significantly accelerate our software revenue growth – from an average of +1.8% per month in 2024 to an average of +3.7% per month so far in 2025.

In August, we performed even better: our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from software subscriptions rose by a solid +6% to CHF 29 452.

And that’s despite a relatively high churn rate of 2.6% – with five fewer active customers compared to July.

This growth is primarily driven by new enterprise customers, for whom we’ve been expanding our capacity since spring (as reported in our April update). We’re pleased with this development and continuing to pursue this strategy.

Consulting revenue also grew significantly, up +12% to CHF 11 677. August projects included the setup of a larger enterprise instance, various custom solutions, analytics implementations, newsletter design work, and customer training sessions.

Our consulting clients included a business association, a pharmaceutical company, several insurance providers, a vehicle manufacturer, a hospital, a fintech startup, an international non-profit, and an e-commerce retailer.

Working with companies and organizations from such a wide range of industries continues to be an exciting and rewarding challenge each month.

Our total revenue in August grew by a healthy +7% to CHF 41 129.

Costs: Stefan’s salary nearly at CHF 4 000, cost increase remains moderate

Thanks to the positive business performance, we were able to raise Stefan’s salary again in August. His nominal workload is now 30%, and his salary increased from CHF 3 218 in July to CHF 3 862.

At the beginning of 2025, we had set a goal to raise Stefan’s monthly salary to CHF 4 000 by the end of the year. That felt like an ambitious goal at the time: Stefan didn’t take any salary at all during our first four years in business, and his symbolic salary of CHF 500 remained unchanged for nine months (from April 2024 to December 2024).

It wasn’t until January 2025 that we began steadily increasing his salary with a clear focus. We didn’t expect to come this close to our goal already in August. Now it’s looking very likely that we’ll not only reach but exceed it in 2025.

We also payed a higher compensation for our analytics expert Peter Boehlke in August, as he worked more hours for us.

Product and admin costs remained stable, while event and marketing expenses declined slightly.

In total, our August expenses amounted to CHF 36 063 – a moderate increase of 3% compared to the previous month.

Here are all our costs including salaries for August 2025 in detail:

Conclusion

In August, we recorded another solid profit* of CHF 5 066 with a profit margin of 12.3%.

Our average monthly profit margin for 2025 so far is also exactly 12.3%.

That puts us well on track to hit – or even exceed – our second financial goal for 2025: achieving a stable monthly margin of 12%, compared to 9.2% in 2024 and 3.3% in 2023.

We’re excited to see what the coming months bring.

* Since June 2025, Friendly has fully offset its cumulative early-stage losses. Our monthly profit now only comes with the caveat that Stefan, our founder, still isn’t paying himself a full salary for his work – we’re working on it.

Der Beitrag Our goals are within reach: Open Startup Report August 2025 erschien zuerst auf Friendly.