What it says
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26Final board pack issued 16 Oct 2024 by Nell Ashcombe. It reports contracted annual recurring revenue of £289,825, ten customers and a headcount of fourteen at 30 Sep 2024, and asks for no decisions.
What it is: an internal board pack for the quarter ending 30 Sep 2024, prepared by Nell Ashcombe. It states "Annual recurring revenue (contracted)" of £289,825, ten customers and headcount of fourteen.
Basis: revenue "follows the executed order forms rather than any estimate held in the CRM". A customer is counted only where there is a live contract.
Not settled: it gives no split of revenue by tier or customer, no movement in revenue, no cash position, no usage trends and no pipeline. It also puts no health score on accounts.
Currency: the figures are as at 30 Sep 2024 and should not be read as the current position. The pack commits BB-Demo to no customer terms and requests no board decisions.
As found in this document
The document
Body
BB-Demo - Board Pack - quarter to 30 Sep 2024
Status: Final Prepared by: Nell Ashcombe, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Issued: 16 Oct 2024 Period covered: the quarter ending 30 Sep 2024
Purpose of this pack
This pack gives the board the headline position at the end of the quarter, in plain terms, with a short commentary on what the numbers do and do not tell us. It is deliberately brief. Where we do not yet have a measure we can stand behind, the pack says so rather than guessing.
Headline numbers
| Measure | Position at 30 Sep 2024 |
|---|---|
| Annual recurring revenue (contracted) | £289,825 |
| Customers | 10 |
| Headcount | 14 |
All three figures are taken as at the quarter end. Annual recurring revenue is the contracted figure, meaning it follows the executed order forms rather than any estimate held in the CRM.
Commentary: revenue
Contracted annual recurring revenue stands at £289,825 across ten customers. That is a small base, and it is a base we know well: every customer is one we can name, and every order form has been read by someone senior.
Two things follow from the size of the base.
Read the whole document (4,689 characters)
- Concentration matters. With ten customers, a single renewal moving the wrong way is visible in the total. We should treat each renewal as an event in its own right, not as a statistic.
- Growth within accounts is as important as new names. The subscription earns its keep when a customer adds teams, users or connectors. We want the board to see expansion and new business reported separately in future packs.
This pack does not break the revenue figure down by tier or by customer. That detail sits in the order forms and the invoices, and we will bring it to the board when asked.
Commentary: customers
Ten customers is the number we can evidence from contracts. We count a customer only where there is a live contract, not where a CRM record merely says "Customer". On that basis the count is ten.
What the count does not show is the health of each account. We have a feel for it from calls, emails and usage, but we have not yet put a consistent score on it, and we would rather say that plainly than present a number that looks more precise than it is.
Commentary: people
Headcount is fourteen. The team is small enough that most people touch customers directly, which is a strength: the people who build the brain are close to the people who use it.
It is also a limit. With fourteen people, the loss of any one person has a noticeable effect on delivery or on a relationship. We should be deliberate about who knows which account, and make sure no account depends on a single person.
What the numbers do not tell us
It is worth listing what is absent from this pack, so the board can ask for what it needs.
- Movement in revenue over the quarter, split into new, expansion and loss.
- Cash position and payment behaviour. Accounting decides what has been invoiced and paid, and that view is not summarised here.
- Usage trends by customer: questions asked, records indexed, active users. These are the best early signs of value and of risk, and they deserve their own page in the next pack.
- Pipeline. We have not set out forecast deals in this pack.
We would rather the board saw a short, accurate pack than a long one padded with figures we cannot defend.
Risks to watch
- Stale data. A customer whose sources stop loading is a customer whose brain is going quiet, even if nobody complains. We want connector and freshness health visible to us before it is visible to them.
- Champion departure. Where one person at a customer drives the use of the brain, their leaving puts the renewal at risk. We should know who the champion is for each of the ten.
- Value not evidenced. A customer who cannot say what the brain is worth will struggle to renew. Each account needs a short, written value case.
Priorities for the next quarter
- Hold every renewal conversation early, with the customer's own usage in front of us.
- Build a single page per customer showing contract, usage and the named champion.
- Report revenue movement in the next pack as new, expansion and loss.
- Keep the team's knowledge of each account shared, so no relationship rests on one person.
Matters for the board
The board is asked to note the position at 30 Sep 2024: contracted annual recurring revenue of £289,825, ten customers and a headcount of fourteen. No decisions are requested in this pack. Questions and requests for further detail should come to Nell Ashcombe.
That one's on us if the detail is missing: tell us what you want to see and it will be in the next pack.
Best, Nell