What it says
What this says
Current to 11 Oct 26Final board pack issued 17 Oct 2023 by CEO Nell Ashcombe. It reports contracted ARR of £56,550 across three customers and a headcount of seven, and says plainly what it does not show: cash, pipeline and usage.
What it is: an internal board pack for the quarter ending 30 Sep 2023, issued on 17 Oct 2023 by Nell Ashcombe. The status is Final in both the header and the text.
Claims: "Annual recurring revenue (contracted)" is £56,550, taken from executed order forms and excluding one-off implementation fees. It rests on three customers, so the pack says "each renewal matters a great deal".
Risks named: concentration, capacity with seven people, value evidence and data freshness. Priorities include naming an owner for each of the three accounts and writing down the value each customer gets.
Not settled: the pack carries no cash or runway view, no pipeline and no usage statistics. It is a point-in-time record from 2023, so it is not a current view of the company.
As found in this document
The document
Body
B-Brain - Board Pack - quarter to 30 Sep 2023
Status: Final Prepared by: Nell Ashcombe, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Date of pack: 17 Oct 2023 Period covered: the quarter ending 30 Sep 2023
Headline numbers
| Measure | Position at 30 Sep 2023 |
|---|---|
| Annual recurring revenue (contracted) | nineteen and a half thousand pounds |
| Customers | one |
| Headcount | seven |
These are the three numbers I would ask the board to hold in mind. Everything else in this pack is commentary on them.
How to read this pack
We are a young company and the numbers are small, so I have kept the pack short and plain. Where I give a figure for revenue it is the contracted annual figure, taken from the signed order form. I have not used pipeline, hopes or verbal agreements. If a number cannot be traced to a signed document, it is not in here.
Revenue
We have one paying customer, and the contracted annual subscription for that customer is the nineteen and a half thousand pounds shown above. That is where we are, and I would rather say it plainly than dress it up.
Two points on how that figure is built:
Read the whole document (4,661 characters)
- It is the annual subscription only. The one-off implementation fee is a separate matter and is not counted in recurring revenue.
- It is contracted, not invoiced. Invoicing follows the order form, and the two should agree. I will bring an invoicing check to the board as soon as there is more than one customer to check.
With one customer, our revenue and our concentration risk are the same thing. I do not think that is a surprise to anyone on the board, but it is worth writing down.
Customers
One customer is live on the brain, running inside their own Snowflake account. Because there is only one, the most useful thing we can do is learn from them in detail rather than generalise.
What I am watching, in order:
- Whether their teams are asking the brain questions as part of their normal week, not only during demonstrations.
- Whether the data feeding the brain is fresh each morning.
- Whether the person who championed us still has the time and the standing to keep it going.
I would like to be able to say what the brain changed for them, and how we know. At the moment I can say some of that and not all of it. That is a gap in our evidence, not a complaint about the customer.
People
Headcount is seven. We have been careful about hiring ahead of revenue, and the team is small enough that everyone knows every account and every open issue.
Commentary:
- The team covers building, delivering and selling. There is not yet a dedicated function for adoption or renewals; at the moment that sits with whoever knows the customer best.
- I do not propose to change that this quarter. I do expect to bring a proposal once we have a second customer and can see what the two have in common.
What went well
- We signed a customer and have kept that customer.
- The product works inside a customer's own Snowflake account, which is the thing we said we would do.
- The team has stayed together and stayed focused.
What did not go as well
- One customer is not a business. We are early, and the pipeline is thinner than I would like.
- We have not yet written down a repeatable way of measuring value for a customer. That one is on us.
- Our reporting is by hand. It is accurate, but it will not scale past a handful of accounts.
Risks
| Risk | Why it matters | What we are doing |
|---|---|---|
| Customer concentration | All recurring revenue sits with one customer | Prioritise new customers; keep the existing relationship close |
| Key-person dependence | A small team holds most of the knowledge | Write things down; share account knowledge across the team |
| Evidence of value | Renewal depends on being able to show what the brain is worth | Agree a simple set of usage measures with the customer |
Priorities for the next quarter
- Win a second customer.
- Agree with our existing customer how we will both judge whether the brain is working, using usage rather than opinion.
- Put a simple, repeatable monthly reporting routine in place so this pack gets easier to write and easier to trust.
Asks of the board
- Note the position at 30 Sep 2023.
- Challenge the priorities above, in particular whether a second customer should come before anything else.
- Tell me what you would want to see in this pack that is not here.
Closing note
The contracted annual recurring revenue is the nineteen and a half thousand pounds stated above. It is the figure in the signed order form, and I will keep it that way: say what happened, say how we know.
Best, Nell