Retreat 🏔️
It's time for builders #50
Last weekend we went on our founding team retreat in Trentino.
It was the cherry on the cake that topped off a great quarter.
As the first part of the year draws to a close, and things are going well, it’s natural to be thinking ahead.
Planning.
Setting goals.
Dreaming big.
It’s fun, but I’m not anxious to get to the future fast.
I’m enjoying the moment.
We’re still a small team, everything is new, and excitement abounds.
It’s a magical time that we’re going to miss.
And I think this is the best signal we’re on the right trajectory.
Blasting through our goals 🎯
Sales
In early January, we aimed to get to around 25 clients by Easter.
At the time, it sounded very ambitious.
We just had 11, and we didn’t close any new clients until January 20th.
Then this Wednesday, we signed client #32.
Product
The tech team’s overachievement was even greater.
Basically, the core product we aimed to build this year is there.
Sure, some parts still need some work, but all major functionalities are live:
screening opportunities
summarising documents
drafting the bid
analysing past outcomes
managing all tenders and people involved in the same space
User love
We got tonnes of this.
Usage has been increasing throughout the quarter.
More than 200 people use the platform every week.
We even got 3/11 companies that signed last fall to upgrade their subscription plans.
Interestingly, they are of very different sizes.
A small company where the entrepreneur himself handles tenders.
A medium-sized company and a very large one, where they brought on board their sales colleagues, in the second case, getting to almost 40 users.
Yes, the explosion in the number of clients created some issues.
But now that Francesca, the founding account manager, has joined, everything is going more smoothly.
Team
We didn’t have specific objectives, but everyone is pumped up.
The second hire referred by a team member accepted our offer this week.
Out of 8 full-time hires, 2 were former colleagues of our first sales and tech hires.
25%!
Enthusiasm is contagious.
Looking ahead 🛫
I came up with the next ARR target together last Saturday while skiing with Matteo Monge, who leads our SDR team.
He’s the most bullish member of the team.
Plus, going down the slopes always gets me excited.
So, of course, the numbers we came up with are super ambitious.
The real work, though, is to focus and find the right balance between execution and experimentation.
In planning the next term (April to July), I split our workstreams into 3 different buckets.
Business as usual
This is what’s been working so far, and we need to keep it.
The current product for SMEs' tender offices, particularly in the medical devices space.
We cold-call them, bring them to the demo, close them as clients, and finally onboard and support them.
The product powers all the standard activities that this particular type of user performs.
Bets
These are new ideas we’ve already done quite a bit of discovery and iteration on.
They are of different types:
new channels (not just outbound but also marketing)
new types of companies by
size
sector
new users → as I said last week, we’re developing very cool features for salespeople
new business model → not just flat subscription but also AI credits
We expect some of these bets to pay off already before the summer, while others won’t bear fruit till the fall.
Discovery
These are more outlandish ideas we still know very little about.
It’s stuff like selling to occasional/first-time bidders that know very little about how tenders work, for example.
Before working on them, we need to learn more.
Some I’m very skeptical about, but some of my team members are more keen on.
When they ask me for permission, my response is: “Look, I’m going to hold you accountable on the business as usual tasks and the agreed bets. But if you want to work on this idea on the side and prove me wrong, go ahead and try”.
Happy Easter 🕊️
No all hands taking place tomorrow.
It’s time to draw our breaths a bit.
Have a nice long weekend, everyone!