What’s been on my mind this week is how fast we need to turn capital into labor. We’ve been careful to stay within the bounds of bootstrapping for the past 2 years, so switching into this new mode has been not without its challenges! It’s very tempting to look at the $27k per month net burn and the loooong runway we have right now and just want to stay very cozy; but that is absolutely the wrong thing to do! We didn’t set out to be a comfortable small-to-mid-sized business. We set out to transform the multifamily construction market! And right now, the two most important things we need to do are make more product and adequately support our customers.
Current subscription ACV: $425.3k
2024 ARR: $152k
Outstanding invoices as of today: $289k
360s: I’m still catching up on video, but by and large, it’s feeling like we’re starting to make tangible progress toward making feedback routine?
UI designer search: We’ve selected one designer that everyone was “strong hire” about, and Jason will be interviewing 3 other finalists in case we want to have two designers working at the same time. Jason and I started talking about getting design help at least 6 months ago, so this is great!
Decarb PM search: By the time the search was closed to new application at the end of the day on Thursday, we’d got 237 applicants, which is a welcome relief, given this is our third bite at this particular apple. Of those folks, I’ve interviewed 5, will meet another 18 this coming week, and have another 25 in reserve, if we need a 2nd round. We have some really fantastic candidates and if we could I’d hire like 5 of them right away!
Dev pipeline: I don’t have a lot of visibility right now into what is happening on product (I’m not seeing things on fire?). I do know we have a ton of work to do!
Renewals: We don’t yet have a system for making sure these get timely follow-up…the next one comes up in May, but it’s one that we may let churn because it’s so hard to collect from RY
IDIQ program legal review: Still working on getting a lawyer to help is with the contracts for our contractor bulk procurement program.
Metrics: Not urgent, but also not something we want to roll over months on end. Now that we’ve decided all this needs is a Jupyter notebook, maybe we can get a Upwork-er?
Big product picture: Marc and I are going to try to spend more time with François to make sure we haven’t been too short-term about the product vision. We’re not unambitious.
Don’t be a series of small businesses: Marc and I are shopping for some founder coaching to make sure we’re staying on a venture-scale path.
Q2 quarterly goals meeting and monthly perm staff on Thursday
Wrapping up the designer search and getting through the decarb PM interviews
Brooklyn tea w. Henry
And here’s what’s on my radar screen - what am I forgetting?
Feel free to leave comments below (edit on a layer to add your notes), or leave a comment.
Did I miss a highlight?
Did I miss something that should be on my watchlist?
Something else you want to react to?
| Chuck Lin | |
|---|---|
| Erika Parkins | |
| François Huet | |
| Henry Baum | |
| Jason Block | The hiring work does take a lot of time, but it’ll be super helpful and necessary on the other side. I am looking forward to the increase in capacity and speed that’s to come shortly! |
| Jeffry Luna | Just re-hashing: https://larabelles.com/ came across it while researching PHP and Laravel, so maybe one of these ladies are available to do freelance work if we ever need it for a specific project. |
| Jeremy Parker | |
| Kendall Adrian | |
| Luke Floden | |
| Maksym Khrystunov | |
| Marc Zuluaga | |
| Naina Shah | |
| Reuben Firmin | |
| Robin Neri | Random find: a part time/virtual fellowship for mid-career professionals that offers mentorship and focuses on reframing systemic societal problems (like housing and environmental justice) https://www.mirafellowship.org/ |