❄️ [Investors update] Snowball - June 2022

Jul 06, 2022

Welcome to the 456 new subscribers who’ve joined us since the last edition. If you’re receiving this email for the first time, its main goal is to update you about how Snowball’s business is going. This is mainly for the 400 + investors who helped me raise 1.6 million dollars, but I’ve decided to open it to the public for the curious out there. If you don’t want to receive it anymore, you can just unsubscribe at the end of this email or click here. And if you want to subscribe to BTC (Behind the Curtain), you can click here:

To investors and friends,

Good evening! I hope you’re all doing great. Summer has begun, and it’s getting quieter and quieter here in France.

In June we entered the “quiet period” for Snowball. Indeed, there’s a seasonality in Snowball’s business. As we can see below, the growth slows down between May/June and September.

Let’s dig into what happened last month.

The Main News

I can now safely transfer the money from the US to France thanks to a “CONVENTION FINANCIERE INTRA-GROUPE” between Snowball XYZ Inc and Snowball SAS.
The dollar keeps rising against the euro which is great news for Snowball. I’ve raised 1.6 million dollars since February 2022. Since then, the dollar appreciated by 9.4 %. If I convert these 1.6 million dollars today, I’d make a “profit” of 150 000 dollars compared to raising this amount directly in euros or converting these dollars in euros from the very beginning.
Snowball will be part of the first batch of Les Echos startup accelerator named “10G”. As I said last month, there’s no string attached. They don’t take any equity, and there’s no obligation on Snowball’s side. It’s great news since it’ll help Snowball to learn from a 114 years old media powerhouse + gain more visibility (Les Echos, le Parisien, etc.). The official announcement is here.
Snowball’s organic growth is clearly affected by the state of the market. We can clearly see a correlation here:

KPIs

Let’s see what happened since the last edition (31st of May 2022):

ARR subscriptions (Annual Recurring Revenue): €252,975 (almost flat vs last month's €252,520). This does not include the sponsoring revenues. See below. 👇
Sponsoring: €12k paid in June. €6K booked for September. Soft commit for €24k at the end of the year.
Number of subscribers: 30,823 subscribers (+ 3% from 29,897 last month).
The opening rate is still high with an average of 55 %.
Paid subscribers: 3,642 (3625 last month).
Healthy but higher churn in June: 3.59 %.
Cash on hands: €114,000 in France (same), $1.6 million in the US (same).

Now let’s turn to the 3Ps (Progress, Plan, Problems). 👇

Progress

In this section, I’ll show you the main things that have happened in the past month/period.

Since I’m reaching the end of my unemployment benefits, I’ll start to pay myself through Snowball in July. My last salary at Comet was around €50k/year (gross salary). I’ve been living with unemployment benefits of €1,900/month (net, after taxes) for about 2 years so I’ve decided to give myself a salary of €4,000/month ent after taxes (around €62k/year gross salary), which seems pretty fair to me regarding the past.
I’ve started to work with a personal assistant through Double in order to delegate some tasks.
Still talking with Spotify for a potential Spotify Original podcast. Nothing’s sure, just talks. I should have an answer in the upcoming weeks.
Talking with multiple companies which could sponsor Snowball in the upcoming months (Finary, Caravel, Mon majord’home, Binance, Yomoni). By the way, I packaged Snowball’s sponsorship offer on a Notion page. If you want to sponsor Snowball or share it with a potential sponsor, you can click here.
Still looking for the first PM (Product Manager). I’m talking with multiple PMs who could join Snowball in the upcoming months. If you’re a PM, just hit reply. If you know a PM, share the news with him.
I’ve written down in a Gdoc the main objectives/tasks to launch Snowball V2. You can click here to read the entire document. Don’t hesitate to comment if you want to share some thoughts.
I believe that microlearning and micro-courses could be a great way to attract new people both in the investment world, but also to Snowball. I’ve recently tested the idea on LinkedIn and it got a lot of traction. Around 1,000 people want to try this new format. I’ve already started to set up everything in order to create the course on WhatsApp. Try to text Crypto 101 to this number 07 67 99 03 99 on WhatsApp (you can save the phone number as Snowball). Yes, there’s only one step so far, but setting up everything was really a pain in the ass. The content part will be way easier and I’ll try to do it during the summer. This will allow me to gather some data about this new kind of content to see if it makes sense to scale it up in the future.

Plans

Here I’ll tell you what are the upcoming month's plans.

See with Paymium and Yomoni how the first sponsoring campaign went on their side (they both ended last week).
I secured a €40k financing with Karmen and we will do a small PR campaign in September to announce the first revenue-based financing in the creator economy in Europe.
Finalizing one key hire (COO/operations/swiss knife 😅). Super happy about that!!!!!
Delegate one part of the Daily Snow in order to have more time to work on more urgent/important projects.
Continue to build the first Snowball micro-course on WhatsApp.
Take advantage of the current exchange rate to transfer $600,000 to France.
Continue to look for a PM or alternative solutions. I’ve recently contacted Mozza, which could be a great way to launch Snowball V2 without a PM in the beginning. They’ve helped great companies like Cajoo to launch their first product iteration. I’ll also contact The Design Crew regarding this. If you have feedback about these two companies, hit reply!
Try to sell more sponsoring spots.
Start to test new acquisition channels: mainly paid ads, and TikTok.

Problems

What are the current problems?

As I said above (and last month), the current bear market is affecting the growth of Snowball.
I’ve decided to stop the hiring process with a good potential “CPO”. Not really a problem though.

Need you for?

If you want to sponsor the free version of Snowball or if you know someone who’d like to. Click here.
You are a PM or a full-stack developer, and you’re interested in this project? Hit reply. If you know someone, spread the news. :)
Just wanna say hi. Hit reply. :)

Thanks for reading and do not hesitate to react in the comment section!

Have a great evening!

Yoann ❤️