❄️ [Investors update] Snowball - March 2023

Apr 14, 2023

Welcome to the 410 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 in February 2022, 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 do it there 👇

To investors and friends,

Hi everybody. It’s already mid-April, and I’m super late with this report! I’m sorry, but in my defense, the Snowball+ launch was quite intense (and still is 😅).

The Main News

Valentine has joined Snowball and becomes employee #1! I’m really happy to have her on board. Valentine will work as a product manager and will help Snowball launch new products. Before that, she was a PM at Livi (telehealth), a PM, and a developer at Lifen (healthcare), and a developer at Lydia.
We finally launched Snowball+, the first newsletter bundle of its kind in France (and probably in the world). Indeed I’m not aware of similar offers in the personal finance universe. The launch has been really great as you can see below, but you’ll find more details in the progress section.

KPIs

Let’s see what happened since the last edition:

We just crossed 50,000 subscribers 🙌. +4.8 % since the 9th of March. I can’t believe that when I first crossed 1,000 subscribers I was so happy, and now 50,000 seems not enough… I need to step back sometimes and realize that it’s quite an achievement… Anyway!
ARR subscriptions (Annual Recurring Revenue): €253,864 (+3,6%).
Ad business: we updated the offer since I set up the prices when there were 30,000 subscribers and there are more than 50,000 now. it’s right here.
- MRR: about €14/15K. Flat. These revenues should increase now that we have more slots available. But it’ll require more outbound sales (so far, I was just waiting for leads to come to me).
Total projected revenues for the upcoming year (subscriptions + ads): €405,000+. Flat(ish).
Opening rate: around 55 %. Flat, but should decrease now that we will send more newsletters. Usually, when you increase not only the size of your list but also the frequency of your emails, the opening rate tends to decrease.
Churn rate March: around 6 %. A bit higher than in February (5%).
Cash on hands: €1,514,000 €1,525,000 (-€11k MoM). A lot of extra expenses this month (computers for new employees, tax accountants in the US, etc.).

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.

Because of the fall of SVB in the US, I’ve decided to transfer the $400,000 which were in my US bank account to my French bank account. No money has been lost. 😅
We launched the new website! You can find it here if you haven’t seen it yet.
We launched Snowball+, the name of the bundle of newsletters.
- 12 additional newsletters.
- €9/month or €80/year.
And people are really excited about it! It generated €15k or ARR in less than two weeks. Here’s what people have to say about it:

And the first editions of the new creators have received amazing feedback too:

Also, I’ve been comforted in my hypothesis that the revenue stagnation was partly due to the market conditions by finding these data about other finance newsletters. In such conditions, I believe that more efforts should be done on acquisition (which I did not have time to do):
I’ve designed a Snowball handbook + onboarding program for Valentine, and future employees. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a start.
A creation process has been set up to publish 1+ newsletters per day (that’s definitely not easy 😅).
The Snowball Daily on WhatsApp has been relaunched thanks to a new service provider called mesaj.io.

Plans

Here, I’ll tell you what are the big projects we’ll be tackling in the upcoming weeks.

Work closely with Valentine on the Money Coach product.
Onboard new employees (tech/design).
Start to deeply think about the post-substack era.
Test new short video format on TikTok (face cam).
Work on acquisition (free + paid).
Enhance the newsletter publication process.
Spring cleaning of snowball expenses (subscriptions, tools, etc.).
Hire someone who could help me with various tasks (marketing, recruiting, ops, etc.). I’ve got a great candidate in the pipe. More about that in the next episode!

Problems

What are the current problems?

Quite a lot of work 😅. Coordinating, reviewing, and integrating the new newsletters is extremely time-consuming.
Snowball+ has created an information overload problem. We will need to find smart ways to make sure that subscribers are not feeling drowned in a sea of newsletters.

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’re a creator and you already have a community or you’ve got talent, but no community? Check this out if you wanna join Snowball. We have great perks including stock options!
👋 Just wanna say hi. Hit reply. :)

Thanks for reading and do not hesitate to react in the comment section or by replying to this e-mail!

Have a wonderful weekend, and enjoy the rest of your week.

Yoann ❤️

Behind the Curtain