Retention.com Monthly Update & 23/34 P&L

Hey RB2B Fans!

This week I’m giving you a sneak peak into our Retention.com monthly update.

Long story short - we’re in the middle of figuring out how to adjust to a new, highly competitive environment, rolling out EOS with the help of Jon Shapiro, and getting two completely new businesses off the ground - RB2B and Data Sales.

I also posted my detailed monthly P&L from 2023/2024, just because I know early stage founders are curious about that kind of thing.

Why not.

But first things first …

Our first “Inbound-Led Outbound Workshop” is taking place this Tuesday, May 7, at 3pm EST/Noon PST, and will be every Tuesday.

Click here to sign up.

I’m going to either share thoughts and open up to questions or bring a speaker on, depending on the week.

This week it’s just me, and the topic is “What is Inbound-Led Outbound”?

Now for the fun stuff …

The post.

After four DOWN months in a row, I’m happy to report Retention.com ARR was up 1.6% in April to end the month at $21,553,978. RB2B is up to $242,400 ARR ( from $61k). Here’s what went well, what didn’t, and why I don’t think we’re out of the woods quite yet: 

WHAT WENT WELL: 

RETENTION.COM:

• Up month (whoop! Go team!)

• I have successfully handed off all day-to-day operations for R!.com to Diana Ross

• We’re continuing the EOS out across all of our business lines, we are all so happy with it

• It’s exposing expectation-setting, focus, and accountability problems that are being fixed

• We’re learning the meaning of “putting process in place” 

• We now have an incredibly deep understanding of the very competitive space we find ourselves operating in (which is VERY different from 18mo ago)

RB2B: 

• VIRALITY. 5,043 companies signed up in 60 days, 78% have collected >1 contact

• We are at $242k ARR and don’t yet have any of the features we plan to charge for

• We pushed Hubspot integration yesterday, ICP filters and “credit system” next

• We think we’ve figured out a no-brainer offer for the LeadGen agency community

• Support still greater than 90% non-human, cheers Robb Clarke

WHAT DIDN’T GO SO WELL: 

• We only generated $300k of cash in April. I was expecting $500k. If April had 31 days, we would have generated $425k. What else was up with our cash generation?

• We make a few performance bonus payments quarterly, which weighed down April.

• Apparently we had a few chunky invoices, and it’s tradeshow season in DTC

• We have made several (expensive) hires related to the Enterprise Data Sales business Santosh is building - very positive for the long run, but negative for this months’ cash

• Wait - did I mention Santosh is starting an Enterprise Data Sales business as a 3rd startup? 

• Revenue growth of RB2B has been slower than expected as my initial PLG thesis was dead wrong and we’ve had to figure out a new free-to-paid hypothesis

WHY I DON’T THINK WE’RE OUT OF THE WOODS YET

Retention.com’s market has become highly competitive. It seems like every day I’m getting forwarded a cold email from a new “wannabe” Retention.com. 

Determining a growth strategy in that environment is difficult on its own, but we’ve put it on the back burner to implement EOS so that no matter what happens we’ll run like a real company in the future. 

While all of that has been going on, we have been investing heavily in what Santosh has always said the larger opportunity was for us in the first place …

Taking our existing tech to the B2B space. 

I believe we are currently in the middle of our darkest moment. 

At Retention.com we’re being forced to adjust too a new reality which is decidedly worse than we thought it would be a year ago. 

Meanwhile, we are investing in new businesses that aren’t going to meaningfully contribute to growth until later this year. 

But, if I close my eyes and imagine what this will all look like in 12-18mo:

1/ EOS is fully rolled out, R!.com is running smoothly

2/ We have come up with a credible growth strategy for R!.com

3/ RB2B is humming, in the high single-digit ARR with 5 employees

4/ Data Sales is contributing low single-digits  

There’s a chance we’re at 30m ARR with the crew we have right now, growing at a very healthy clip. 

That … for me … is the Promised Land.

Keep building.

The HubSpot integration should DEFINITELY be done and ready for Beta this week.

We got tripped up with the timeline feature … It was more complex than anticipated.

I appreciate all who volunteered, and we’ll reach out as soon as it’s ready.

Next up - ICP filtering and “Hot Pages”.

Then the credit system.

That’s it for this week!

Have a great weekend, and keep building.

Adam