We’re looking to grow
For the past 6.5 years the team has worked really hard to build a sustainable business. We think we’ve done that and now want to take the next step and grow quicker. You may have seen a recent article in the NBR (paywall here) that we’re looking to raise capital. The article details our plans to grow SuiteFiles. We’re doing this through the Snowball platform. Over the past couple of years we’ve put a lot of energy into refining and better understanding our metrics so we have a great platform for growth.
We’ve been very careful with how we measure success and the next six months to the end of our financial year are pretty exciting for us. We’ve worked incredibly hard the last 6.5 years to get to this point. Now that we have a vibrant sustainable business it’s time to get on the world stage. Wish us luck, or if you’re keen, come along for the ride as a customer, or if you’re so inclined, as one of our new investors! The capital raise is open to the public for investment until the end of October.- SuiteFiles Capital Raise.
Key metrics
We recently topped $1 million in annual recurring revenue – a major milestone that suggests we truly have product market fit. The next goal is to get to $5 million. That’s just over of 23,000 paying subscribers and we’re already at 4,519. We’ve got this far with virtually no spend on sales and marketing.
Ramping up
Now the rubber hits the road. Over the next five weeks we’ll be in three countries marketing SuiteFiles. First stop Singapore, then Sydney and London.
Singapore
This week we’re in Singapore attending the Accounting & Finance Show Asia which aims to showcase digital innovation in the accounting and finance sector. The “Title Sponsor” is Xero, and the SuiteFiles team are there to support Xero with a branded space in their “partner pavilion”.
The event is primarily focused on accountants, bookkeepers and finance managers, and the focus this year is on the digital technology revolution and cloud accounting. There are over 150 “how to” style presentations plus live demos and an expectation of more than 2,000 attendees from SMEs and accountancy practices in Singapore and South East Asia.
They will be talking to businesses about the product and its deep integration to Xero Practice Manager. The main reason for attending is to help the Xero team with their messaging about the cloud, which is perfectly aligned to our own growth goals. Another reason for attending is the opportunity to meet with and talk to key decision makers who are potential users of SuiteFiles. Of course, the goal is to gain new customers from the event. The audience are already sophisticated enough to know what they want (migration to the cloud) and we believe that SuiteFiles is just what they’ve been looking for. Attending events like this has proven a great way to show attendees just what SuiteFiles is all about and provides great brand awareness for us. It’s a key part of our growth strategy.
I also have the pleasure of speaking at the event in a session titled “No more risky business – how to improve your file management in the cloud” where I’ll talk about key do’s and don’ts cloud based file management.
Other events
Whilst in Singapore I’ll also attend the Grow with HubSpot conference, where some of the senior leaders of the world’s biggest brands will be talking, including Intuit, Stripe, Slack, Twitter and AWS. The focus of the event is growth, and in particular the path to a US$100 million company. Whilst that goal is some years away, the journey has started, and the Closing Keynote (titled “From Startup to Unicorn”) is by JD Sherman, the President and COO of Hubspot. He will be talking about the key lessons overseeing Hubspot’s growth, from startup to IPO to multinational company.
The second half of the year is off to a great start with so much activity. We are looking forward to closing out the year on a high!
