War report: April 2022

We share our milestone numbers and objectives in our April 2022 War Report, as well as the learnings and advice we have collected. We hope they will be useful in providing lessons for others who are in similar situations to ours or can benefit from their publication. Building in public is not easy, but we pretend our best.

If March was the month of releases, April was the month of confirming good feelings and putting our feet on the ground. Our Product Roadmap was accelerated by the 'Stackoverflowgeddon'. April was the month to sit down, meet with our new team members and set our medium and long-term strategies. We even participated in a paddel tournament!

Our numbers

Sales: Durability over time. The fact that sales were down in April, compared to March, may depend on three factors. One, that March was a record high for Manfred. Two, that Easter is a gap in the middle of the month. Three, some processes in the first days of April were computed in March. In any case, the figure achieved in April shows stability, and that is always positive.
Billing: The fact that billing equals - in this case, exceeds - sales is also a great new. A great effort by our team to close all these processes in extremis in the month of April.
Current: The working capital for the month of April is slightly conditional. An investment of 200K has been received from Sngular, which was already foreseen in the budget. This is the reason for the drastic increase in the working capital variation.

MONTH	SALES	BILLING	CURRENT VARIATION
MARCH 2022	206.662€	211.786€	53.699€
VARIATION	-10%	-1.63%	+164%
APRIL 2022	185.472€	208.321€	141.866,69€

Sales (without taxes): consulting services, Manfred Daily offers or commissions coming from hiring processes.
Billing (without taxes): invoices sent out. They tend to match sales, but we still have a certain time gap and, in addition, the invoicing assumes the possible corrective invoices that have to be made.
Current: the company's total assets and economic rights (cash, assets, outstanding receivables, and dividends).

OUR GOALS

As you know, we like to make our numbers public, but it is not the only thing we want to show. For us, goals are also important. So, just as March was a month of releases and running against the clock, April has been the month of putting our feet on the ground, aligning ourselves, and knowing where we are going.

In April we launched the Join the Resistance campaign, a call for beta testers who want to help us with some tests for the synchronization of our Online CV with other platforms. Lucía joined the Scouting team, and we took advantage of the fact that Sven, our first international signing, was coming to Spain to do his onboarding in person.

Sales

• To sell and invoice at least 190,000€ (😁). If we round it up a bit, we can consider it achieved. We computed some sales from the first days of April in March and fell €5.000 short of our goal. However, it has been a great month for the Scouting team.

Development

• Enabling multilingual model for the web (😢). It was a big challenge, and our development team almost reached it. There are still some points to solve, as well as the translations from the Marketing team.

Marketing

• Sven Peter’s onboarding (😁). Sven is already flying (literally). Our latest addition to the marketing department, and first international addition, Sven Peters, has completed his onboarding and is taking the reins of Development Advocacy. During this month he participated in digit.dev, a technical conference in Tallinn. He came to Madrid to do his onboarding in person and the whole marketing team was able to design our roadmap.
• Produce Montaraz project (😁). We have been months running after this objective. It is finally being produced.

• Preview and first version of our salary report (😢). OOPS! We hit a wall. There was a shift in focus in marketing content production that meant that these salary pills could not be produced within the month.
• Internal brand communication onboardings (😁). Talks, conversations, examples... Everything for our Scouts to be, in addition, ambassadors of the Manfred brand. In April we did two brown bags, one on the tone of the message in RRSS, led by Coral, and another on technical communities on the Internet, led by Antonio.

Happiness

• Definition and implementation of the new organizational system (😁). Manfred's regular meetings have been analysed to understand how the workflow can be improved. There are still some details to be finalized as new colleagues join the team.
• Prepare Brown Bags of the month (😁). So ready and so prepared. Marta Lora, our ameisin CHO, set out to organize the Brown Bags for the month of May. Not only have the May ones been organized, but the June ones as well.
• Focus on hiring and incorporating more fredders to the scouting team (😐). WE ARE STILL SEARCHING. Don't hesitate to join us!!

OUR GOALS FOR MAY

Sales

• To sell and invoice at least €190K. We believe that we have found a target where, now that there have been no scouting additions, the team should feel comfortable while being sufficient to sustain the structure and growth of the company.

Development

• Finally, enable multi-language version at getmanfred.com . Right now, our website is a bit of a mess, idiomatically speaking: we have everything in English, but our offers are in Spanish, as are our blog posts... In May we will have both options with defined and delimited language sections and flows.

Marketing

• Run our new “data pills” from our database strategy. As we told you in this post about the distribution of genders in technical roles, we feel that having such a complete database gives us a great responsibility: to share with the world the insights we get from it. Now that we have started to do so, we want to create a constant flow of publications.
• First batch of Montaraz deliveries. In May we will carry out two important tests: first, we will see how well we manage the work with an external logistics agency (something we have not experienced so far) and, secondly, we will see and touch qualities, materials, colors. If all goes well, we will be flying in June.
• Translating the website into Spanish. Having a multi-language version implies not only recovering texts from the version we had just 2 months ago, but also translating into Spanish new sections that we have been developing during this time, such as our Home. In addition, we will take the opportunity to polish and align copies with what we are and what we want to be.
• First approach to our international expansion. Sven joined Manfred a month ago, with the mission to help us to make ourselves known in other places. He will therefore start visiting events and conferences in other countries, where he will learn about international markets, issues and opportunities.

Happiness

• Focusing on internal hiring. We need to grow our team, specially in the Scouting field. We’re actively looking for Scouts. If you want to join: https://wp.getmanfred.com/ofertas-empleo/390/manfred-scout-recruiter-abr22
• New fredder’s onboardings. We hope some fredders will join us soon. Our Happiness team will carry their onboardings, to be sure they’re ready to fly free at Manfred.
• Manage monthly Brown Bags. Keep going with this internal training. Team’s loving it!

If you want to learn more, you can find further details on our public roadmap.