What does 2009 hold for us?
Well, as I read November’s blog posting I struggle to know what to add! The financial news remains all doom and gloom and the predictions are that the recession will be long and deep. Yet our position remains the same.
We had a very good 2008 with revenue almost exactly doubling year on year. We had worked hard to keep overheads down which means profitability was good. So we enter 2009 with a good recurring revenue stream, a decent cash balance and a good prospect list. Another key aspect is a complete lack of debt. This is extremely important in the ‘credit crunch’. It seems that a lot of perfectly viable companies may go to the wall simply because they can not get credit to ease cash flow.
So, our financial position is good, the hatches are battened firmly down and we will be keeping a very tight control of our overheads.
The last couple of months of 2008 held few surprises. We exhibited at the DIA eCTD conference in San Diego and then at the Open Text user conference in Orlando. Both shows were good for us and produced new opportunities.
Just before the eCTD conference we experimented with a ‘breakfast seminar’ at a local hotel. The idea was that we would attract local San Diego biotech companies to come along and learn about PleaseReview. It was always going to be something of an experiment. Whilst, pre-internet days, the breakfast seminar approach was, in general, a very successful activity, I wasn’t sure how it would pan out in 2008. The answer was, as a means of meeting prospects, ‘not brilliantly’. As a means of connecting with existing clients, ‘very well’!
It could of course be the way we marketed it but, whatever the reason, we ended up with approximately 50% of our target number of attendees and had more clients than prospects in the room. Thus it turned into more of a mini user conference than anything else.
So, the lesson I take away is that as a means of interfacing with prospects the seminar idea needs more work. As a means of meeting and gaining customer feedback, it appears to work well.
From a product perspective, we released v3.6 as anticipated and started work on v4.0. At the time of writing, the main area of v4.0 functionality, namely the greatly enhanced collaborative authoring functionality, is looking good. It will be on the internal test server by the end of the week. I’m looking forward to playing with it.
The feedback from the v4.0 webinars was overwhelmingly positive and I have no doubt that if we deliver what we have said we will deliver, we will continue to prosper.
Keeping half an eye on the venture capital scene (as we are prone to do) shows that it's just as well VC funding is not in our plans. This article in the Financial Times suggests that all is not well in VC land. No surprises there I guess as all is not well in many places – especially those to do with finance.
So we sail into 2009 with the prediction that it going to be tough for the sale of computers, software and outsourcing services. Tell me something I don't know.
There is little point in repeating the November 2008 blog posting which includes a still valid analysis of my thoughts on what will happen in 2009 so our plan remains simple. We will keep our heads down, we will continue to work hard, make great software which people want to buy and be very well positioned for the eventual upturn.
We had a very good 2008 with revenue almost exactly doubling year on year. We had worked hard to keep overheads down which means profitability was good. So we enter 2009 with a good recurring revenue stream, a decent cash balance and a good prospect list. Another key aspect is a complete lack of debt. This is extremely important in the ‘credit crunch’. It seems that a lot of perfectly viable companies may go to the wall simply because they can not get credit to ease cash flow.
So, our financial position is good, the hatches are battened firmly down and we will be keeping a very tight control of our overheads.
The last couple of months of 2008 held few surprises. We exhibited at the DIA eCTD conference in San Diego and then at the Open Text user conference in Orlando. Both shows were good for us and produced new opportunities.
Just before the eCTD conference we experimented with a ‘breakfast seminar’ at a local hotel. The idea was that we would attract local San Diego biotech companies to come along and learn about PleaseReview. It was always going to be something of an experiment. Whilst, pre-internet days, the breakfast seminar approach was, in general, a very successful activity, I wasn’t sure how it would pan out in 2008. The answer was, as a means of meeting prospects, ‘not brilliantly’. As a means of connecting with existing clients, ‘very well’!
It could of course be the way we marketed it but, whatever the reason, we ended up with approximately 50% of our target number of attendees and had more clients than prospects in the room. Thus it turned into more of a mini user conference than anything else.
So, the lesson I take away is that as a means of interfacing with prospects the seminar idea needs more work. As a means of meeting and gaining customer feedback, it appears to work well.
From a product perspective, we released v3.6 as anticipated and started work on v4.0. At the time of writing, the main area of v4.0 functionality, namely the greatly enhanced collaborative authoring functionality, is looking good. It will be on the internal test server by the end of the week. I’m looking forward to playing with it.
The feedback from the v4.0 webinars was overwhelmingly positive and I have no doubt that if we deliver what we have said we will deliver, we will continue to prosper.
Keeping half an eye on the venture capital scene (as we are prone to do) shows that it's just as well VC funding is not in our plans. This article in the Financial Times suggests that all is not well in VC land. No surprises there I guess as all is not well in many places – especially those to do with finance.
So we sail into 2009 with the prediction that it going to be tough for the sale of computers, software and outsourcing services. Tell me something I don't know.
There is little point in repeating the November 2008 blog posting which includes a still valid analysis of my thoughts on what will happen in 2009 so our plan remains simple. We will keep our heads down, we will continue to work hard, make great software which people want to buy and be very well positioned for the eventual upturn.
posted by David Cornwell, PleaseTech Ltd at 3:13 PM
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