Anne Coghlan

Startups and Crypto sound like a marriage made in heaven - low-cost transactions, new markets, lower-risk payments. But how do Founders get started? Read this piece in Startups Magazine to determine if crypto is right for your business.

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The UK is home to 1,800 VC-backed AI startups, and 16% of all UK VC investment went into AI in the first quarter of 2024. The UK’s AI sector is valued at $92bn (£72.3bn), the largest in Europe. The question is... how confident are we that the ecosystem will rally and ensure responsible development of AI? [Data from Tech Nation] #tech #ai #startups

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Not seen much on LinkedIn about this, so sharing with my view. OnlyFans just put their 2023 accounts into UK Companies House, and you can get access to them. The numbers are truly extraordinary: - $6.6bn in GMV, that's 22x in four years - $1.3bn in net revenue - $649m in operating profit - $472m paid to the owner in dividends in the year, $631m including withdrawals over the 4 months post accounts close - 4.12m creator accounts, up from 3.18m ( 29%) - 305m fan accounts, up from 238m the previous year ( 28%) So the rest of this is my analysis and commentary. Here are the top 5 things that stood out to me: 1. 2/3 of revenue is US, with the rest split evenly between UK/Europe and ROW - like many Creator Economy businesses, this is very heavily US focused. Really brings home how much disposable income there is in the US economy vs everywhere else. 2. Revenue per creator $1610 average (down from $1744) - seems reasonable. There will be a strong power law here, with some accounts making a lot, and many making very little. 3. Spend per fan account $21.73 (down from $23.24) - lower than I would have guessed, not a lot really in a year. Wonder how many of those accounts are active, and how much a relatively minor portion are really driving the business. 4. Some of the staff are getting very well paid, truly. 5. They pay significant corporation tax! $172m in total, of which $148m to the UK. Unlike many major platforms. This is really good to see. Beyond the salaciousness and just focusing on business, this is an incredible success story out of the UK. And so much more successful than say Cameo. Thoughts? Tabel credit: Dragos Novac

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Attention ; startup founder - So you want to go from 100k to 1m ARR ? A couple of primers ; 1/ What got you here, won’t get you there Selling to your network, family / friends def works However it has a ceiling ( unless you are a Beckham, or Kim K, with a cult-like following ) You need to start to sell to strangers, who dont know you or your business or product / service offer And thats OK - you need to educate them that you exist and have a worthy value prop Its all apart of the process - so embrace it 2/ You will need more than 1 channel that actually works, and running a few in parallel can work ( sometimes, you gotta do a few things all at once, and kill the ones that dont work quickly ) Don't get me wrong, you can run a 1 channel test at a time, with a test-learn approach But you will need, to run multiple tests, over the course of a year or two - to see what actually sticks ( is it outbound, is it paid marketing, is it partners - who knows ? ) Traditional motions - like outbound work ( to varying degrees of success ). Outbound has fundamentally changed, over the past 5 years ( pre & post COVID ) Post COVID - we have seen a few interesting developments The first wave, was everyone was on email / linkedin and spamming everyone like there was no tomorrow The second wave is a bit more nuanced. There is personalisation. There are new channels, like slack, discord, whatsapp, carry pigeon ( l hear snail mail is back too !! ) Cue, unconventional channels… Often forgotten ones like, partners also work - but they take longer to spin up and require alot more forward investment ( and patience with them ) They take time, and planting the seed is step 1. They may take a while to sprout, like a bamboo tree ( stay the course, your bamboo tree may one day go bananas .. and you will be basking in that shade ) 3/ Taking your team on a journey To level up, you will need to ensure you and your team are ready Again, refer to point 1 To scale from initial traction, to some form of PMF ( you will know what that looks like, once you experience it… ) - you and your team, need to be doing things a bit differently That will include running your sales / marketing systems differently for e.g It will also include automation, and trying to really bed down processes Things that worked from 0 -> 0.1 ( those manual things, that dont scale ) can now be automated ( to an extent ) Alot more will go into sales CRM hygiene, and marketing attribution ( what actually lead a prospect to trial us, or find us, etc ) This is a good thing. Embrace the new phase of growth... you deserve it ( and the challenges, that come with it ;) You may actually make it to 1m ARR now... The mountain is a monster, but you can summit it, if you just keep going… So keep pushing. The sunshine at the top of 1m mountain is something quite special, and needs to be experienced first-hand...

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