October 2015 Monthly Report
Welcome to our first bare all report!
Each month, we’re going to lift the bonnet and show you exactly what’s happening inside Sproutli. We’re going to be so transparent and vulnerable that it’s going to be a little scary for us.
To be honest, we’re not sure how you, our tribe, will take it.
Will showing warts and all be a good thing? Will you mind when we make mistakes? Will you think you could do a better job than us? I guess we’re about to find out!
For vegan business owners ……
I hope that by sharing our story each month we can be the ‘crash test dummy’ for you. We’ll test different strategies and we’ll let you know what works and what doesn’t work.
Hopefully this will save you time and money in starting or growing your own businesses.
To our users…..
Over the last few months we have been feeling very grateful for all the help you have given us. We receive Facebook comments and emails daily with people telling us:
- how much they love the app
- what’s broken
- what we can do better
- offering to help
- suggesting improvements
- adding businesses
We honestly can’t thank you enough! We take everything on board as you can hopefully tell from the constant improvements that the app goes through.
So, let’s get into it, what happened in October?
What a busy month!
We made a BIG DECISION, to official become a not for profit organisation.
It feels good that we won’t worry about revenue for the next 4 months, but instead keep building the most useful app for the vegan community.
It doesn’t mean that we’re not focused on making Sproutli a sustainable organisation, however it does align our focus to provide HUGE VALUE first, before trying to really monetise.
We nearly all of October preparing for World Vegan Day in Melbourne, held on the 1st of November at the Showgrounds and also preparing for the Adelaide Cruelty Free Festival held 1 week later.
Melbourne’s World Vegan Day was our official launch of the app after we have been testing with early users for a number of months. In preparation for the launch, we:
- Rebuilt our app from the ground up
- Designed Sproutli T-Shirts to help spread the word
- We ordered activism cards to give out for free
- Made beautiful brochures explaining the app
- Added hundreds of new listings
- Purchased a banner and table cloth
The biggest thing we did, was that the app went through several major overhauls while we received daily feedback from users and kept making whatever improvements we could.
The chart below shows that we had around 100 active users each week on the app. Some people were using the app up 20 times in a week, while others used it just the once to find what they were looking for.
For those of you that love numbers:
- Total number of users: 669 (up from 494 in September)
- Revenue: $576
- Expenses: $6,951 (purchasing the stall kit and t-shirts)
- Facebook followers: 1848 (+30 from last month)
- Kindness Card holders: 29
- Premium listings: 6
Your top questions from users in October:
Your question: When will you have a map showing all listings near my current location?
Our answer: Yes! This has been a hugely requested feature, and we’re working hard to make sure we’ll have it by the end of January.
Your question: How about this: “Are you trying to make money from the vegan community?”
Our answer: No, we are not for profit and are going through the process to ensure this is reflected in our company constitution.
Your question: How can I add a business you’re missing?
Our answer: By end of November, you can add listings yourself via the app, but for now, just tell us which business to add and we’ll do it for you.
Your question: When are you coming to my state?
Our answer: We’ve got a blog post coming about that one soon. : )
What are we going to do in November?
- Attend Melbourne’s World Vegan Day.
- Attend Adelaide’s Cruelty Free Festival.
- Allow users to create listings in the app for either businesses they love or businesses they own
- Create a blog.
- Ask for volunteers from each of the remaining states and territories that we don’t have Sproutli in to help us with data in their home states. Send an email to hello@sproutli.com if you want to help out.
- Find a volunteer coordinator.