September 2017 Investors update

Xavier Damman -

Dear investors,

Sorry for the delay, been busy with the release of Open Collective v2.

It includes lots of new features: save credit card on file, customize tiers/rewards, create an organization so employees can donate on the company’s behalf (e.g. https://opencollective.com/airbnb) and more.

Next focus: allow anyone to create a collective (if they can bring a host)

Our biggest bottleneck for growth is that we can only host open source collectives.

Yet, we are receiving more and more requests from other types of collectives (meetups, political parties, and other non profit associations). Since some of them do already have a legal entity (or know one they trust that could act as their host/fiscal sponsor), we want to make it easy for them to quickly create an open collective without having to contact us. Our hope is that over time they will not only host their own collective but also enable other groups in their vertical/geography to have their own collective.

Asks

- We plan to bring our first full-time engineer. We are starting to interview candidates — any referrals are much appreciated. Experience in open source and in financial products are a big plus.

- Looking for companies that can be the first ones to allow their employees to give up to $x/month to open source projects they care about. We need some early adopters to bootstrap this. Can you help?

Numbers

September was our best month yet! We crossed $70k in donations!

We remain on track to raise $500k+ in donations in 2017.

We increased number of donations by 17% this month (compared to 4% last month). The Summer lull seems to be over, and Vue.js joining also helped.

September

  • 3,412 Backers: +14% (cumulative to date)
  • 226 Active collectives: +9%
  • $72k Total donations through the platform: +28% (Two large one-time donations that won’t carry over to next month)
  • $3,591 Total revenue: +28%
  • 35 active Hosts (95 total hosts)
  • 2,307 Transactions: +19%
  • Burn rate: $39k

August

  • 2,990 Backers: +8% (+11% between June and July)
  • 211 Active collectives: +12% (-6%)
  • $56k Total donations through the platform: +35% (+5%)
  • $2.8k Total revenue: +38% (+5%)
  • 86 Hosts (29 active)
  • 1,943 Transactions (+5%)
  • $27k Burn rate (Aseem on leave)

News

- Cities are Open Collectives — Pia spoke at OuiShare Fest about “Why we need to define a new social and economic unit to enable us to fully operate in this world.”

- We hosted a great Webinar with Sean Larkin: How Webpack Reached $400K+/year in Sponsorship & Crowdfunding

- Pia’s Zeit Day Berlin Talk is live: A new way of sustaining Open Source.

Don’t hesitate to reply to this email if you have any questions / feedback.