What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Final board pack from CEO Nell Ashcombe, issued 17 Oct 2023. It reports contracted annual recurring revenue of £150k, 8 customers and headcount of 9, all from contracts and accounting, with no forecast.
What it is: an internal board pack for the quarter ending 30 Sep 2023, prepared by Nell Ashcombe. It states that "Every figure here comes from the contracts and the accounting records, not from the CRM."
Claims: contracted annual recurring revenue is £150k under executed order forms, excluding one-off implementation fees. It also reports 8 customers with live contracts and 9 staff.
Worries named: concentration, evidence of value, and stale data from a connector that "quietly stops loading". The board is asked to note the numbers, discuss health reporting and agree a pipeline and renewals view in the next pack.
Not settled: the pack "does not forecast" and gives no pipeline view. It is also three years old at the as-of date, so it is a historic position and not the current one.
Body
BG-Demo - Board Pack - quarter to 30 Sep 2023
Status: Final Prepared by: Nell Ashcombe, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Date of issue: 17 Oct 2023 Period covered: the quarter ending 30 Sep 2023
Purpose of this pack
This is the board's view of where BG-Demo stands at the end of the quarter. It is deliberately short. The company is small, and the board should be able to read the whole thing in one sitting and know what is true.
Every figure here comes from the contracts and the accounting records, not from the CRM. Where the pack does not say something, that is because we do not yet have the evidence to say it well, and I would rather leave a gap than fill it with a guess.
Headline numbers
| Measure | At 30 Sep 2023 | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Annual recurring revenue (contracted) | £150k | Executed order forms |
| Customers | 8 | Live contracts at quarter end |
| Headcount | 9 | Employed staff at quarter end |
Three numbers, and they are the ones to hold the company to.
Annual recurring revenue
Read the whole document (4,861 characters)
Contracted annual recurring revenue stands at £150k at the quarter end. This is the annual value of subscriptions under executed order forms. It excludes the one-off implementation fees, which are fixed-fee and earned once when a customer joins.
Two things to keep in mind when reading it:
- It is a contracted figure. It says what customers have agreed to pay for the year, not what has been collected. Collections are for the finance review and are not restated here.
- With so few customers, each account is a large share of the total. One renewal moving either way is visible in the headline. We should read the number account by account, not as a trend line.
Customers
We have eight customers with live contracts. Each has its own B-Viz built and run inside its own Snowflake account, which is the part of the product we are proudest of and the part that takes the most care to deliver.
With eight customers, the right way to manage the book is to know every one of them personally. Each account has a named owner at BG-Demo, and I still sit in the exec-level conversations on the larger ones.
Team
Headcount at the quarter end is nine. The company is still a single room of people who all know what every customer is doing. That will not last, and the board should expect me to come back with a view on how we keep that closeness as we grow, rather than pretending it scales by itself.
Commentary
What is going well
- The product is in live use at eight customers, and the contracted base is on a footing we can describe plainly.
- The model works as designed. We earn once on implementation and then on the annual subscription, and the subscription is the part we have to keep renewing.
- The team is small enough that nobody is guessing about the state of an account.
What worries me
- Concentration. Eight customers means a single departure or a single champion leaving is a real event. Our biggest protection is knowing who the champion is at each customer and whether anyone else would speak up for B-Viz if they left.
- Evidence of value. Customers renew when their teams stop reconciling systems by hand and start asking B-Viz. We need to be able to show each customer, with their own usage, what that is worth to them. Today that case is made account by account and by conversation, not by a standard method.
- Stale data. B-Viz is only useful if the data under it is fresh. A connector that quietly stops loading is the most likely way we lose trust without anyone complaining.
What I am not claiming
This pack does not forecast. It does not set a target for the next quarter, and it does not give a view on pipeline. We do not yet have a pipeline record I would put in front of the board without checking it against the contracts. When we do, it will be in the next pack.
Decisions and asks of the board
- Note the headline numbers above as the company's position at the quarter end.
- Discuss how the board wants to see customer health reported while we are this small: one line per customer, or a short narrative on the few that matter most.
- Agree that the next pack will carry a proper pipeline and renewals view, built from the order forms and accounting, with the CRM treated as a claim to be checked.
Next steps
| Action | Owner | By |
|---|---|---|
| Review customer health account by account | Nell Ashcombe | Before the next board meeting |
| Draft the pipeline and renewals view from contracts and accounting | Nell Ashcombe | For the next pack |
| Bring a view on how the team and the way we work should change as headcount grows | Nell Ashcombe | For the next pack |
Sign-off
Issued on 17 Oct 2023 as the final version of this pack.
Best, Nell
Nell Ashcombe Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, BG-Demo