What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Final internal board pack by Nell Ashcombe dated 17 Jan 2024. It reports contracted annual recurring revenue of £252k, twelve customers and headcount of eleven at 31 Dec 2023. It states no service levels or prices.
What it is: an internal board pack for the quarter ending 31 Dec 2023, prepared by the CEO. It says it gives "the three numbers that matter most at this stage of the company".
Claims: contracted annual recurring revenue is £252k from executed order forms, with 12 customers and headcount of 11. Customers are counted only with a live contract, so a CRM "Customer" record without one is excluded.
Current: no. It is a position at the end of 2023 and has been overtaken by later events, so it should not be read as today's base. It sets no commitments for any customer.
Not settled: it gives no movement over the quarter, no cash or costs, and no customer health. It does not break the base down by tier, sector or renewal date. It lists risks (concentration, stale data, champions, team capacity) only in general terms.
Body
BG-Demo - Board Pack - quarter to 31 Dec 2023
Status: Final Prepared by: Nell Ashcombe, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Date of pack: Wednesday 17 Jan 2024 Period covered: the quarter ending 31 Dec 2023
Purpose of this pack
This pack gives the board the three numbers that matter most at this stage of the company, and says plainly what we know and what we do not yet know. It is deliberately short. We are a small team and the board should be able to read it in one sitting and argue with it.
Where a figure comes from a source, the source is named. Where the evidence does not show something, we say so rather than guess.
Headline numbers
| Measure | Position at 31 Dec 2023 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Annual recurring revenue (contracted) | £252k | Executed order forms |
| Customers | 12 | Executed order forms |
| Headcount | 11 | HR records |
How to read the table.
Read the whole document (5,636 characters)
- Annual recurring revenue is the contracted annual subscription value under executed order forms. It is not the CRM figure and it is not the invoiced figure. If the three ever disagree, the executed order form wins, and we will say so on the page.
- Customers means organisations with a live contract at the quarter end. A CRM record marked "Customer" with no live contract is not counted.
- Headcount is people employed by BG-Demo at the quarter end, as held by HR. It excludes anyone who has left.
Commentary
Revenue
Contracted annual recurring revenue stands at £252k across twelve customers. That is a small base, and every account matters to the total. The board should expect individual renewals and individual upgrades to move this number visibly, in both directions.
We earn twice from each customer: a fixed-fee implementation when they join, then an annual subscription that has to be renewed and, ideally, grown. This pack reports on the second of those, the subscription base. Implementation fees are one-off and are not part of the annual recurring revenue figure above.
Customers
Twelve customers is enough to learn from and few enough that we know each one by name. Our working view is that the value of B-Viz shows up when a customer's teams stop reconciling systems by hand and start asking B-Viz instead. We would like to be able to point to that for every one of the twelve. At the moment we can do it for some and not yet for all, and that is a gap we own.
This pack does not break the customer base down by tier, by sector or by renewal date. That analysis belongs in a later pack once the data is cleaner and the sample is larger.
Team
Headcount is eleven. The team is small enough that most people touch customers directly, which is useful for learning and risky for capacity. We would rather say that now than discover it when a customer is waiting.
What the evidence does not show
In the spirit of saying what happened and how we know, here is what this pack cannot tell the board:
- Movement over the quarter. The facts we hold here are the position at the quarter end. We are not presenting a bridge of new, expanded, contracted and lost revenue, and we will not infer one from the totals.
- Cash and costs. This pack covers revenue, customers and people only. Accounting decides what has been invoiced and paid, and that reporting sits outside this document.
- Customer health. We have not scored the twelve accounts here. Usage, tickets and conversations are read account by account, and nothing in this pack should be taken as a statement that any customer is or is not secure.
Risks we are watching
These are stated in general terms, because we would rather be accurate than precise.
- Concentration. With a small number of customers, the loss of any one of them would be felt in the headline number. We treat each renewal as a commercial priority.
- Stale data. B-Viz is only as useful as the data beneath it. If a connector stops loading or records stop being indexed, the customer will feel the product has gone quiet before they tell us. We want to see that ourselves first.
- Champions. Value is lost when the person who championed B-Viz leaves and nobody can say what it is worth. We should know who the champion is at each customer and who would replace them.
- Team capacity. A small team serving a growing customer base needs to protect time for onboarding and for adoption, not only for new sales.
Opportunities
- Customers who are heavy users are the natural candidates for more users, more connectors or a move up a tier. We should find them through usage, not through hope.
- Every customer who can describe in their own words what changed in their Monday meeting is a reference and a renewal that is easier to win.
- Writing down the value case for each account, in plain language, is cheap and helps both renewal and expansion.
Asks of the board
- Please challenge the three headline numbers and the definitions behind them. If the definitions are wrong, we would rather change them now, while the base is small.
- Tell us which additional measures you want to see in the next pack, and we will say honestly whether we can support them with evidence.
- Share any introductions or experience on retaining and growing a small, concentrated customer base.
Next steps
| Action | Owner |
|---|---|
| Confirm the definitions of annual recurring revenue, customers and headcount with the board | Nell Ashcombe |
| Review every customer's champion and value case, account by account | Nell Ashcombe |
| Agree the content of the next board pack with the board | Nell Ashcombe |
Best, Nell