Balance sheet S2 2022

The first in a series of Starfox development updates. There's no fuss here: we're sharing the good news, the bad news, the discoveries, the doubts and the successes:

• Starfox's growth

• Customer projects

• Team evolution

• Operational changes

Stable growth

Sales growth of +170% by 2022

And that's only natural, since I started Starfox Analytics on my own in 2021. Since this summer, Starfox has welcomed 3 new employees to meet our customers' needs.

Sales 2021 → 2022 by quarter

🚀 We reached a plateau ~ €30kin monthly revenues in Q3 2022, and should end the year at €310kin Sales following the arrival of the team in H2 2022.

Cumulative sales 2022 by quarter

Customer projects

Since 2021, we have been developing our relationships with digital agencies, who are excellent partners and influencers. They now account for over 50% of support requests.

In H2 2022, there will be some fine long-term projects for major accounts, but above all a lot of fixed-price projects for SMEs, where things are moving fast and having a major impact.

✅ 50 projects completed by 2022, and 14 missions currently underway.

Examples of projects for the second half of 2022 :

PSA Banque

Support in the study and choice of an alternative to Google Analytics in an international context.

Campsites

• Definition of requirements and Tagging Complete plan

• New Datalayer implementation and GA4 migration

• GTM optimization (from 12 to 3 containers)

• Server-side tag migration

• Setting up consent and CRO tools

3QTZ

Support in setting up media dashboards

• Sources: Microsoft ads, Google Ads, PowerBi, Meta

• Data reconciliation + target import

• Datastudio Dashboards

Viapresse

• Needs and KPIs workshops

• Ensure E-commerce continuity on Universal Analytics from a Datalayer on the GA4 model

• Implementation of activity management dashboards

Oney

Support in the study and choice of an alternative to Google Analytics in an international context.

• International collaboration and needs gathering

• Setting up Tealium x Piano Analytics

The team evolves

Starfox grew from 1 to 4 people in September 2022 to accommodate :

Trained as an engineer at Télécom Paris, followed by 5 years in IT consulting at Wavestone. Edward became Web Analytics Manager at Converteo for 4 years before joining Starfox, where he supervised, among other things, in-house R&D.

Ex-Michelin, Camille has a 360° vision and experience in SEA, SEO, SMA, CRO. Camille is an expert in tracking implementation and is also training as a Flutter engineer.

Trained as an engineer at the Institut National de Statistique et d'Economie, from which he graduated top of his class. Oussama is experienced in technical implementation and BigQuery queries.

In addition to the Core Team, we have set up a panel of independent experts as needed to absorb certain workloads or collaborate on subjects we haven't yet mastered.

Recruitment

We resumed the recruitment process in H2 2022 and Starfox will welcome 2 new senior profiles in Q1 2023.

🎯 2023 recruitment target
‍Between 5 and 10 senior profiles. Some very nice profiles are in the pipe to complete the team in S1 2023.

🚀 Join Starfox Analytics
‍Integrateour team of passionate experts! We're recruiting experienced data marketing profiles.

Skills development

To become the benchmark expert agency in the French market, we need to encourage ongoing training, anticipate technical and regulatory issues, and encourage knowledge-sharing between employees. To this end, we have taken the first steps:

• Access to Simo Ahava's online training courses

• Watch and R&D : setting up tools to measure the 20% of time dedicated to R&D

• Internal Wiki: creating our shared knowledge base

• Accepting missions on unknown stacks (e.g. Tealium/Piano)

"Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back"- Alvin Toffler

Internal organization

Since the beginning of the year, Starfox has succeeded in its first challenge of bringing together and financially supporting a small team of passionate experts around a common vision.

In S2 2022 we also established our values, and the implementation of best practices to achieve them.

A shared vision and team values

Our culture is guided by respect, transparency, collaboration and direct but benevolent feedback. We have an obsession with clear and precise communication with our customers and within the team. We avoid bureaucracy, but develop simple, efficient processes, and encourage continuous improvement.

💡 We recruit for a value fit, not a culture fit, to promote a diversity of talents, experiences and perspectives. We bring together a team from different cultures but with the same core values.

Launch of the first SFX Days!

For the moment, Starfox is 100% remote. Eventually, we'd like to open offices to give us even greater flexibility.

With the arrival of the team, we launched SFX Days, in September and November for the second edition. 3 days every 6 weeks for us to meet physically, in one place, to work together on internal subjects, both monitoring and R&D, predefined and voted on beforehand.

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💬 "One of the recent pleasant surprises is the feeling of closeness that seems to be shared between team members, despite the 100% remote. I think it's a reflection of our team cohesion."- Edouard de Joussineau (Starfox Analytics founder)

Still too little shared content

We communicated too little in S2 2022. Setting up processes and staffing the team at the end of the year were the priorities.

✅ Setting up a content publication schedule

✅ Setting up a Discord community

⚠️ A Discord community that's still not very active

First webinar in partnership with Malt Academy

Data collection has been divided by 3 in 2 years. The cause: Adblockers, native tracking prevention mechanisms in browsers and OSs, changes in European regulations (RGPD and ePrivacy). We're going to clear the ground with you and tackle the solutions that exist today. → Link to the webinar replay

Iterations on our internal processes

We put a lot of effort into organizing our internal operations.

💡 What if our business doubled tomorrow?

We organize operations and production tools as if we had twice the workforce, so we're always one step ahead.

"Luck favours the prepared " - Louis Pasteur

Among the components we have put in place for S2 2022:

• Daily morning standups

• Weekly R&D update

• Monthly feedback

• Operational time tracking

• Job templates (onboarding, offboarding, tagging plan, specifications, etc.)

• Handbook and documentation of internal procedures

• Onboarding process for new employees

The challenges for 2023

1. Establish healthy growth

Starfox is a 100% independent agency whose capital is held by a single partner, as well as all employees in the form of BSPCEs.

Being independent means slower growth, but also healthier growth. The team's challenge is to set up a virtuous system that will enable sustainable growth and a fulfilling environment for employees.

We're thinking about what to expect as Starfox grows. One of the remaining questions is profitability.

⚠️ How can profitable growth be maintained? Salaries will increase, the company will introduce new milestones representing additional costs (HR, Management etc.) which will jeopardize the viability of the project.

☝ Assumptions for 20231. Operational efficiencies (automation/standardization)2. Focus R&D on recurring revenue generation3. Avoid certain costs (external coaches rather than managers?)

2. Develop our reputation to attract top talent

1. Open the Inside Starfox blog. We're going to open a space to share our interesting content. On the program: customer case studies, wikis on technology and regulatory watch, recipes and open source code developed by Starfox, and much more!

2. Accelerating the innovation and R&D program. We're going to step up our R&D efforts by promoting collaborations. We expect to onboard a new technical collaborator in early 2023.

3. Growing the Discord community. Our ambition for 2023 is to grow the Discord support community. To achieve this, we've already reduced the number of channels and plan to liven it up with exclusive content.