We've been quiet for some time while we "worked on ourselves," but we're still here, growing, on the heels of profitability, and our technology is mostly behaving itself.
Acquired a New Client Venue.
The highlight of our quarter is our expansion to two venues. Starting March 26th, we've added Tuesday nights at Charann's Tavern to our roster. We kicked off with socials to gauge interest and expand our local network. Our inaugural Speed Dating event in Tampa is set for May 14th. The reason we waited as long as we did to add a second location is we wanted to hit two benchmarks, a reliable app, and positive gross profit. Therefore a second venue must mean...!
Strongly Encouraging Financial Performance
We define gross profit for managerial accounting purposes as gross revenue minus direct marketing costs, those that scale to drive volume like Facebook, but not static costs that don't scale like our website. We had a near miss in November followed by 3 straight months of positive gross profit proving our potential to grow with scale. March was also a near miss due to a series of "learning experiences" to be discussed later. Our ability to finish so close to a positive number despite setbacks is still very encouraging. Valentine's Day fever drove us to crush February and top out over $900 from our single venue.
Consistent App Performance
Our app continues to perform admirably, for both social mixers and speed dating with no major hiccups reported. We've also made creating a profile and checking in to an event a lot more user-friendly and eliminated known issues requiring technical intervention. Our next project is to enhance its functionality for socials by introducing a favorites feature and using AI to optimize conversation topic matches to show the most similar users at the top of the guest list.
Another tech-related milestone was the implementation of a membership system on our website. This allows for a more personalized experience and streamlines the checkout process, setting the stage for tighter integration with our app.
Why did March go Wrong?
Our biggest setback stemmed from a canceled speed dating event targeting the 30-45 age group. This age group has been a tar pit every time we have attempted, but riding high from 3 straight months of success, we became overconfident and gave it a try anyway. Pre-sales started very low and the decision was made to cancel the event midweek. After we started the cancellation process but before we could finish it, sales started to pick up. Even with some of our channels already shut down, we achieved our minimum for a go. The lesson learned is that we need to be in a much more solid position to take this risk again and that it's not over til it's over. Canceling rather than waiting to see what last-minute sales would be like proved the wrong decision.
At The Study, our previous arrangement for socials proved unsustainable for the venue. In March, we experimented with a system where we charged $5 a person instead of being paid per person by the venue. As a result, attendance, and more importantly for our ability to promote much higher grossing speed dating events from our contact list, registrations plummeted. After reevaluating, we've renegotiated terms to maintain free events at a reduced per-person fee.
Thank you for your continued support and confidence in Maka Connect.
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