2022 Fluvio Company Annual Report, Reflection and Lookahead
WRITTEN BY DEVON O’ROURKE, FOUNDER & MANAGING PARTNER
First-half strength in the technology market followed by a broadly unstable macroeconomic backdrop in the second half of 2022 led to a challenging, but resilient third year for Fluvio.
We believe in transparency, and while we are a private company with no obligation to report on performance, we have decided to provide the public with insight into our business for the second year in a row. Transparency serves as a mechanism for holding ourselves accountable. This report may be valuable for those that are interested in learning from our experience in order to more effectively build their own businesses, as well as those that are invested in our future as a client or partner. Ultimately, we believe sharing these details will help grow the product marketing, consulting, and technology ecosystems, and in turn, propel Fluvio forward in the coming year.
Key Metrics
1 Measured via Google Form surveys, NPS benchmarks - 100th percentile across all industries
2 Measured via monthly Gusto employee surveys
Highlights
In the first half of 2022, Fluvio continued to experience strong demand for our technology product marketing consulting services, with 2022 H1 revenue increasing 128% year-over-year before economic headwinds impacted our growth trajectory. While growth slowed in H2, our business proved to be resilient. We maintained our headcount and continued to invest (albeit with increased scrutiny/diligence) in business development and L&D initiatives. Ultimately, we finished 2022 with 25% year-over-year growth in our client base (as measured by Monthly Active Clients in December 2022 vs December 2021) and a 67% increase in revenue year-over-year (to over $2.1M). Our business was buoyed by strong client satisfaction and support (+82 net-promoter-score; 100th percentile across all industry benchmarks) leading to renewals, referrals, and network growth. The positive momentum during such a turbulent backdrop has shored up our leadership position within a niche space (product marketing consulting) that we believe is primed to grow in 2023.
Reflection
As the Managing Partner, I’ve personally dedicated time to review and reflect upon Fluvio’s performance in 2022 and have attempted to identify the key drivers behind our success in order to effectively plan for 2023 growth.
Inclusion & Diversity (I&D)
In 2022, we continued to invest in company culture and development. In March, we developed and released our Inclusion and Diversity Policy and set up frameworks to hold ourselves accountable, including pre-interview I&D surveying and bi-annual I&D employee surveying.
At Fluvio, inclusivity and diversity are fundamental to our mission. We believe that a work culture that is open, transparent, and all-embracing allows individuals and teams to work together more effectively, consequently making us more resilient and competitive. This belief is not limited to corporate placards and backend policy but exists within the everyday modeling and practice of the behaviors and mindsets exhibited by our leaders and employees. We strive each day to foster a culture where everyone feels safe contributing and bringing their real selves to work.
Why is establishing an inclusion and diversity policy important? We believe that an open, inclusive, and transparent culture allows individuals and teams to work together more effectively. All perspectives must be allowed, encouraged, and absorbed in order to make the most sound, resilient decisions for our business and our clients’ businesses. Additionally, we believe people are the most critical asset to our business; we must cultivate an environment that is attractive to a wide, increasingly diverse workforce in order to compete for top talent.
Learning & Development (L&D)
Offsites. While we have operated as a fully remote, distributed company since we began hiring two years ago, we were able to come together in person twice in 2022. These offsites (Austin and Denver) proved to be critical team-building opportunities that will pave the way for a future working model. Moving forward, we plan on holding annual or bi-annual offsites to gain alignment, build upon our culture, and workshop Fluvio’s future endeavors.
Individual L&D budgets. In addition to team offsites, we unlocked the budget for individual employee L&D opportunities, offering budget for online trainings, accreditations, and conference attendance/participation including Product Marketing Summits in New York, Denver, Austin, and Chicago. We were also excited to welcome our first intern to the team; Temitope Adaramoti joined us in July to learn the ins and outs of product marketing and has been instrumental in growing our LinkedIn presence, extending our voice in-market, and up-leveling our creative. Finally, our monthly Lunch & Learn series began incorporating outside, third-party subject matter experts such as CMOs, VCs, and Consultants, providing our team with alternative points of view on relevant topics.
Ultimately, our focus on hiring and up-leveling talent led to strong team growth in 2022, as we added two new roles to the company, offered one promotion, and finished the year with a 100% Employee Happiness Score (measured via monthly Gusto surveys) for the second consecutive year.
Product & Services Expansion
While continuing to focus on our core consulting business, we expanded into a suite of offerings in 2022 based on client and market feedback. With the addition of workshop and hiring services, Fluvio now offers a suite of products and services to help software and technology businesses scale more effectively and efficiently throughout each stage of their lifecycle.
Workshops. We now offer a collection of workshops for companies looking to define or refine their positioning, messaging, or marketecture and optimize their go-to-market strategy. Our workshops guide participants through a series of themed exercises that are designed to help cross-functional leaders ideate, and ultimately, align on foundational go-to-market elements.
Hiring (Fluvio Launchpad). Finding and attracting the right product marketers is challenging, even for the best companies and recruiting firms. Fluvio Launchpad helps clients safely find long-term success with their product marketing foundation by ramping up product marketing talent during the course of our consulting engagement and graduating them into a full-time position at its conclusion.
With this evolution, we are quickly becoming the firm that high-growth companies turn to with their most critical, strategic go-to-market challenges.
Partnership & Ecosystem Growth
Content & PR. In 2021, we found product-market fit and established a voice within technology and product marketing communities; in 2022, we focused on network expansion. We invested more heavily in content to educate and cultivate a follower base on LinkedIn resulting in a 68% year-over-year increase in followers to over 1,300. While we grew our network, press outlets (most notably Business Insider) began to cover our story, contributing to an increase in demand for our services. In late Q4, we launched our podcast, Embracing Erosion. Tapping our network, Embracing Erosion lets listeners inside the heads of product marketers, investors, and go-to-market leaders who tackle changes head-on and turn them into competitive advantages. Two months post-launch, the podcast has already reached listeners in nine countries and is showing early signs of success.
Partnerships. Partnerships help Fluvio establish brand awareness, grow pipeline, diversify revenue streams, and provide unique access to key players in our ecosystem. In 2022, we increased our focus and emphasis on partnerships – pursuing net new partners, renewing existing partners, and building a cross-selling motion with our clients. We started the year with two partnerships and closed the year with six, including a renewed partnership with Product Marketing Alliance and new relationships with industry leaders such as Klue (our podcast is now a part of their Compete Network) and Clozd.
Ultimately, high client satisfaction (as indicated by our NPS score of +82), increased exposure and perception attributed to content and PR, and partnership expansion led to pipeline resilience in 2022. Unlike most businesses, we are fortunate to continue to defer spending on advertising (including search ads) to sustain growth.
Lookahead
While we are excited about the opportunities ahead, we acknowledge the rather significant uncertainty and a potential recessionary economy will impact our growth prospects in 2023. We find confidence in the fact we accurately forecasted economic headwinds in 2022 during last year’s Fluvio Company Annual Report, Reflection & Lookahead that we deemed to be a natural correction from an inflated market. Thankfully, our business outlook proved correct (we were equipped to successfully handle this headwind).
Challenges
At this moment, I can't help but look around the ecosystem and both appreciate our success and attempt to plan for what may lie ahead. We continue to be in choppy waters and there is no way of knowing when they will dissipate – some are now planning for the tech recession to subsist through 2024. The stock market had its worst year since 2008 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq has performed the worst of the three indexes, losing ~33% on the year as investors rotated out of growth stocks amid rising recession fears. This bled into the private markets as well, with venture deals dropping dramatically from their 2021 highs alongside a projected further decline in startup funding in 2023 (according to PitchBook). Fortunately, we have focused on establishing a sustainable growth model from day one, not taking any outside capital to fund our business. Therefore, we need only to make minimal adjustments to our operating model which has been profitable since our inception. This puts us in an advantageous position, as most venture-backed businesses are forced to plan for survival over the next year and not for growth (VCs are now recommending their portfolio companies reduce burn in order to have enough capital to survive until 2025). However, we expect to continue to experience ups and downs that impact revenue forecasting and our ability to commit to full-speed growth initiatives. To prepare, we are going into 2023 with an elevated sense of caution and increased diligence in our decision-making processes on hiring and investments in our business.
Opportunities
While there are significant, undeniable headwinds forming as we enter 2023, we will remain opportunistic. There is a natural rebalancing underway and it's healthy; we believe we are uniquely positioned to not just withstand the current environment, but to win within it and rise as it subsides. It’s no secret that consulting firms generally perform well during recessions. While technology companies extend hiring freezes (or at least decelerate hiring) new products will continue to be built and launched, strategic challenges such as pricing and packaging will persist, every SaaS deal and dollar spent will be scrutinized, and the need for high-impact product marketing services will become paramount. Companies are beginning to think more creatively about how to utilize budgets to accomplish their goals without increasing full-time employee overhead.
With our commitment to investing in talent, growing sustainably via revenue and organic demand, generating and honing IP, and operating as a small, nimble team focused on tackling the most impactful GTM challenges – Fluvio is in a strong position to fulfill the needs of thousands of technology companies in the years ahead.
Final Outlook
Given Fluvio’s continued success and resilience throughout 2022, we are confident we are focusing on the right areas and will continue to prioritize hiring and up-leveling talent, refining our GTM Model and IP, and expanding our services and partnerships to elevate our brand and drive net revenue expansion in 2023.
About Fluvio
Fluvio is a consulting firm built for the realities of the modern technology business, in which speed and execution are non-negotiable.
Fluvio provides flexible consulting services to help software and technology businesses find product-market fit, establish go-to-market strategies, and deliver high-impact marketing campaigns. With niche experience operating within startups, global enterprises, and everything in between, we replicate proven product marketing techniques that excel in fast-paced, high-growth environments.
