From 25k to 45k/Month: Trying to Build the Company We Wished for as Employees

I have deep admiration for entrepreneurs with a clear vision of their goals, especially those dreaming big about creating innovative products that change the world.

But let’s be real — it took me two and a half years to develop a clear vision for WP Umbrella and what it should become. About time, right?

About six months ago, I shared our second year in review with you, highlighting how we went from $12K to $25K per month in six months. We also discussed the challenges of growing from two founders to a small team of four, and the importance of documenting everything we do.

Fast forward to today: we’ve almost doubled our monthly revenue and team size, and so many things have changed in how we operate.

I’d say that WP Umbrella is becoming a real, yet unique, company—the kind we wished for when we were employees and the kind we aspire to have as customers. We’re doing everything we can to make this a reality.

Building Our Company Culture

Operating a fully remote company with six people across different time zones and cultures is a challenge. Autonomy and ownership are essential, but balancing this without becoming a “mercenary” company is crucial.

As the CEO of WP Umbrella, I strive to hire people with the right mindset: kindness, ownership, and goodwill, in addition to the hard skills they need to do their job. I aim to bring together a diverse set of personalities so that we are not all alike, and diversity can fuel what we do.

Our company culture is built on freedom, ownership, kindness, and goodwill. As I told the team during our first startup retreat in the Alps, it’s not the founders who define company culture—it’s the employees (though I really dislike that word).

We’re at a pivotal moment, having hired bright minds and seasoned professionals. It’s time for the founders to pass on leadership roles and operational responsibilities to these great minds.

We are not a VC-funded company, so our team members don’t have equity, and the end goal isn’t to sell the company. We’re on this journey to create an awesome product with fantastic people.

My main concern, alongside customer satisfaction, is ensuring our team members feel accomplished and understand that our ultimate goal is to add value to our customers in everything we do—product, marketing, support.

This way, we can match the love and strength our customers show us on G2, Facebook, or when they contact our customer support department.

Organizing Our First Startup Retreat

We organized our first startup retreat in Serre Chevalier, en route between Lyon and Torino, where WordCamp Europe (which we were sponsoring) was taking place. This was definitely a “work hard, play hard (and eat a lot of cheese)” moment.

During the retreat, we defined the roadmap for Q3/Q4 and had many open discussions on everything we do. It was a fantastic opportunity to reshuffle the cards with fresh perspectives and onboard new team members (we added two people in June, growing from 4 to 6).

As a product led growth company where customer support department is the most important thing, discussing the product roadmap was the most efficient way for me to onboard these new team members. It was a good opportunity to delve into everything we do, and everything that we will be releasing before the end of the year.

Besides work, this was a fantastic moment for the team to bond, and I was happy to see friendship happening and team spirit rising.

Not everything was perfectly organized, but this was a memorable first start-up retreat that none of use we will never forget. On a personal note, I was glad I could show the team the place I live in most part of the year.

Product Updates

In the past six months, our changelog has been quieter than usual. We’ve however managed to release:

• The ability to exclude updates to prevent breaking websites.
• A new alerting center to ensure you don’t miss plugin vulnerability or downtime alerts.
• The ability to invite team members and collaborate.
• A brand new dashboard to boost your productivity.
• The option to use multiple sending domains for reports, showcasing different brandings.

We’ve slowed down the pace of product updates to focus on improving WP Umbrella’s reliability. These behind-the-scenes enhancements are crucial to accommodate the thousands of new websites that will join WP Umbrella in the coming months.

We’ve also spent countless hours developing new backup technology, allowing us to move out of Google Cloud, encrypt your backups, and store data on our own servers in France, ensuring even stricter GDPR compliance. This new technology will also enable us to create new differentiators in our backup and restoration processes in the future.

The era of quick and dirty is over. We now have a staging environment to test updates since February—no more cowboy updates on Friday evenings. While a small part of me misses it, this change is best for our 2,500+ users.

WP Umbrella in Numbers

We’ve reached some exciting milestones over the past two and a half years that we’re thrilled to share:

• Revenue Milestone: In July, we celebrated hitting half a million in revenue.

• Widespread Adoption: WP Umbrella is now installed on over 30,000 websites, something we never imagined reaching so quickly.

• Global Reach: Our biggest market is the US, with France following closely behind. 🇫🇷

We’ve reinvested all our earnings back into the company, focusing on our team and adding as much value as possible for our users. This approach feels right, and I’m confident it will continue to pay off.

• Customer Loyalty: Keeping our customer churn rate between 2% and 4% is a major win and shows we’re on the right track.

• Customer Happiness: With a 94% happiness score, it’s clear our efforts in product development and support are resonating well.

These numbers are more than just metrics; they represent the trust and satisfaction of our growing community.

So What’s Next for WP Umbrella?

We’ll continue transitioning from the most chaotic bootstrapped company ever to a more structured one, delegating leadership to people who are better than Thomas and I at what they do.

We’re also about to release some of the most requested features from our public roadmap, and in the coming months we will add so many cool stuff to WP umbrella, including:

• Safe update.
• Visual regression monitoring.
• Domain expiry monitoring.
• A new reporting feature interface and the option to send email reports to your clients. (For those who prefer PDFs, you’ll also be able to add a custom cover).
• Integration of updates made outside of WP Umbrella into reports.
• A new backup interface to better reflect our new backup technology and the introduction of a fair use policy for backups.
• A new 2FA authenticator so you can get your 2FA code, not just via email.
• Scheduled updates, allowing you to put your WordPress maintenance on autopilot in combination with our safe update feature.

Thank you for being an essential part of our journey and for your continued support.

I’m incredibly excited about what the future holds and can’t wait to share our new features with you.

Your feedback is invaluable to us, so please keep sharing your thoughts and suggestions. Together, we can continue to improve and build something amazing.