They certainly have come along way. From idea illumination, to raising a successful funding campaign, to now. Solid foundations and a profitable business.
This team is a group of pioneers. Their model of funding a open source community driven and developed project via a non profit company as opposed to a governance board seeded by commercial interests is truely unique. They are a non profit but they aren't a charity either. In this respect they are more like the Google's etc that deliver services which matter to us powered by open source tools on the backend. The exception is that in this instance we know what their intentions are from the very beginning. No alterior motives. The software may be free but they remove the hassle via a service that the community pays for directly.
They are transparent about their motives as well as financing and operations.
Once they remain true to the people above and the core commitments their future will shine bright.
Continuous Improvement
What I like most about these guys is that are constantly learning. They listen, experiment and tweak.
It isn't just love of technology. They mean business. Serious business. Applying equally as much passion to running and improving the operation as they do to refining the technical bits of the product.
What They've Accomplished in 3651/4 Days
- Unique visitors: 3,284,749
- Total downloads: 504,949
- Total users: 257,307
- Ghost(Pro) subscribers: 3,675
- Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): $29,177
- Annual recurring revenue (ARR): $350,124
- Average revenue per user: $7.94
- Churn rate: 4.87%
- Team size: 6 people across 3 continents
Follow the Lead
We should all learn from the example that they have set and study how they made it happen. I sure will. You can find more details in their blog post.
Cheers to Ghost!
Nneko Branche.