First, our present for you!

Yes, it’s our anniversary, but you get the gift.. On our anniversaries so far, we have given our customers 10X discounts. It was 10% on first, 20% on second, 30% on third. I don’t know if we will do 100% discount on our 10th anniversary; but for the 4th, we certainly have 40% discounts for you!!

From now, till 18th Feb 2013, you get a flat 40% off on our products. We’ve already discounted the prices, so you don’t have to worry about coupon codes!

The Past…

Apps Magnet was the first professional grade, commercial extension developer for activeCollab. We’d been using activeCollab for a while and developed a reporting solution for our own needs. That was later released as Reports module for activeCollab on Feb 12, 2009. A month later, we launched PlannerX for Basecamp – based off a planning system we used in activeCollab ourselves. PlannerX was soon ported to activeCollab, and we kept moving forward from there on.

On our second anniversary, we released a series of videos. The first – “2 years of Apps Magnet: from zero to six figures” instantly became a hit – not just in activeCollab community, but also in other startup / tech circles.

The 4 Essential Skills for Entrepreneurship video too was termed “inspiring” by many viewers.

Do watch these videos if you haven’t already!

The Present & The Future…

We shared our 2013 Roadmap with you last month. And we are very much working on it. We released 5 product updates last week and are working on a lot more!

Time Reports Plus will soon merge with Reports Plus. Financial reporting will be added to Reports Plus too. Resource management work for Planning module is underway and we are getting closer to the kind of workflow we want from it.

The team is growing, support response time is coming down, and we are looking forward to a bright 2013!!

How has been your experience with us these four years?

Many of you have been with us for a good part of these four years. How’s been your experience? How have these four years been for you?

We’d love to hear your comments! Post them below!!

We did very well financially – almost three times of last year. We doubled our product offerings and almost doubled our daily customer acquisition numbers. Most importantly, we continued to win hearts of more and more customers.

On the other hand, our time lines were screwed up. We could not launch new products / updates we had planned. Things like updating our website, setting up a live demo for all of our products etc are still open.

But it’s been supremely rewarding. We’ve created a market that did not exist. We’ve pushed activeCollab forward. We’ve helped thousands of people manage their projects better. We’ve saved millions of dollars for people. We’ve made a difference.

And there are lessons I keep close to my heart. Practices that have given us this success and love from customers. Techniques that I’ve never shared before.

On this anniversary, I am going to share them with you. Practical ideas that you can apply in your business, in your projects, with your team to create unprecedented success.

Interested?

So what have we achieved in the last year? Here are some numbers.

Statistics

Y1 Revenue Breakup of Apps Magnet

• 9 products, plus some defunct and some under development!
• 850+ customers
• 55% customers purchased more than one product
• 300+ topics on our GetSatisfaction support forums, 340+ customers participating
• 2 main focus areas – activeCollab and Basecamp
• 28 product updates
• 2 People Team, both with day jobs (yes!)

I also did a revenue contribution breakdown. Planning module is our best selling product. activeCollab business gives us more than 80% revenues. But both our Planning tools – Planning module for activeCollab and PlannerX for Basecamp together claim 77% of the business. That is what gave us the success – solving one problem really well.

Thank you for your love and support. We couldn’t make it without you – our customers.

The year was eventful and I have many stories to tell. Like why we closed down our iPhone unit, why we are building only extensions and not full products, how I goofed up in one version of Planning module, and how my itch to know daily sales led to creation of Putler. Let me know if you would like to hear some!

Onward..

:Nirav