Moz has a tradition of sharing its financials (check out 2012 and 2013 for funzies). It's an important part of TAGFEE.
Why do we do it? Moz gets its strength from the community of marketers and entrepreneurs that support it. We celebrated 10 years of our community last October. In some ways, the purpose of this report is to give you an inside look into our company. It's one of many lenses that tell the story of Moz.
Yep. I know. It's April. I'm not proud. Better late than never, right?
I had a very long and extensive version of this post planned, something closer to last year's extravaganza. I finally had to admit to myself that I was letting the perfect become the enemy of the good (or at least the done). There was no way I could capture an entire year's worth of ups and downs—along with supporting data—in a single blog post.
Without further ado, here's the meat-and-potatoes 2014 Year In Review (and here's an infographic with more statistics for your viewing pleasure!):
Moz ended 2014 with $31.3 million in revenue. About $30 million was recurring revenue (mostly from subscriptions to Moz Pro and the API).
Here's a breakdown of all our major revenue sources:
Compared to previous years, 2014 was a much slower growth year. We knew very early that it was going to be a tough year because we started Q1 with negative growth. We worked very hard and successfully shifted the momentum back to increasingly positive quarterly growth rates. I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far. We still have a long ways to go to meet our potential, but we're on the path.
In subscription businesses, If you start the year with negative or even slow growth it is very hard to have meaningful annual growth. All things being equal, you're better off having a bad quarter in Q4 than Q1. If you get a new customer in Q1, you usually earn revenue from that customer all year. If you get a new customer in Q4, it will barely make a dent in that year, although it should set you up nicely for the following year.
We exited 2014 on a good flight path, which bodes well for 2015. We slammed right into some nasty billing system challenges in Q1 2015, but still managed to grow revenue 6.5%. Mad props to the team for shifting momentum last year and for digging into the billing system challenges we're experiencing now.
We were very successful in becoming more efficient and managing costs in 2014. Our Cost of Revenue (COR), the cost of producing what we sell, fell by 30% to $8.2 million. These savings drove our gross profit margin up from 63% in 2013 to 74%.
Our operating profit increased by 30%. Here's a breakdown of our major expenses (both operating expenses and COR):
Total operating expenses (which don't include COR) clocked in at about $29.9 million this year.
The efficiency gains positively impacted EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) by pushing it up 50% year over year. In 2013, EBITDA was -$4.5 million. We improved it to -$2.1 million in 2014. We're a VC-backed startup, so this was a planned loss.
One of the most dramatic indicators of our improved efficiency in 2014 is the substantial decline in our consumption of cash.
In 2014, we spent $1.5 million in cash. This was a planned burn, and is actually very impressive for a startup. In fact, we are intentionally increasing our burn, so we don't expect EBITDA and cash burn to look as good in 2015! Hopefully, though, you will see that revenue growth rate increase.
Let's check in on some other Moz KPIs:
At the end of 2014, we reported a little over 27,000 Pro users. When billing system issues hit in Q1 2015, we discovered some weird under- and over-reporting, so the number of subscribers was adjusted down by about ~450 after we scrubbed a bunch of inactive accounts out of the database. We expect accounts to stabilize and be more reliable now that we've fixed those issues.
We launched Moz Local about a year ago. I'm amazed and thrilled that we were able to end the year managing 27,000 locations for a range of customers. We just recently took our baby steps into the UK, and we've got a bunch of great additional features planned. What an incredible launch year!
We published over 300 posts combined on the Moz Blog and YouMoz. Nearly 20,000 people left comments. Well done, team!
Our content and social efforts are paying off with a 26% year-over-year increase in organic search traffic.
We continue to see good growth across many of our off-site communities, too:
The team grew to 149 people last year. We're at ~37% women, which is nowhere near where I want it to be. We have a long way to go before the team reflects the diversity of the communities around us.
Our paid, paid vacation perk is very popular with Mozzers, and why wouldn't it be? Everyone gets $3,000/year to use toward their vacations. In 2014, we spent over $420,000 to help our Mozzers take a break and get connected with matters most.
Also, we're hiring! You'll have my undying gratitude if you send me your best software engineers. Help us, help you. ;)
Last, but certainly not least, Mozzers continue to be generous (the 'G' in TAGFEE) and donate to the charities of their choice. In 2014, Mozzers donated $48k, and Moz added another $72k to increase the impact of their gifts. Combining those two figures, we donated $120k to causes our team members are passionate about. That's an average of $805 per employee!
Mozzers are optimists with initiative. I think that's why they are so generous with their time and money to folks in need. They believe the world can be a better place if we act to change it.
That's a wrap on 2014! A year with many ups and downs. Fortunately, Mozzers don't quit when things get hard. They embrace TAGFEE and lean into the challenge.
Revenue is growing again. We're still operating very efficiently, and TAGFEE is strong. We're heads-down executing on some big projects that customers have been clamoring for. Thank you for sticking with us, and for inspiring us to make marketing better every day.
Classic example of Transparency!!
I think MOZ should knock the door of IPO now.. People will gonna be crazy to invest here :)
Congratulations to the whole MOZ team!!
PS: I'm sure, I'm not the only one who is thinking to be a part of MOZ after seeing $420,000 spending on paid holidays :)
We're hiring. :)
Paid Paid FTW!
Seriously, we take care of the (1) the people, (2) the product, and (3) the profits, in that order.
Yup but mostly in engineering section but but I'll keep an eye on this particular page now :)
No one discloses their subscriber no. with precise no. particularly there are many more competitors. Hats of to Moz and its management. Its figure for fund raising and Moz made it public for people like me to encourage potential subscribers.
So you somehow managed to cut over $4.2 MILLION off of "cloud services" in one year and never mentioned it once. Anyone using cloud services on a growing website would sure love to know how you did that.
It's not a secret. :)
I talked about our move from public to private cloud in last year's annual report. You can read more about the technical details on our dev blog.
We've talked about it a few times previously - check out this post from 2013 and this one from Geekwire with some more detail. Long story short - we built our own datacenter starting in late 2012 to early 2013, and finally wrapped up most of that in 2014. As a result, we were able to bring down hosting/processing costs significantly, especially for Mozscape indices.
Congratulations to the entire team Moz as deserved by these spectacular results and provide great value.
Fun reading this :)
Like- "oh, you have an interest in SEO since you are following MOZ, right?"
Nope, I have an interest in MOZ, separately from SEO :)
Keep it up guys!
Nice to see Moz opening their books, albeit it in infographic format. Michael makes a good point - it would great if we could see projections for 2015 and where Moz is after Q1 in regards to these projections. Glad to hear that Moz following is growing, you guys do offer a really good service and obviously take care of your own personnel as well!
We're on target for our Q1 goals, with the exception of cash and operating expenses. We actually didn't spend as much as planned, so we have more cash than we thought we'd have.
For most people, this would be good news. :)
It's actually kind of a bummer. We didn't hire as many engineers as we hoped. It's great that we're saving money, but I'd much rather be executing faster on strategies. We've got some product ideas and improvements in the pipeline that we need more help building.
Please, please, please send us your most amazing technical talent so that we can make more great stuff for the community!
Regarding 2015 forecast, we do an annual budget that the board approves each year. That's good governance. However, it's not really what we use to operate the business. We have a rolling forecast that we update regularly based on conditions on the ground. That's what we use to operate the business. In general, we're hoping to grow between 25%-35% this year. We're also planning on spending more to fuel 2016 growth (mostly engineering headcount). We're aiming to keep our cash burn around 10% of revenue. Hope this helps!
Our CFO, Glenn, is working on some updated projections after a slightly-better-than-expected Q1. I shared an excerpt from his email to the board of directors here on Google+ if you're interested, and will try to share those projections when we get them, too.
For anyone reading wondering what TAGFEE is you can find out here - https://moz.com/about/tagfee
The classical example of transparency. Good to know the hard work of MOZ team. Good Luck for the Year 2015!.
Love the transparency! This is such an improvement - just from 2012 to 2014 you guys have increased massively! Very strong year. I can't wait to see the 2015 numbers as I think they're going to frankly blow these away.
Glad to see the amazing progress of Moz, seeing the stats I wish I could be the part of this superb organization.
Great insight.
Would have been nice to see a prognosis what you would expect 2015 to happen - just for comparison in the next annual report ;)
May I ask for some examples what you donated for? Just my personal interest. :)
In April of this year we donated to the following organizations:
Broadway Cares - Equity Fight AIDS
Casa for Children
Children International
Doctors without Borders
Humane Society
Planned Parenthood
Seattle Children's Hospital
United Way of King County
Velocity Dance Center
WACAP
Washington Trails Association
Sarah would have more info on the full year of 2014. But that's a good example!
I'm always happy to hear good news about Moz. Congrats!
This is fascinating. You are paragons of virtue, and particularly so in the internetland where most companies are very closed about their activities and motivation. You are an inspiration to us all.
Congrats MOZ ! :D Moz actually always gave best opportunity for researching. Why i am saying that point (opportunity), As a marketer i have to talk about business consultancy with people. Moz is a live example for referring that place. They provides our courage for startup and finally thanks Sarah Bird for this decent post. :)
Great to hear that you are going in the right direction. I think that as a startup and with the challenges you have, the high quality in your products and service is outstanding.
Keep up the good work!
Paid Paid FTW!
Seriously, we take care of the (1) the people, (2) the product, and (3) the profits, in that order.
WOW ! Interesting Stats.. Who said that SEO is not a growing business? All the best for coming years !
Congrats and really you deserve that, the way you are updating us about SEO is awesome. Thanks for everything.
waooo, its a great review of 2014. Dear Moz you are doing excellent you deserve all appreciation. congrats whole moz team. :)))
Hi Sarah and Rand,
Love this post and really happy to see your growth. Spent the whole morning once again reading your journey. The past reports, the vc mishaps and success and your superawesome story. I had come across the below figures in the VC post are the metrics still the same or are there any updated one? I'm doing a informal study on why churn happens in SaaS products and can it be prevented was curious if the metrics is the same or has improved.
"On an average weekday, ~150 marketers take a free trial Approximately 56% of those 150 free trials will convert into paid memberships Of those, ~40% cancel their membership in the first 3 paying months The remaining 60% (~50 out of our 150) keep their PRO subscription 13+ months on average (meaning the monthly cancellation rate is ~2.5%) Approximately half of those (~25) retain PRO membership for 18+ months"
It's really interesting how personnel costs have trebled in two years yet recruitment costs have dropped by 75% during the same time period. How has your recruiting process changed from 2012 to 2014? Is it the case that you're using less agencies now, hence the drop in recruiting costs? If so, how are you recruiting these days instead?
The personnel costs include health insurance, tuition reimbursement, coaching, paid paid vacation, and other benefits. We've increased these costs and have not increased the pace of hiring. In fact, 2012 was the most hiring we've ever done in a year. So, the numbers make sense because we're paying more to support our workforce and did not increase headcount at the same rate.
We've got a ton of open jobs now though. So I expect that recruiting number will jump up in 2015. :)
Makes sense - thanks Sarah! :-)
Love the detail. Honestly. Thats amazing. Keep up the good work.
Any chance you'll introduce a "basic" package for newbies? The $99/month standard package is a bit hard to justify. At a $1,000/year you're pricing a bunch of potential customers out of the market who may only need a few tools/services and therefore can't justify the current entry level package.
very interesting these statistics
Thanks for sharing, Sarah. It's really interesting to see where Moz's revenue is generated. Same goes for your expenses. I can say I'll never complain about my annual payment processing fees. $914K... Ouch!
Impressive numbers. I've been a follower of your company since 2006. With the all the tools you provide, you guys deserve it!
I was surprised about 1 million for payment processing. Wouldnt it be interesting to hire a specialized firm to optimize or reduce that figure? (I dont know where to find that). Also using something like Bitcoin (few people would use it in your business, or maybe many), you could save if you give an incentive. You would also test a future "payment system" (Yes I like descentralized tech) :)
$20,827,194 on Personnel / 149 Mozzers = ~$140k average salary. Seems like a great place to work!
Well, remember that's "all-in" personnel costs, so things like health insurance (which is very expensive) and other benefits are included. But, yeah, Moz does a solid job of living up to the *Generosity* in TAGFEE.
Hi Sarah,
I love to read the annual report. Thanks for posting. This year you guys did not include traffic to site information. Do you mind sharing this with us?
Thanks Carla
Hi Carla, we have a graph of organic traffic growth on the Moz 2014 infographic, but not in the post. Is that what you're looking for?
Gah! Sorry about that, I thought we'd pulled that over to the post, as well -- it must not have saved! I'll see if I can't get that fixed, and in the meantime, Carla, if you have any specific questions let me know -- there are no secrets here. =)
Update: Okeydoke, it's now been inserted above. Thanks for noticing that!
Here MOZ replaced "confidential" tag with "public".
Report depicts enthusiasm of entire MOZ team. Probably Spam Score feature will play significant role in next year's annual report.
Well, as I started to read this, I felt jealous.. I don't know why even I'm just a beginner blogger but my crave for becoming a popular rich blogger is just endless. Well, good luck Moz for 2015!
Congrats Moz for Completing 10 years.
Nice to see Moz you are growing, you really desirve this.... May you grow more rapidly.....
First, thank you so much for your transparency and as a long-time follower of Moz I am happy to see you guys experiencing some success in the face of many challenges.
Second, question:
When you say "organic traffic was up by 26%" -- does that mean ALL inbound organic traffic (social & search, maybe referral/direct?) or is that strictly a search engine traffic number?
If it is all channels, which one is driving your YoY growth: social or search engine?
Any insight you can provide on that number and which channels are driving that growth would be greatly appreciated!
Organic search traffic. Social is tracked separately. Here's a very rough look at our social traffic in 2014 (may not include all referrers) https://i.imgur.com/g4nbGe3.png
Awesome, thanks Cyrus!
Given that you are struggling to recruit engineers and you are one of many similar products in a space rife with continual disruption, how concerned are you that ~89% of your revenue comes from a single product?
Question from that of a curious and enquiring mind only!
Give 'em time Rand is gonna build an honest search engine
Not very concerned.
It's important to remember that EVERYONE is struggling to recruit engineers. This is a universal experience for anyone trying to build software, especially at scale and working with big data. We store and process hundreds of Terabytes of data and are moving to the multi Petabyte range. The number of people that have experience with the scale and complexity of our products, and the size of our data sets, is pretty limited. Everyone has the same challenge we do.
While we have one subscription product today, it's actually made of up of smaller applications (followerwonk, OSE, Q&A, Moz Analytics etc), and we've got more applications on the way. :)
Yes we have challenges; We also have big opportunities. I believe in the Moz team and in the strength and growth of the wider digital marketing market. We will be successful, but certainly not without encountering and overcoming many challenges along the way. And that's okay. It keeps us learning and growing.
So, I'm not 'concerned' in a significant way. I am invigorated. In the immortal words of 30 Rock's Jack Donaghy, "Business doesn't get me down, it gets me off." :)
If you're looking for easy money, I do not recommend VC-backed startup in a dynamic market. :)
Request with Suggestion for Growth of MOZ, U need to Open Branches in Other countries with there locality Staffs....
E.g: If you open one branch in India like Google, Yahoo & Bing did and you can charge pro tools in Indian Rupees instead of $, then U can easily grow your revenue from India...You can pay the staffs in Indian Rupees it is also cust-effective for MOZ.....
Impressive numbers! Congrats on the strong year!
Congratulations. You give your best to the community. Your success is well deserved.
That graph about unique organic visits is interesting. Trends are very similar in 2013 and 2014. What's the cause for those spikes in March and September-October?
One more question, have you thought to build your own search engine?
Hello Sarah,
I am too late to comment, but have seen very good numbers here. I would like to congrats you and the whole team.
As almost company cares about their-self, products, profits, etc. But its great to see that moz cares about people as well, its great to be a fan of Rand as I am always.. :)
Anyway, good job Sarah..
I think it's very honest to publish these annual reports. All the best to the whole team!
Moz team you deserve for it
How much did you feed EVIL Google?
Yea I thought as much ...