Speed Wobble

Dear Investors,

I wrote the original version of this preamble during our first ever company-wide offsite. I've been working on the details of it for a few weeks now but the final thing is a challenge to put together. I wanted to call it Speed Wobble - we moved fast and shit got rocky for a bit there but we've stabilized. We're not going to crash and burn. It’s just a wobble!

I felt like I could explain that concept beautifully and humorously with an analogy that would connect with our team and fire them up. I tried to rush it out while also meeting more than 30 of the most important people in my life. Of course it sucked.

I never had a chance.

Turns out they didn't need it anyway. This offsite is one of the most important decisions we've made. There's real magic here. I wanted to get them excited but they've done it to me instead. Oh, and they're funny. Like, all of them. I can't remember the last time I've laughed so hard.

This is the team that ensures we change culture. I'm going to focus on spending time with them instead of fixing this. For those reading this for the first time, the bad parts have been removed. You missed something truly stupid, this is what you get for having not subscribed sooner.

Welcome to the directors cut.

A Look at Q3 - Q4 of 2022

Embracing the new normal post-Q4 RIF

• Personnel costs $432k /month reduced by ~ 30%
• Operational costs $45k /month reduced by ~ 56%
• Marketing costs $25k /month reduced by ~ 78%
• Content costs $50k /month *New
• EBITDA at ($552k) /month
• Runway until June 2025 ~ 31 months

The second half of 2022 was a considerable maturation period for Metafy, involving necessary restructuring as well as considerable success in establishing ourselves in new titles. With the changes to the market, our need to increase revenue has become a core focus. During this period, we have continued to invest in product development in order to support our extensive ecosystem play so that we are increasing our defensibility and benefitting from our robust network effects. Speaking of, let's get to the point.

We saw strong growth in all our core metrics in the second half of 2022:

H2 Breakdown (relative to H1):

• Unique Active Experts: 1,077 → 1,399 (+30%)
• Unique Active Students: 11,166 → 14,849 (+33%)
• Booked Sessions: 24,763 → 35,524 (+43%)
• GMV / Revenue: $1,369,276 → $1,946,167 (+42%)
• Cash on hand: $13,109,203
• Monthly burn: $890k (does not reflect Q4 layoffs)

We’ve also seen strong retention in the amount of money our experts are making on the platform. Our cohorts for Q4 2022, in particular, have shown strong growth in their earnings across their months on the platform:

Product

The last half of 2022 was all about unpacking the vision and figuring out how we actually pull it off. No fancy footwork, no big surprises, just a steady stream of "oh yeah, that's what we need" moments. The first piece of that long-term vision, Memberships, will be falling into place in late Q1, early Q2.

Bring your eyeballs as close to the screen as you're legally allowed and sneak yourself a peek of what's up next.

Memberships

Quality is now the new quantity.

This is the very reason so many have begun flocking to Metafy. They’re looking for something deeper than mediocre content shelled out by creators trying to hit their weekly quota to make ends meet.

Memberships is how we ensure the greatest minds in gaming are being paid in a way that could enable them to get off the hamster wheel. The money earned from members directly supports the individuals and communities within them. We share the wealth. Everyone benefits.

The first offering for memberships will be video content, with a focus on ensuring that when a Partner is featured in platform content they're not only earning a cut from royalties and referrals, but they're also getting the opportunity to promote their own session business.

We help drive interest, and capture the upside of that interest.
Aligned incentives are a beautiful thing.

Session Summaries

Remember video session summaries? If you don't, good. I'm glad. That was my idea, and it sucked, but it's worth remembering that was Past Josh and not Present Josh. Past Josh sucks, everybody knows that.

We zapped Video Session Summaries with our Product Offering Obseletion and Dissapation Laser (POODL). Trust me. That feature is dead. The POODL has bark and bite.

From the radioactive goo left over, we've formed Written Session Summaries. Since launch, we've seen a 5x increase in submissions and a whopping 15% increase in retention. It might be a healthy fear of the POODL, or maybe, just maybe, this shit just works better. Progress.

Top Mentor

The guys we pay lots of money to keep us from paying lots more money have informed us (multiple times) that we cannot under any circumstances threaten, harass or blackmail our users into being good coaches. In the face of this, we had no choice but to sell the contents of that 'warehouse' you, our investors, approved and go back to the drawing board.

Top Mentors is a new system the enables us to identify (and reward!) top performance among our coaches. We've been hearing a lot of noise about this positive reinforcement thing. Experts who achieve the coveted position of Top Mentor shall be heralded as gods among men. Their wisdom sought after from all corners of the world. Or at least we think they should be. In the meantime, they're getting a badge and premium placement within their game for that month.

The Stranger

I'm going to be honest, I don't know what the hell is going on with this thing. Nobody does. It just showed up mysteriously and started offering strange rewards to our Partners. We're hoping it's more ghost in the machine than eldritch horror, but more research is needed.

Just don't call it cute. For the love of all you hold sacred, do not call it cute.

From the Community

Here's some recent tweets that are entirely outside of our control. I’m speaking of the wonderful contributions the community has made of their own volition that have never been legally endorsed by Metafy in any way. There, legal team, are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?