TelemetryDeck Fall Update 2025
This is about mental health, numbers, and our roadmap.
October 3rd is Germany’s Day of Unity, marking the country’s reunification. For me, it’s personal—I was born in the former East, moved West after the Wall came down, and built my life there. Even a quarter-century later, differences between East and West remain—economic, demographic, political—and they’re closely tied to my own family’s story. That’s why it matters to me to keep this part of history alive.
For everyone else: Happy release day of The Life of a Showgirl ✨
Why do we believe that sharing our perspective adds value?
Daniel and I want to share another update on how the company, the product, and we ourselves are doing. These seasonal updates have become a tradition we really value. You can read older posts here.
We learn a lot from founder stories, indie developer diaries, podcasts, and posts about both successes and setbacks, and that’s why we like to share what’s on our minds, too. After all, there are hardly any companies out there, whose founders meet over their shared interest of societal and political issues, begin their journey as a startup, dream of VC money, and then decide to bootstrap (with the support of some business angels).
It has now been five years since the initial idea, four years since we came together as a team, and three years since the company was officially registered as a limited liability company. 2025 is the year in which we will achieve profitability with the analytics product we founded as an EU-based, data protection-friendly alternative for developers. What a journey!
A few numbers
In addition to Daniel (CTO) and myself (CEO), we now have two other part-time employees working in data science and sales, as well as a team of three to five freelancers (depending on the workload) and two highly skilled helpers who receive company shares in return for their work. We are incredibly happy to have found a diverse and international group of fantastic people who believe so strongly in the vision of TelemetryDeck that they are willing to devote some of their time to us. Yes, they get paid for it, but they could get that elsewhere too…
It’s amazing what our small team gets done together. Today we’re looking after almost 4,000 accounts and processing over 11 billion data points. Every month, about 120 new customers join us, and we love keeping everyone in the loop with our newsletters.
Most of the chatter happens on Mastodon, where nearly 800 people follow along. In August, we solved 52 support tickets — each one a chance to connect with our community. And we’re especially happy that almost 20% of our customers log in at least once a quarter to dive into their data.
In 2024, we narrowly missed the milestone of €100,000 in sales. This year, we will easily reach it, but that also means that new sales tax rules now apply to us, and we now need a representative in Switzerland of all places. Everything has two sides…
What we’ve learned so far in 2025
In 2025, Daniel and I set out to attend more events to see how they’d impact B2B sales. The brutal truth: They drained more than they delivered. Conferences and trade shows had almost zero impact on our revenue and eat up huge amounts of time, and for a small team like ours, that has real consequences. Add to that the toll on our social batteries — we may hide it well, and we’ve met fantastic people, but we’re founders who feel more at home behind a desk than on stage.
We realized we were (work-wise) the happiest back when we started TelemetryDeck during lockdown: working from home, talking asynchronously with developers worldwide. So we’re going back to basics — focusing on social media, trying out new content formats, and fine-tuning our funnels.
Of course, we still attend events (check out our list) and sometimes even give talks. But we no longer let FOMO guide our choices. Instead, we pick what we genuinely enjoy, because that matters too. That’s the beauty of being a founder: we get to build a company that works the way we do.
The second big topic for us is subscriptions. Churn has risen slightly (though at an excellent 3% on average) and more customers now cite “too expensive” as their reason for leaving. Price sensitivity is growing, while our own costs keep rising as we invest in performance, team growth, and stable jobs.
You may have noticed we’ve started limiting accounts more strictly once monthly quotas are exceeded. We’re still fine-tuning the balance of free features and volume, but under the hood a lot has changed: we can now offer custom plans for larger customers, and much of the manual work has been automated, including the new warning emails. As always, we’d love your feedback.
A glimpse on our roadmap
The most important things on our roadmap are about our users. We are making things easier for everyone using SSO. Very soon, you’ll be able to log in to TelemetryDeck with GitHub and Okta.
We’ve been searching for a better way to keep you informed about new features, required updates, and best practices right inside the dashboard. The old warning icon in the corner just wasn’t doing the job — most people overlooked it (our mistake, not yours).
That’s why we’re going to introduce a new tile system. It makes sure important information is visible and easy to access, so you always have what you need to get the most out of TelemetryDeck and optimize your app.
Of course, planning for growth also means we’ll need to convert more free users into paid plans. To make this possible, some features will gradually be limited. The system is already in place and will soon apply to new accounts, while the timeline for existing ones is still open. We’ll be sure to let you know well in advance of any changes.
We are also thinking about bringing the TelemetryDeck iOS app back to life. If you are one of the people who reached out to us in the past or if you just wish, we would offer an app, please reach out and let us know what exactly you expect from a TelemetryDeck app, feature-wise. We’ve got a theory we’d love to either prove or debunk…
On funding
Over the past two years, we raised convertible loans from several business angels, which under German law needed to be turned into real voting shares within two years. We completed that process in July — a notary- and paperwork-heavy exercise, as you can imagine.
Our cap table is now clean, and we’re focused on growing under our own steam. TelemetryDeck remains founder-led: Daniel and I still hold nearly 90% of the company and steer it independently.
Winter will be as cold as we allow it to be
The last few years have brought with them lots of divisions in the world. That’s why we’re so happy that we’re still uniting people who love ethical, honest products like ours, from all over the world. Thank you so much for being on this journey with us! Let’s make awesome things happen!