2024 Annual Review

Hello everyone!

Yes, I know, it’s Friday; sorry for the delay!
This newsletter took me much more time than I expected to write.

But it was worth it: welcome to LaDataViz's 2024 annual review!

Did we reach our goals? How much money did we make? What worked and what did not? We will tell you everything!

Context and goals

As a reminder, we are a small data visualization studio of two, and we do not plan to change that anytime soon! We want to stay small, flexible, and as free as possible.

Our mission is to make your data visualization workflow easier.
To do that, we focus on three different areas:

• Product: We develop tools primarily for Tableau users.

• Consulting: We help clients with data visualization projects.

• Content: We communicate mainly through YouTube videos and this newsletter.

Goal

In 2024, our focus was thriving.

Our primary objective was to improve everything we built and shared in previous years. We had five main goals:

• Increase the revenue from products ✅

• Create four new products ✅

• Completely redesign our website ✅

• Send at least two newsletters per month ✅

• Publish at least one video per month on YouTube ❌ (far from it)

The first three goals are product-oriented, and the other three are content-oriented.
We did not have any goals related to the consulting side of our activity.

Let’s start by looking at the product side and answering the central question: Is it viable to create a small company that builds products for Tableau users?

Products

We created an excellent base for our product in 2023. Most of the technical questions related to handling accounts, licenses, payments, etc., were solved.

In 2024, we focused on creating new products using the same base and concentrated on increasing the revenue from the products.

We are currently selling six main products:

• Figma to Tableau Plugin - $179 / year
  Generate and convert your Figma designs into Tableau dashboards.

• Viz Extensions - $150 (or $35 per extension) for the cloud version.
  Generate advanced visualizations directly inside Tableau.

• BANg - $59.
  Generate KPI cards in Tableau in minutes instead of hours.

• Filter Manager - $49
  Customize all your Tableau filters with a single click.

• Better Download Extension - $25

  Download the underlying data of a pre-selected worksheet in Tableau.

• AdvViz - Free
  Export static advanced visualizations in Tableau.

Product Revenue

This is the most critical part for us and our key indicator for 2024.

In 2023, our product revenue was 3 478€, or 2% of our total revenue.
In 2024, our product revenue is 39 596€, or 14% of our total revenue.

Our monthly average revenue from our products increased to 3 300€, making product development a sustainable revenue stream for one person.

In May 2024, we showcased our product at the Tableau Conference and received multiple shoutouts during Devs On Stage. In June, we launched the Viz Extensions. You can see in the evolution above how these two moments helped us increase our revenue.

If we compare our different products, the Figma to Tableau Plugin drives most of our revenue (61%).

We plan for the Viz Extensions revenue to increase in 2025 as more companies become interested in the Enterprise (offline) version. This is normal, as a big company that needs Enterprise versions is usually slower to adopt new Tableau versions.

On the other hand, the Figma to Tableau plugin is now a subscription and will bring recurring revenue. Let’s see how things evolve this year!

Viz Extensions

Viz Extensions were the main focus of our development for 2024.
We created twelve Extensions!

Most of the revenue comes from the Pack (you get all the existing and future extensions with a one-time payment).

Considering the top five, it might be interesting to create a “Viz Extension—Essential” containing the Radar, Gauge, Tree, Network, and Polar area. 

AdvViz

AdvViz continues to be used and is probably our most visible product (it is free, which undoubtedly helps).

We continue to be impressed by people's creativity in using the tool for public visualization. Although we haven’t updated the gallery recently, we have found nearly 300 visualizations and 40 VOTD!

To conclude this part, I want to thank you all. If you are reading this, you have probably used our tool, paid or free.

Thanks for your trust and for helping us.

Consulting

Working for clients was not a priority in 2024.

We aimed to keep the number of days roughly the same as in previous years, even though we are now two people available full-time. This allowed us to secure revenue while focusing half of our time on product development.

In 2023, we worked around 220 days for clients.
In 2024, we worked around 260 days for clients.

We worked with ten different clients (five new and five recurring).

A few things are important here:

• we are not dependent on one client

• we keep attracting new clients, and we can select who we work with

• one big client stopped using Tableau, but we could replace it with two new ones

Consulting still brings the majority of the revenue, but as I explained last year, it is revenue that we can’t scale or control a lot, and it also brings time and sometimes geographical constraints.

However, working with clients keeps us aware of people's issues when developing dashboards and helps us get new product ideas. The long-term goal is probably to reduce the number of days spent in consulting, but never to stop completely.

Content

Again, our focus was on thriving, so we didn’t start anything new on the content side; we continued to publish regular newsletters, speak at events, and try to publish a few videos.

Newsletter

In 2024, we sent 30 newsletters and reached 2238 subscribers.
If you are reading this, you are one of them; thank you!

That’s an increase of 888 subscribers compared to 2023.

Given the current state of social media, this newsletter is the best way to communicate. If there’s anything we can improve, please let us know!

YouTube

YouTube is… difficult. Last year, I posted only three videos: one about the Figma to Tableau Plugin, one about Viz Extensions, and the presentation I gave at DataFam Europe.

Since I care a lot about their quality, I spend too much time working on them (and should probably delegate some editing).

However, the channel continues to grow, and we have reached 2096 subscribers (+965). The overall views and watch time also continue to grow:

With this inconsistency, we are still far from being able to monetize anything on YouTube, but it is still a great way to showcase our products and explain how they work.

Speaker, Blogger, Podcaster

Finally, on the side:

• We collaborated with Tableau Tim to create three YouTube videos on his channel about Viz Extension, Figma to Tableau, and becoming a DataDev.
  

• We wrote the Viz Extension Guide on Tableau’s blog.
  

• We talked at a lot at different events online or in person:
  Tableau Conference
  DataFam Europe
  Comunidatos (in Spanish!)
  Brazil TUG(in Spanish, too!)
  Poland TUG
  Le French TUG
  

• I was interviewed on a French Podcast: Developer Experience.

Overall, everything was helpful and helped bring attention to what we are building! At this point, we don’t plan to change much regarding the content.

Let’s talk 💰

For this final part, I want to share our financial results with you.

We share this openly because it’s hard to know what’s possible when you’re just two people and, like us, you have no one in your family doing something similar. We often see big company revenues or startups raising capital, but we are simply two individuals working on what we love with clients we enjoy working with.

I have ten years of experience in data visualization and Tableau. I’ve been freelancing since 2019 and full-time since 2021. We’ve been building products since 2023. Everything takes time—there’s no such thing as overnight success.

Luck, timing, hard work, opportunity, where you’re born, where you live, who you know—everything counts and can play for or against you.

We don’t compare ourselves to anyone, and neither should you.

Focus on doing what you love, and strive to improve a little bit every day.

That being said, here’s probably the most important chart for us to follow our progression.

Our revenue is growing, the percentage of revenue from the products is increasing, and our expenses are decreasing. Overall, this was a perfect year.

But it’s also the end of the cycle. Ok, it's time to wrap up!

Wrapping up

Everything we learned, experimented with, and shared in the previous years culminated this year by “thriving.”

We restart the cycle this year, and the focus will be again on learning. The extra revenue we generated this year will help us in that task. But that will be the focus of next week’s newsletter!

Next week, we’ll share our plan for 2025, so stay tuned!

You can reach us easily over there:
‣ Website: https://www.ladataviz.com
‣ Twitter/X : https://twitter.com/ladataviz
‣ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ladataviz
‣ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ladataviz/
‣ All other links: https://linktr.ee/ladataviz

If you have any suggestions, feedback is appreciated!