Cut monthly burn by £3,200 for a local edtech firm
By auditing cloud subscriptions and renegotiating vendor contracts, we found significant waste. The savings extended their runway by an extra 4.2 months without cutting staff.
LearnLoop had a solid product and a growing user base, but their bank balance was dropping faster than their revenue was rising. They were spending roughly £14,800 every month on overheads, and the founders couldn't pinpoint exactly where the leak was coming from.
The challenge
The team of 8 at LearnLoop was focused on building features, not looking at bank statements. By mid-2024, they realized their runway had shrunk to just 5.5 months. They had 27 different software subscriptions running, many of which were 'ghost' accounts from former employees or tools that overlapped in functionality. Their cloud hosting costs had also climbed by 42% in just two quarters without a matching increase in traffic, mostly due to unoptimized database instances left running from a previous testing phase.
Our approach
We spent 9 business days digging through their transaction history from the last three quarters. Our team of 2 analysts interviewed their lead developer to understand their actual tech needs versus what they were paying for. We identified 11 subscriptions that could be cancelled immediately without affecting daily operations. After the audit, we spent three days negotiating with their primary CRM and hosting providers to move them onto annual plans and legacy tiers that weren't advertised on the main pricing pages.
The solution
We implemented a 'Spend-Light' framework that consolidated their marketing tools into one platform, saving £840 alone on redundant email software. We moved their staging environment to a more cost-effective provider and set up automated shut-off scripts for non-production servers during weekends. Finally, we drafted a simple one-page procurement policy so any new subscription over £25 now requires a quick Slack approval from a founder to prevent future 'subscription creep'.
Results
The audit and subsequent negotiations stripped away the waste that was threatening the company's survival. LearnLoop now operates with a leaner cost base, allowing the founders to delay their next funding round and maintain more equity.
Timeline
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Sept 3, 2024Full audit of 9 months of bank and credit card statements
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Sept 11, 2024Tool utility interviews with the product and dev teams
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Sept 18, 2024Direct negotiation with the top 3 software vendors
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Sept 25, 2024Implementation of the new internal spend approval process
"I honestly thought we were already being lean, but Onbelai found £3k of waste that we just weren't seeing. It bought us nearly another five months of time to hit our growth targets."