Backyard Brains Finances
Backyard Brains is an open company. Both our hardware and software are open source. We encourage users to tinker with the design, learn from it, and even make it better!
But we don't stop there... we are also "open source" when it comes to our finances. Though we are but a small private company, we have decided to open up our books to help our employees and customers understand how Backyard Brains is doing as a whole. Are people buying these kits? How much revenue does Backyard Brains take in? How much does it really cost to produce a SpikerBox? How much do these cats make?
Feel free to browse our 2010 Balance Sheet and our 2010 Income Statement from our last tax filing.
But year end reports are so stale. How are we currently doing? Below are a few live reports on our growth, revenue, and customer base. We look forward to adding to these plots as we grow.
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As of our latest sale (on 2012-May-16), we have sold 1473 SpikerBoxes! 661 were shipped as our standard SpikerBox kits, while 549 were sent as our "bag of parts" DIY kits. We also put on workshops, and we've helped students assemble an additional 177 units. 59 do-it-yourselfers have opted to just get a bare board and purchase their own parts (the El Cheapo). 27 of the SpikerBoxes were the dual channel variety. We have also sold 43 RoboRoaches!
Individual SpikerBox shipments (onesies, twosies) make up 51.40 % of our orders (622 total: 319 were SpikerBoxes, 303 were DIY Kits). The remaining
48.60 % have gone into classrooms (588 total: 342 as SpikerBoxes and 246 as kits). Below is the breakdown of our shipped boxes over the past few months.
Just who are these people that are purchasing these SpikerBoxes? We try as best as we can to figure out who each of our customers are (we like to call them and talk for a bit on the phone). Below is the breakdown of our current customer base (491 unique customers; 608 total orders).
 [79]|Amateur [65]|High School [66]&chd=t0:0.0582120582120582,0.505197505197505,0.164241164241164,0.135135135135135,0.137214137214137&chtt=Backyard Brains Customer Breakdown)
Our customers come from all around the world. We have sold units to 26 different countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Cyprus, Ecuador, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Within the United States, we have shipped to 46 states [including a SpikerBox in Fairbanks, Alaska and Honolulu, Hawaii!]. We have also shipped many SpikerBoxes to our friends in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Below is the breakdown of revenue by state (Exluding workshop sales; The darkest red is = $18,581.36).
