On Tuesday, Amsterdam-based Bird, a global communication platform, published its first-ever Shareholder letter for 2024. The announcement was made by Robert Vis, founder & CEO at Bird, through a LinkedIn post.
“Reflecting on the past 3 years, I can only describe as excruciating pain. Not only in the sheer hard work it took but the resistance was real. When everyone thinks you’re crazy, all your executives repeatedly leave no matter how much you believe yourself, you wonder – am I wrong. Am I crazy?” says Vis in the post.
“Well, maybe a little – the idea that B2B SaaS singularity was actually possible, having one app to manage your entire business instead of 100’s of apps is per definition, I guess – a little crazy,” he adds.
“Relentless operational discipline, speed and execution. Defying all laws in software yet within the bounds of physics. Moving from infrastructure to application and infrastructure, decreasing headcount by 70% while 10x speed of innovation, pivoting at scale taking risks moving off every known SaaS app and reducing all of the complexity known to businesses into simplicity – one app to manage all of your business,” he further reminisces.
Here are six key takeaways from Bird shareholder letter 2024
Achieved €207.4M in revenue
In 2024, the company achieved €207.4M in revenue, which was 101.3 per cent of its target.
The Amsterdam company reported €83.4M in EBITDA, a 226.6 per cent of their target, with Q4 EBITDA margins reaching 45 per cent.
Validated two important hypotheses
Additionally, the company said that it has successfully validated two crucial hypotheses.
First, they demonstrated that disparate business functions could be unified into an AI-driven platform.
Second, they proved that this unification could create exponential value beyond the sum of its components.
Bird CRM achieved €17M in ARR
Bird CRM, which was launched in February, achieved an impressive €17M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by year-end.
“When Western Union chose Bird over Salesforce for an ACV TCV deal, it wasn’t just a sales win – it was validation of our vision. When Bunq moved their entire customer operations for Marketing and Service (15M account holders) to Bird, it proved our platform could scale to support major financial institutions,” says the report.
Business in a Box
In December, the company launched Business in a Box, an enterprise software platform designed around three key pillars: GROW, MANAGE, and AUTOMATE.
- GROW focuses on revenue generation and customer engagement, offering marketing automation, sales acceleration, and improved customer experiences.
- MANAGE enhances business operations, covering financial processes, human resources, IT security, and engineering with simplified workflows and AI integration.
- AUTOMATE provides an intelligence layer with AI agents for customer support, candidate screening, expense processing, and more, ensuring seamless cross-application workflow automation.
“The power of Business in a Box lies not just in these individual components, but in their seamless integration. When your marketing automatically feeds qualified leads to sales, when hiring a new employee automatically triggers IT provisioning and payroll setup, when customer interactions automatically update across all systems – that’s when you begin to see the true potential of our platform,” adds Vis.
17% reduction in operating expenses
The Amsterdam-based company has migrated to its platform from more than 35 separate systems, including Salesforce, Zendesk, Jira, Marketo, Brex, and Bamboo.
They have also reduced their banking relationships from 35 to 3. As a result, they achieved a 17 per cent year-over-year reduction in operating expenses (OPEX), improved EBITDA margins, and a strong Rule of 40 score in Q4.
“The global B2B software market represents trillions in annual spending, fragmented across thousands of point solutions. We believe this fragmentation is fundamentally inefficient and unsustainable. Just as cloud computing consolidated infrastructure, we believe business operations are ready for their singularity moment – the convergence of all business functions into a single, intelligent operating system,” says Vis.
“We’re not just building a better software company – we’re creating an entirely new category. The Business Intelligence Operating System will do for business operations what iOS and Android did for mobile computing – create a unified platform that fundamentally changes how work gets done,” he adds.
Debt-free, 83% gross margin and more
Bird is now debt-free with a 1.39x current ratio and also has 83 per cent gross margins and 45 per cent EBITDA margins in Q4.
The company also achieved 1,680 per cent year-over-year growth in Bird CRM, demonstrating the power of transformative technology and operational excellence.
“We’re working on deeper AI integration, expanded global coverage, and new capabilities that we believe will redefine enterprise software. Our mission remains clear: to create a world where businesses can focus on their core purpose, free from the friction of disparate systems and processes. The chaos of a hundred apps will give way to the simplicity of one intelligent platform,” says Vis in the report.
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