Uneed Residency #2 - The Finances

Hey 👋🏻

As promised in the recap, here are the finances of the second Uneed Residency.

After the first batch, I shared every number and ended the article with a plan: bring what comes out of my own pocket down to €1,000-2,000 per edition. So this article is also a bit of a report card on that plan, and spoiler, I didn't get the grade I was hoping for 😅

The money coming in

Two sponsors backed this edition:

• Creem: €5,000
• Postiz: €5,000

That's €10,000 in total. Creem coming back for a second edition means a lot to me, and Postiz joining (with Nevo, its founder, staying with us all week) was a great addition 🫶🏻

This time I applied the first lesson from batch #1 and billed both sponsors in euros, so what we agreed on is exactly what landed in my account.

The money going out

So the second Uneed Residency cost €14,055.

The result

€10,000 in, €14,055 out, which means I covered €4,055 myself.

That's €755 less than the first edition, which is a step in the right direction, but it's still about twice the upper limit I had set for myself in June.

What went according to plan

Cheese & Friends went from €1,237 to €367. It was still one of my favorite evenings of the week, and I'm pretty sure nobody felt they were getting less. That's €870 saved without touching the experience, exactly what I was hoping for.

The Friday party disappeared, and so did its €800. To be honest, the decision wasn't about money: a week is short, and I preferred to keep every evening for the group. But the budget doesn't complain.

Billing in euros worked. Two sponsors at €5,000 brought in more than three sponsors did in batch #1, even without a bonus sponsor this time.

What didn't

The content didn't get cheaper

My plan was to replace the €2,400 video from the first edition with a much simpler setup. Instead, I asked Virgile to come and help me with photos, videos and the 12 interviews I recorded with the residents. Between his fee and his Airbnb near the manor, that's €2,032, so only about €370 cheaper than the first video.

The output is very different though: instead of one video showcasing the Residency, we now have 12 interviews that give visibility to each resident and to our sponsors. As I said in the recap, I would never have managed them on my own, so I don't regret it at all. But it's clearly not the "simple setup" I had in mind 😂

A new line: the cook

This is the biggest change compared to batch #1. Vincent cooked almost every meal for 16 people during the whole week, and he cost €2,000. Add the groceries and eating at the manor cost about €3,000.

I think it's one of the best investments of this edition: nobody had to think about meals or cook after a long day, everyone ate together at the same table, and the food was incredible. But it's a real cost that wasn't in the plan I wrote in June, and on its own it explains most of the gap with my target.

No contribution from residents

In the first article, I hesitated between asking every resident for €200 or only the returning ones. In the end, I didn't ask anyone this time, so that lever stayed at €0.

The interesting part

If I put the content aside (the video for batch #1, Virgile for batch #2), both editions cost almost exactly the same:

So the Residency itself, meaning the manor, the food and the outings, costs around €12,000 for a week, and with two sponsors at €5,000 it lands right at the edge of my comfort zone. What pushes it well above is the content, which is really a marketing spend for Uneed, the residents and the sponsors more than a cost of the Residency itself. It still comes out of my pocket, though, so I can't just pretend it doesn't exist 😅

Another way to look at it: the manor alone is 58% of the budget. Everything I optimized this time (the restaurant, the party) was small compared to it.

Where I stand

My rule hasn't changed: the Residency isn't meant to make money, but I don't want to put more than €1,000-2,000 into each edition if I want to keep running several of them every year.

What has changed is how I want to get there. The obvious answer would be to find a third sponsor, but that's not the direction I want to take. Going forward, I'd rather work with a single sponsor per edition, or even none at all.

The first reason is independence: I don't want the Residency to exist only if I manage to convince several companies to fund it every few months. The second one is freedom, since fewer partners also means fewer commitments and more room to organize each edition exactly the way I want. And the last one is about the sponsors themselves: a single sponsor gets all the visibility (the interviews, the posts, the merch, someone on site with the residents) instead of sharing it, which makes the deal much more valuable for them.

That changes the math quite a lot, though. With a core cost of around €12,000, one sponsor at €5,000 leaves a €7,000 gap, and without any sponsor the whole €12,000 is on me. Trimming a restaurant here and there won't be enough anymore.

One lead I'm considering is to ask residents to pay a bit for their week. To give an order of magnitude, with one sponsor and the same costs as this edition, bringing my share back to around €1,500 would mean about €400 per resident. That's still far from what a week like this actually costs, and it would go down if I also find a way to lower the biggest line, the manor. But it's a real change, and I want to think it through carefully so it never becomes a barrier for people who would love to come.

That's exactly why batch #3 will probably look a bit different. More on that in the next article!

I'm still very happy with what this money paid for: a week with 13 amazing people, great food every day, and 12 interviews that will keep giving visibility to everyone involved for weeks. I'll keep sharing the numbers for every edition, the good ones and the less good ones 👊🏻

Thomas