MRR trajectory
6.3x
£60K to £380K MRR in 18 months.
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§ · archetype · edinburgh fintech
An Edinburgh fintech SaaS · £60K → £380K MRR.
Industry archetype drawn from patterns across multiple Edinburgh FinTech Scotland engagements. Representative metrics across 18 months: 6.3x MRR, net retention 118%, free-to-paid conversion 22%, M12 logo retention 91%.
Industry archetype · drawn from patterns across multiple Edinburgh FinTech Scotland engagements · brand identity composite
net retention
118%
Net dollar retention across existing-customer base.
logo retention
91%
M12 customer-logo retention.
§ 01 · the brand archetype
A Skyscanner-alumni founder building wealthtech.
The archetype represents a slice of Edinburgh FinTech Scotland we ship into reliably: a wealthtech, payments, or regtech SaaS founded by a Skyscanner-alumni-network operator, running £60K MRR pre-engagement on a stitched-together Webflow-marketing-site plus product-app stack, with self-serve activation but a high free-tier-to-paid drop-off, FCA-registration scope but onboarding flows that didn't honour that scope cleanly, and a pricing page that didn't match how buyers actually progressed through tiers.
Three structural problems compounded the growth ceiling. The marketing site didn't merchandise the FCA-registered scope as a credibility signal — competitors leaning on regulator language outranked. The product onboarding wasn't built for the compliance-first reality of UK financial services — KYC happened too late and dropped 40% of activated users. And the pricing page bundled features in a way that didn't match the buyer's actual decision tree, forcing buyers to over-buy or under-buy.
§ 02 · the approach
14 weeks. Five workstreams. Compliance-first.
Workstream 1 · Next.js marketing site + FCA-credibility surfaces. Next.js marketing site on Vercel, FCA-registration scope merchandised as a credibility signal, regulator-language alignment, security + compliance schema markup. Organic CR lifted from 1.8% to 3.6%.
Workstream 2 · FCA-aware onboarding rebuild. KYC moved earlier into the activation flow, scope-aware data collection, audit-trail integration. Free-to-paid conversion lifted from 9% to 22%. Drop-off in the activation funnel halved.
Workstream 3 · Pricing page + tier-ladder rebuild. Pricing page rebuilt around buyer-decision-tree (entity-size, transaction-volume, integration-depth) rather than feature-bundling. ARPA moved from £790 to £1,420 across 12 months.
Workstream 4 · Stripe + product-app revenue infrastructure. Full Stripe integration with metered billing for transaction-volume tiers, dunning + recovery flows, and entity-aware billing for company accounts. Net retention reached 118% by month 14.
Workstream 5 · Cohort + revenue analytics. Built a Looker Studio dashboard tying Stripe revenue to cohort behaviour, product-feature usage, and pricing-tier movement — the founding team gained product + revenue visibility in one place for the first time.
§ 03 · tech stack named
Next.js + Stripe core. Compliance-first.
web
Next.js + Vercel
Marketing site + product-app frontend, ISR-cached, Vercel-deployed.
billing
Stripe
Metered billing, dunning, entity-aware billing for company accounts.
auth + KYC
Custom + Onfido
Auth on top of Postgres + Onfido for KYC verification.
email
Customer.io
Behaviour-triggered onboarding sequences and product-led emails.
analytics
Looker Studio
Cohort + revenue dashboard, founder-team usage daily.
infra
AWS UK + Postgres
UK-region data residency for FCA scope alignment.
§ 04 · cohort + 18-month detail
The numbers behind the headline.
| metric | pre | m6 | m18 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MRR | £60K | £155K | £380K |
| ARPA | £790 | £1,090 | £1,420 |
| Free-to-paid CR | 9% | 17% | 22% |
| Net retention | 94% | 108% | 118% |
| M12 logo retention | 71% | 85% | 91% |
| Organic CR | 1.8% | 2.7% | 3.6% |
Metrics representative of the archetype; specific brands range plus or minus 20 percent.
§ 05 · what this means for edinburgh brands
If your Edinburgh fintech looks like this archetype.
The pattern this archetype represents (Edinburgh FinTech Scotland SaaS in the £40K to £150K MRR range, FCA-registered or in-scope, with self-serve activation but a stitched-together stack) is one of our most-shipped Scottish engagement shapes. The 14-week timeline holds steady; the metrics typically land within plus or minus 20 percent.
Five capabilities transfer directly. Next.js marketing site with FCA-credibility surfaces. Compliance-first onboarding rebuild. Pricing page rebuilt around buyer decision tree. Stripe metered billing for transaction-volume tiers. Cohort + revenue analytics in one dashboard.
Every Edinburgh engagement starts with a 30-minute discovery call. Scope, timeline, and budget come back in writing within 48 hours. GMT cadence Mon to Fri.
§ 06 · book the edinburgh call