May 2026 closed at $13,987 in revenue. To put that next to last month, April brought in $56,654. So May came in at about a quarter of April. A quieter month after a big one would not worry me on its own. The figure I cannot wave away is the year on year one. Last May we did $33,294. This May we did $13,987. That is 42% of what we did a year ago. Less than half.
The trailing 12-month number, the one that actually measures the 10x, went backwards from $547,314 to $528,007. That nudges us from 10.5% of the $5.19M target back to about 10.2%. The drama is the monthly figure. The truth is the trailing twelve months.
Here is why May stings. The first four months of this year were running, on average, about 33% ahead of the same months last year. We were up across the board. Then May landed at under half of last year. This is not a small wobble. It broke the pattern the rest of the year had set.
Why did it drop?
The honest answer: right now, I don't know. I don't have a clean explanation yet, and I am not going to invent one to make this update feel finished.
The structural thing I would point at is timing. A lot of our revenue is annual subscriptions, and that money arrives in lumps. April was a heavy month for renewals. May was not. That is the whole reason I measure this on a trailing twelve month basis instead of month to month, because any single month can swing hard on when the annual deals happen to land.
But that is a hypothesis, not an answer. Down to 42% of last May is bigger than timing usually explains. So this week I am going through the detail properly, to work out how much is renewal timing, how much might be a lost account, and how much is just the shape of when the money comes in. When I know, you'll know.
This is exactly the month I'd want to skip. I committed to the second Tuesday of every month, good or bad. So here I am on a bad one.
Here is the thing about doing this in public. If nobody was watching, the easiest thing in the world would be to go quiet for a month, wait for a better number, and come back when the story was nicer. That option is gone. The number is on the website with my name on it, good or bad.
What still moved.
The revenue number does not capture any of this, but it is the work that pays off later.
- The new website went live. We moved off WordPress so that AI tools can actually maintain it. The SEO audit fixes are built in from the start instead of bolted on afterwards.
- The Cloud version of Comment Security Default is built and waiting on Marketplace approval. It lets admins set the default security level for new comments up front, so the right setup is on from day one instead of relying on people to remember.
- The advanced edition of Document Vault is being built. This is the real pricing move I promised in Month 01, the higher tier that genuinely does more. Version control for attachments is already in. Access logging is what we are working on now. These are the things a security or compliance lead asks for by name, not usage limits dressed up as a plan.
- I launched two ad-supported websites, Redmoon Randomizers and Redmoon Calculators. Free tools, no login, no subscription, earning from ads. A completely different revenue model from the Jira apps, and a way to spread the risk. Far too early for numbers.
What did not move.
- The outreach. Late in May I sent messages to twelve compliance and security people at our existing Document Vault customers. The result was zero replies. Not one. Twelve is a small sample, and these are some of the hardest people to get a cold reply from. I have parked the cold version. When it comes back it will be warm, triggered off something a customer actually did.
- The Android app is still in testing and behind where I wanted it. It is our first product completely outside the Atlassian Marketplace, and it is being held up by how much support and compliance work we have.
What is next.
Three things for June.
- Find out exactly what drove the May drop.
- Get the Comment Security Default Cloud app through approval and live.
- Keep the advanced Document Vault edition moving.
One down month is one data point. It is not the challenge. April was one month and I told you not to get excited. May is one month and I would say the same in reverse. You don't get the real picture for a year. What you do get, every second Tuesday, is the actual number, whatever it is.