SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

If your sales cycle doubles, you’re bookings are cut in half with a massive lack of predictability. There was actually no difference in performance when looking at bookings of a company or their lead conversion rate regardless of whether or not they used AI. That elongated sales cycle created pipeline supply shocks.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 334

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 29, 2024

Dan, a Stanford-trained engineer with experience guiding companies like Intuit, understands how to optimize your product metrics for growth by focusing on retention and building a product users truly value. Understanding the product metrics Let’s have two products – A and B. The key is to go beyond surface-level metrics.

Metrics 105

Metrics Scale Acquisition Retention 105

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2025

The best time to negotiate marketing pilot terms is in the last two weeks of a quarter – Vendors are more flexible with minimum spend and commitment requirements when they’re trying to close their books. Schedule regular deep dives into performance metrics to maintain your edge.

Scale 249

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Marketing 249

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2021

Your VP of Sales is responsible for a “bookings” number, including renew als, multi-year deals, etc. If so, that may be (and in fact, likely will be) at the expense of new bookings. Also, Bigger Companies tend to incent multi-year contracts as full credit bookings for the entire amount, over all the years. Where The Magic Is.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Metrics Sales Churn 280

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

The Hidden Costs of UBP While UBP offers many advantages, it does come with tradeoffs: Complicates churn measurement : If a customer uses your product intermittently (every third month, for example), standard monthly churn calculations will show the account churning and reactivating, skewing your metrics. Sales teams lose leverage.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2024

What data and metrics do you need to convince SaaS investors you’re in good shape and aligned with what they care about? These metrics are more targeted to those preparing for a Series A or B round and could make the difference between an excited-to-invest-in-you investor and a pass. What gets investors excited about this metric?

Metrics 190

Metrics Sales Hiring Retention Churn 190

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 6, 2022

Post-Covid Metrics. Management teams ought to be evaluating whether a PLG or SLG investment produces more bookings per dollar invested. As net income may become a more important metric for valuation, it may replace sales efficiency as a better metric for measuring bookings productivity. GTM Motion.

Headcount 344

Headcount Market Research Acquisition Education 344

SaaStr

JULY 21, 2021

Many have NRR as a top-level company metric. I love having NRR be the #1 metric for Customer Success. It’s also a sign of a great VP of Customer Success when they are willing to sign up for growing NRR as the #1 metric and what their variable comp is tried to. That’s still pretty common. More on that here.

Customer Success 359

Customer Success Trends Retention Metrics 359

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 30, 2020

Compare the slopes of marketing’s lead generation efforts to sales’ bookings trajectory. If the marketing slope is up and the bookings slope is up, the teams are aligned. Many demand generation marketers focus on SQLs rather than MQLs as their target metric to align themselves better with the sales team to mitigate this.

Marketing 357

Marketing Sales B2B Trends 357

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2024

David Sacks classic post on Burn Rate Multiple is A+ and a key metric for every venture-backed startup. It simplifies a lot of complexity into one metric. But the best burn less each month than they bring in in new bookings and revenue (a Burn Multiple of 1x or less).

Startup 337

Startup Metrics Revenue 337

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2022

That's how much in bookings they plan to add this year. That’s how much in bookings they plan to add this year. So with that one, public metric, you can very quickly guess how fast your competitor plans to grow in the next twelve months. And thus their ambitions for bookings in the next 12 months.

SMB 315

SMB Scale Startup Enterprise 315

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 18, 2022

As the company grew, problems worsened: Years ago, when Brian, our CEO, would ask simple questions like which city had the most bookings in the previous week, Data Science and Finance would sometimes provide diverging answers using slightly different tables, metric definitions, and business logic. Bad metrics are like salt water.

Revenue 325

Revenue Sales Hiring Finance Metrics 325

How To Buy Saas

DECEMBER 20, 2024

These metrics include monthly recurring revenue (MRR), customer acquisition cost, churn rate, customer lifetime value, etc. If you are a SaaS business owner, you can invest in analytics tools to get better insights and data to analyze these metrics and make actionable decisions.

Payment Services 52

Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Features 52

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 6, 2021

The payback period metric doesn’t capture the difference in the quality of the revenue/cash collections. But there is a viable GTM strategy for startups to book multi-year deals with pre-payment, and use that cash to finance GTM growth. Especially if logo churn is low, account expansion is strong, and the sales cycles are brief.

Sales Hiring 352

Sales Hiring Scale Payments Payment Solutions 352

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

Metrics, Metrics, Metrics The first thing Secureframe thinks about is metrics. If you don’t know your key company or North Star metrics, talk to your investors or other experts to figure out what they should be. So they can take action on the metrics in real time if they’re going in a direction they don’t like.

Sales Recruiting 305

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 305

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2021

If you can grow new customers bookings and upsell bookings at about a 1:1 ratio, like UiPath, that’s the golden ratio for future growth. The math can be a bit hard to do, but UiPath fortunately has done it for us, and 75% of UiPath’s new revenue / bookings are from existing customers. #3. ” #5.

Outsourcing Services 362

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Payment Features Cloud 362

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

” And that’s also why AARRR metrics are called pirate metrics. Short for acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue, these metrics help you measure and drive product growth. In this article, we’ll dig deeper into the AARRR framework and the relevant metrics associated with each stage.

Metrics 105

Metrics Customer Lifetime Value Acquisition Software Review 105

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

I.e., at least 50% of your bookings from new accounts and new logos. It should be one of your Top 5 metrics. 50% of your growth and new bookings from new logos. Focus on NRR over GRR is a fair and real concern. A good yardstick is 50/50. At least, until you are huge. Well past $100m ARR. Aim for at least 50/50.

Scale 328

Scale Engineering Scaling Churn 328

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2024

To start adding eight figures and then nine figures of new bookings a year, it can really help to focus on bigger customers. The Most Important SaaS Metric of All: Net New Customer Growth The post Going Upmarket and “More Enterprise” is Great. The law of large numbers means this just makes sense. The sales team?

Enterprise 328

Enterprise Scale SMB Investment 328

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

So Jamin Ball at Altimeter Capital probably does the best job of tracking SaaS and Cloud metrics of public companies of anyone out there.

SaaS 300

SaaS Cloud Scale Metrics 300

SaaStr

DECEMBER 12, 2023

Keybanc and Sapphire have some great overall metrics here : Overall, the media AE closes $750,000 a year, and that’s actually up from 2022 — mainly due to hiring freezes and contractions. Enterprise reps tend to close more ($1m+), and SMB reps less (maybe $500k), with $750k net new bookings per year the median.

Sales Hiring 336

Sales Hiring SMB Enterprise Metrics 336

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2020

If not on a month-over-month basis, then at least on a bookings basis. A Good/Mediocre VP of Sales does a bit better than Just Founder-Led Sales in new bookings — but some metrics may get worse. Net net, your bookings keep growing. A Bad VP of Sales sees bookings decline. A bit more on that here.

Sales Hiring 324

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Scaling 324

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 13, 2022

That’s a lot of buffer to achieve Series B metrics [1]. Fewer person hours means less marketing, sales pitches, & bookings. 2] Tangentially, this is why the burn multiple (total burned / total ARR) has become an important investor metric. In 2021, employment costs per capital increased to roughly $200k.

Headcount 325

Headcount Venture Capital Finance Startup 325

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 4, 2025

Tracking the right user metrics helps you precisely identify issues in the product experience rather than feeling lost in a sea of data. In this article, Ill cover 10 crucial user metrics every product manager should track to turn data into decisions that increase product adoption. Emphasis is on the word right.

Metrics 59

Metrics Scale Software Review Churn 59

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2021

In any event, 25% of their new bookings come from the existing base. Publish diversity metrics, 39% female, 62% white. “Based upon employee self-identification, 62% white, 12% Asian, 7% of two or more racial groups, 4% black, 7% of Hispanic or Latin background, and 0.2% The NRR story, told differently.

Enterprise 325

Enterprise Scale B2B Metrics 325

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

They result in better capital efficiency, an important metric in this environment. As a company scales, renewal revenue begins to dwarf the new bookings. Large NDR figures are hugely beneficial to startups. They imply strong product market fit. They provide predictable revenue growth. Imagine your current ACV is $1k.

Enterprise 351

Enterprise Startup Retention Engagement 351

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2020

If your bookings dropped, if your churn went way up, then … it did. Maybe bookings are down 50%. Just like we’re half-adjusted to shelter-at-home, most of us have now adjusted to new metrics in bookings, retention, and downgrades. Sometimes, rough. Sometimes, just crazy. Things changed. Now you have the data.

Payment Services 296

Payment Services Forecasting Churn Retention 296

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2024

Grow headcount and expenses, but more slowly than bookings. #5. Modeling 3% Stock-Based Dilution a Year A metric almost every leader is tracking more carefully now. Sales & Marketing expense is up 9.8% — but that’s on 22% revenue growth. That’s how you get more efficient. UiPath is modelling 3% a year.

Scale 304

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring AI 304

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2024

They’ve made it by using basic adoption metrics and a gut feeling about where customers will land with renewals. How many of your customer success teams mirror that same value narrative in their QBRs and present their customers with metrics showing exactly how they delivered that value? That worked for a time, but not really anymore.

Scale 290

Scale Customer Success Scaling Revenue 290

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 2, 2024

Userpilot’s SaaS Product Metrics Benchmark Report has found that compared to other industries, healthcare SaaS companies perform lower across most of the 6 metrics we studied. You will also learn how healthcare companies can improve their product metrics. In the report, we look into 6 metrics: New user activation rate.

Healthcare 105

Healthcare Benchmarks Metrics Onboarding 105

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

Carlota Perez argues in her book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital that in the early days of a “golden age”, financial capital is necessary to fuel new technology innovation. . Geoffrey Moore calls this group the Late Majority and the Laggards in his book Crossing the Chasm , a secret bible for many SaaS CEO’s. .

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 299

SaaStr

MAY 18, 2021

Its net revenue retention at IPO was about 130% and the majority of its new bookings come from its existing customers. Today, 73% of Salesforce’s new bookings come from its installed base. More here: Public SaaS Company Disclosure Metrics for Retention and Renewal Rates. Twilio was 150% at IPO and is still at 140% today.

Merchant Services 280

Merchant Services Revenue SMB SaaS 280

User Pilot

AUGUST 17, 2024

‘How to optimize your product metrics for growth’ by Dan Olsen is one of the talks in this year’s Product Drive hosted by Userpilot. In this article, you will learn who Dan Olsen is, discover the core ideas from his book The Lean Product Playbook, and find out what you can expect from his talk. Let’s dive in!

Metrics 105

Metrics Acquisition Retention Onboarding 105

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2021

When you set out to track your churn, it’s vital to pick the correct metric. > 6 months booked = Win-back (Negative Churn). Rule 4 – Understanding Non-Standard Renewals: < 12-Month Bookings. When calculating your ATR Churn Rate, be mindful of your FX impact with respect to specific metrics.

Churn 263

Churn Customer Success Payment Features Subscription 263

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2020

Then Jason and I did a book called Impossible to Inevitable , which was just updated a couple months ago. So from the newest update of the impossible book, I’m going to share the best practices for igniting and reigniting growth, sort of like the latest lessons learned. How do you engineer growth? He got 50 copies.

Scale 282

Scale Outsourcing Services Revenue Outsourced Development 282

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 11, 2024

As a result, software vendors often see an uptick in revenue and bookings during these periods. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. I created this subset to show companies where FCF is a relevant valuation metric.

Cloud 167

Cloud Cost optimization & reporting GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Review 167

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 4, 2024

Well, sorry to disappoint you, but you might be getting excited about the wrong marketing metrics. Vanity metrics. From the article, you will learn what vanity metrics are, how to identify them, and how to choose more actionable alternatives to drive product growth. Choose metrics that directly correlate with these objectives.

Product Marketing 105

Product Marketing Metrics Customer Lifetime Value Marketing 105