SaaStr

OCTOBER 1, 2020

SaaStr speaker favorite Dave Kellogg recently shared with us his thoughts on why churn is dead, and what’s driving many companies to turn to net dollar retention. Churn is not disclosed. Once you can see and understand the ARR engine of a company, then calculate core SaaS economic metrics. 2 Churn rates blow up LTV.

Churn 305

Churn Retention Acquisition Benchmarks 305

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2021

Churn is a paramount topic in SaaS , as we all know. If every dollar of ARR is worth $6+ in the long term, including upsells and second order revenue … then of course, by the same token, for every dollar of ARR that churns … you’re losing $6 of notional ARR. But maybe even more important is measuring Almost Churn.

Churn 300

Churn Metrics Customer Success Investment 300

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2025

Companies are seeing massive growth numbers, but with a catch – high churn rates and unpredictable usage patterns. Focus on Production Use Cases The key metric isn’t initial adoption – it’s production deployment. The Real Signs of “Experimental” vs “Real” ARR Want to spot the difference?

AI 273

AI Scale Artificial Intelligence Startup 273

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

SaaS metrics can be more confusing than one might think. What if a customer churns, but is on an annual contract? My SaaS Metrics Primer: * ARR always = 12x MRR. Look, ARR and MRR aren’t really GAAP metrics. Something important is off in finance, in metrics, in reporting, and/or collections. I hear you.

Metrics 314

Metrics Banking Scale Churn 314

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2020

It took me a little while to see activation rates as literally one of the 3-4 most important metrics in SaaS, but it probably is. I don’t have a perfect metric, but after working on this with a dozen+ SaaS companies recently, I have a simple heuristic: 90% or more of your customers need to activate in the shortest practical time.

Churn 334

Churn B2C B2B Metrics 334

Stax

MARCH 16, 2025

The average churn rate for the software industry as a whole is 14%. Thats actually one of the lowest churn rates across all industries. That said, industry experts agree that your SaaS companys goal churn should be below 2%. TL;DR The average software industry churn rate is 14%, but SaaS companies should aim for under 2%.

Payment Solutions 88

Payment Solutions Software Review Churn SaaS Payments 88

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Third, contracts mitigate churn rates because the customer is only making a renewal decision once per year, instead of 12x per year. Similarly, Salesforce began with a usage-based approach before shifting to annual seat contracts when churn rates became significant and revenue predictability faltered. Sales teams lose leverage.

SaaS Payments 273

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 273

SaaStr

JULY 26, 2022

But beyond all the other Pros and Cons of SMB vs enterprise, there’s one looming issue with SMB SaaS: Churn. Endemic churn. The type of churn you almost can’t do anything about. Net net, most true SMB SaaS products often churn on the order of 3% per month almost no matter what you do. And measuring it.

SMB 363

SMB Churn Payment Services SaaS 363

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2021

Moving from Churn to NRR as the Core Retention Metric. This may sound obvious to more enterprise folks, but many Very Small Business and SMB focused SaaS companies still focus more on churn than NRR. NPS is now the #1 metric at HubSpot — for all employees. NPS is A Great Core Metric. #3. I Was Wrong.

Metrics 61

Metrics SMB Scale B2C 61

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2022

It created a lot of discussions and was more controversial then — that NPS was a great core metric. Back then, I wrote that when I was a SaaS founder, I thought Net Promoter Score (“NPS”) was a somewhat dumb, Big Company metric. NPS isn’t tied to upsells, churn, or revenue. NPS is A Great Core Metric.

Metrics 293

Metrics Churn Engineering Innovation 293

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2024

Though it seems counterintuitive to maximize revenue, Miro intentionally set the threshold high enough that when someone bought Miro, they were getting the collaborative value because the users needed to use the product as a team vs an individual (which early data showed the highest churn in).

Payments 284

Payments Pricing Scale Revenue 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

Let’s break down the real metrics from companies doing this right. But the data showed that behavioral triggers (like “2 hours after last app session”) consistently outperformed time zone optimization by 40-50% on engagement metrics. Quick Reality Check: 84% of customers now expect personalized experiences.

Scale 271

Scale SaaS B2B Scaling 271

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2025

Time-to-value is your most critical early metric. What Most SaaS Companies Get Wrong The standard playbook is: Hire sales Hit growth targets Eventually add CS when churn becomes painful But that’s backward. Don’t wait until you’re forced to fix churn. Shocking, I know. Way earlier.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Churn 246

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2020

In B2C and high-churn environments, it’s indeed a critical metric. But in SaaS, in the earlier days, we inherited a lot of our lingo and metrics from B2C web services. So we used their core metrics like “Churn” and “Lifetime value”. We’ve moved on in SaaS from CLTV being a core north star metric.

Metrics 286

Metrics Customer Lifetime Value B2C B2B 286

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

For a VP of Customer Success (VPCS), their “quota” or ownership should revolve around two key metrics: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) and Gross Retention Rate (GRR). NRR is the North Star metric for customer successit measures how much revenue youre retaining and expanding from your existing customer base.

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 162

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) Customer Success Churn Retention 162

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2021

Churn is when your customers drop out on you, and when it comes to your customer base, it’s inevitable. There are a number of factors to churn, including your business model, the maturity of your company, as well as your business type. No matter what, you’re going to have to figure out how to manage churn on the regular.

Churn 275

Churn Data Onboarding Business Model 275

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2021

Reducing churn in SaaS, along with increasing new ARR is the backbone to growing your business. In this guide, Andrea Webb, the SVP of Customer Success & Retention at Solarwinds , and Tim Willey, the SVP of Commercial Strategy & Operations at ForgeRock , share their tips for understanding and combating churn. .

Churn 257

Churn Customer Success Payment Features Subscription 257

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Really, what you tend to see when you keep a stretch VP too long in their current role is flat metrics. Churn that stops decreasing. Churn should keep coming down, at least a bit, until it’s top quartile at least. When you see bookings, leads, churn or feature velocity flatten — that’s a flag.

Sales Recruiting 313

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Metrics 313

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 18, 2021

The SaaS industry is full of advice on the perfect product metrics to gauge your users’ activation, engagement, and interactions. If you don’t know exactly what questions you want answered, these product metrics leave you blinded by the very data you hoped would open your eyes. What are product metrics?

Metrics 269

Metrics Customer Lifetime Value User Experience Engagement 269

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2024

What are the three most under-discussed metrics on social media, with VCs, and especially with founders? They went from on-prem to a SaaS model and may flatter their metrics a little by confusing them. Key Takeaways Track your net new customers after churn. This should be your North Star metric. They’re all at $2.5B

Metrics 300

Metrics SaaS Scale Social Media 300

Clouded Judgement

NOVEMBER 18, 2024

”” Benchmark Data The data shown below depicts how the ServiceTitan data compares to the operating metrics of current public SaaS businesses. Together, we refer to our Pro and FinTech products as “add-on products.””

Benchmarks 299

Benchmarks Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments 299

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital and 25-year C-level veteran, shares the top 14 signs that you have a SaaS metrics problem, the five reasons those symptoms exist, and a SaaS metrics maturity model with five layers to help you move the needle at every stage. The 15 Types of Misuse and Abuse of SaaS Metrics #1: Bludgeoning.

Metrics 339

Metrics Sales Hiring Benchmarks SaaS 339

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

Check out this 2018 Europa session with Guillaume Princen, Head of France and Southern Europe @ Stripe, where he talks about the metrics you need to be focused on in your startup. If you don’t have the time to watch the whole session, here are the main metrics you should be mindful of. One is your churn. MRR, obviously.

SaaS Payments 246

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 246

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

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

Balanced Metrics : While they track traditional SaaS metrics, they also measure customer success indicators specific to the construction industry. Lower Churn : When software is deeply embedded in industry workflows, switching costs become naturally high.

Construction 251

Construction Scale SaaS Travel 251

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2023

So over the past decade-and-a-half we’ve come up with a lot of yardsticks, metrics and rules for SaaS companies. E.g.,: CAC of < 12 months is Good-to-Great Paying sales reps 25%-30% of what they close is Good A burn ratio of 1 or less is Good These metrics do sort of work, if you have some capital to spend (i.e., They don’t.

SaaS Payments 278

SaaS Payments Metrics SMB Payments 278

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2021

Be Careful About the Metrics and Ratios You Pick. At Evernote, there was a push to do more and more analysis on the metrics and numbers. The thesis was many metrics were too easy to game. At Evernote, they conflated bounce with churn — and Phil challenges us not to. For example, there are always 7.8

Churn 258

Churn Retention Acquisition Startup 258

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2021

Churn is not her responsibility, nor is there any material credit for multi-year deals. This makes your VPS also implicitly responsible for churn as well, as well as net revenue retention for all accounts. Up until $8m-$10m ARR or so, this disalignment is relatively smallb/c it takes a while for renewals (and churn) to be material.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Metrics Sales Churn 274

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

Some fun facts: 10+ years of SaaStr conference attendance Partner at Point Nine Capital, a leading early-stage VC firm Geographic reach: Actively investing across Europe, US, and Australia Notable portfolio: Zendesk, Algolia, Contentful, Loom (and many more) Known for his “five ways to build a $100M business” framework The 5 Key Things (..)

Data 147

Data Acquisition AI Finance 147

SaaStr

MARCH 9, 2025

Meeting intensity KPI challenge : Sometimes AI efficiencies can reduce a company’s core metrics (like Calendly’s “meeting intensity”), requiring leadership to make conscientious decisions about value tradeoffs. Building separate AI interfaces can create unnecessary tech debt and learning curves.

AI 202

AI Scale Education User Experience 202

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

In this week’s Workshop Wednesday , Salesforce Ventures Investor, Jessica Bartos, shares the 5 metrics every SaaS company should care about in any market environment, especially the one we’re currently in. Growth Is Still Number One Growth is still the number one metric, but it’s not the only one. You do that by showing momentum.

Metrics 261

Metrics Marketing SaaS SMB 261

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.

Metrics 184

Metrics Sales Hiring Retention Churn 184

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2022

So don’t get me wrong — NRR is a Top 3 Metric for any SaaS company. And importantly — importantly — they don’t sweat churn too much if the NRR goal is still being met. Or logo retention as a metric can work as well, especially in B2D and other models that grow a lot over the year on their own.

Customer Success 260

Customer Success Metrics Scale Retention 260

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2023

Learn about the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023 with the CEOs of the most metric-oriented company, monday.com, and the founder of SaaStr. For a quick recap on SaaS metrics: What is ARR in SaaS? So now we must be smarter about the most important SaaS metrics because they matter again. The takeaway?

Metrics 245

Metrics SaaS Sales Hiring Finance 245

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 23, 2025

It tends to be very predictive — and smooth over some variability.

Churn 176

Churn Startup Metrics Revenue 176

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Sessions typically focus on real metrics, strategies, and lessons learned, not theoretical concepts. Benchmark Data and Performance Metrics SaaStr sessions typically feature transparent sharing of key metrics and benchmarks that are otherwise difficult to access. Get out of the home office. Pull together the team.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

But the end-user usage just never appeared … In SaaS, it actually takes until Year 3 for your customers to churn out from low engagement / low usage. So the buyer really doesn’t even have any success metrics going into the first renewal. If not, the customer would churn – but not until month 24.

AWS 337

AWS Churn Enterprise Pricing 337