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Dear SaaStr: What Are the Most Important SaaS Metrics in the Early Days?

SaaStr

SaaStr ) And once you have at least a little revenue ($1m-$2m ARR or so), net revenue retention / churn. NRR and churn aren’t necessarily statistical significant before Year 2-3 and before $1m-$2m in ARR). Churn is important, but in the early days, just drive it down. Probably, measured as NPS (more here: I Was Wrong.

Metrics 283
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From 0 to $10m ARR, At What Point Do We Start Hiring and Whom?

SaaStr

Marketing : Likely no VP of Marketing yet either — unless. You might bring on a growth hacker to help with demand gen, but youre still figuring out product-market fit. Marketing : Around $1M ARR or if you find someone strong, earlier, youre ready for a VP of Demand Gen or Marketing. A head of Product.

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The Challenge with SMB SaaS: High Growth Can Only Mask High Churn For Just So Long

SaaStr

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
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The Silent, Lurking Churn: Activation Rates Less Than 90%

SaaStr

That means after all the time and money put into building your product, marketing your product, trialing your product, demo’ing your product, selling your product, closing the deal, celebrating … and then … a ton of those customers are immediately at risk. Think about that.

Churn 334
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4 Competencies of a Successful Sales Team

Speaker: Collin Stewart, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Predictable Revenue

After identifying that you have a great product that the market needs, the next step is to determine if you have the proper messaging, if you are using the correct channels, and if you have the most effective tactics in place. Sales effectiveness = Product Market Fit*(Messaging + Channels + Tactics).

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The Complete Guide to SaaS Pricing Strategy

Tom Tunguz

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.

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SaaStr Podcast 470 (and Video): How Product & Marketing Should Work Together with PagerDuty

SaaStr

This sometimes means that Julie has to adjust the market strategy to suit what has become a different product, but it also means that they’re making the right product for the right people. . It slows down the journey, resulting in more churn and fewer happy customer-advocates. Putting customers in charge of the journey.