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. They were earlier to mass-scale recurring revenue services on the web than B2B was. So we used their core metrics like “Churn” and “Lifetime value”.

Metrics 290

Metrics Customer Lifetime Value B2C B2B 290

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

The event is strategically designed to facilitate 1000s of meaningful connections through 1000+ on-site “Who Do You Want To Meet” dedicated 1-on-1s for B2B founders and execs (no service providers, sorry!) VIP Networking app for B2B founders and execs attending (no service providers, sorry!)

Sales Recruiting 193

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 193

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2022

When you work in B2B marketing, you don’t often get a great reason to show off your work to your friends and family. B2B marketing has a reputation for being more performance-oriented than brand-oriented. Check it out: This campaign proves that we B2B marketers can be just as creative as anyone when it comes to advertising.

B2B 306

B2B Branding Marketing B2C 306

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

Chart Mogul

OCTOBER 30, 2024

Satisfaction > Adoption When determining success metrics, don’t lose sight of the difference between clues and facts. Satisfaction > Adoption when it comes to determining a good success metric. Good success planning is key. Customers don’t care about your title Account Executive? Account Manager? Customer Success Manager?

Management 105

Management B2B SaaS Scale 105

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., It depends.

SaaS Payments 284

SaaS Payments Metrics SMB Payments 284

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2024

Let’s jump right into this set of community questions focused on SaaS metrics, growth, and efficiency. What metrics should we expect in this environment? These payback metrics are important for investing. Q: When it comes to GTM efficiency, what are the most important leading indicator metrics? Do zero-cost budgeting.

Metrics 276

Metrics Scale Sales Hiring SaaS 276

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2025

So there’s the 10x ARR club … hard enough today in B2B and SaaS for public companies. By far the most highly valued B2B software company. It’s already #1 in B2B and SaaS today. And then there is Palantir. 78x ARR as we write this! It’s just a powerhouse right now: $3.5 24% GAAP profit margins!

Artificial Intelligence 159

Artificial Intelligence Government AI Benchmarks 159

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

PST, Bo Borland, founder, and CEO of playbuilt, shares four steps for creating repeatable success at every stage of growth, specifically in B2B Enterprise. Let’s look at Borland’s approach to aligning and executing B2B team selling motions for a rinse-and-repeat process for growth. Mapping 9-box to the buyer’s journey and team roles.

Enterprise 297

Enterprise B2B Scale SMB 297

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2025

If you can maintain this pace and improve your metrics (like NRR and sales efficiency), you could still build a significant, valuable B2B business over time. That means you could hit $6M ARR in 2 years and importantly, $12M ARR in 4-5 years. While this isnt hypergrowth, its steady. However, youll need to be patientits a slower path.

Sales Hiring 203

Sales Hiring B2B Churn Retention 203

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2025

Our AI Can Review Your Outbound Email Copy, or Even Just Create it For You From Scratch Tell our AI about your B2B business: ARR, ACV, growth, ICP, etc. Our AI Can Help You Figure Out What To Do About Churn and Other Issues Share all your challenges and metrics, and our AI will help come up with a game plan for you. #6. Really Well.

Sales Hiring 162

Sales Hiring AI Interviewing B2B 162

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

It’s to say many of us do not know how to use AI effectively enough yet to impact conversion metrics. #6: 8: 3x Net Dollar Retention Thanks to This Pricing Model Over time, the dominant pricing structure in B2C and B2B applications is like the cell phone plan. So how much business has it closed? You pay an additional 2.5

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 333

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What Is The Best Indicators of Product Market Fit at an Early Stage SaaS B2B Startup? This is a rough metric, but I’d say from experience working closely with 25+ SaaS companies … if you aren’t growing > 10% a month after $10k in MRR or so … then you don’t yet have product-market fit. Not yet at least.

Product Marketing 290

Product Marketing B2B Startup Marketing 290

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2025

So at SaaStr Annual, Dave Kellogg did a great deep dive on “5 Things Every B2B CEO Needs to Know about Marketing” In the Age of AI it’s even more true today, so I wanted to update our SaaStr take-aways from the deep dive. Instead, focus on two key metrics: Pipeline coverage – Do we have a chance to hit our numbers?

Sales Hiring 205

Sales Hiring Marketing Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team 205

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2025

With 17 years of venture capital experience, Ethan began his career in consumer investing before pivoting to B2B, where he developed particular expertise in developer platforms and B2B software. Focus on the right metrics : Be transparent about your key metrics rather than relying on vanity numbers.

Technical Review 162

Technical Review Venture Capital Outsourced Development ChatGPT 162

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2025

100+ Are in B2B. #3. B2B Startups Spend 15% of Revenue on Sales and 10% on Marketing, Per SaaS Capital #4. The Top 10 Learnings from Launching SaaStrs Own AI: What Every B2B Founder Needs to Kno w Top Vids + Pods: #1. The Top 10 Customer Success Metrics Investors Care About in 2025 with Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta #4.

Scale 146

Scale Customer Success Scaling AI 146

FastSpring

JULY 11, 2024

The most common examples of successful CRO tactics provided at many conferences tend to focus on B2C ecommerce, but what are the proven winning tactics you can use in your B2B CRO strategy? In this episode of Growth Stage, we interview Sahil Patel of Spiralyze about his thoughts on: Special considerations for B2B CRO. Jump to video.

B2B 169

B2B Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales 169

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2021

Now LinkedIn isn’t a stand-alone public company anymore, so we can’t get quite as many metrics and details from them as we used to. B2B market is on fire. A bit of a B2C metric I guess (members), but still a visceral example of making more money from your base. But we can get enough. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1.

B2C 334

B2C B2B Acquisition Cloud 334

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2024

A lot of you reading SaaStr are probably more B2B SaaS oriented and may not be paying attention to the consumer market, but it’s already massive and is continuing to grow quickly. So, let’s look at the state of subscription apps and how B2B SaaS can learn from it. In B2B, the classic metric for this is 2% now and was 2% in 2006.

Payment Features 306

Payment Features Subscription B2B Mobile 306

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

Be explicit about success metrics Define what success looks like beyond revenue targets to align expectations. Founder-led sales provides invaluable dat a When founders sell the first $2-3M, they generate critical insights on customers, conversion rates, and retention that inform the GTM strategy.

Sales Recruiting 245

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 245

SaaStr

AUGUST 21, 2020

This I’ve found to be a big flag in B2B/SaaS. In B2B/SaaS, the best CEOs are always close to the customers. Doesn’t share enough metrics, data, etc. But selling your company for $20m-$30m isn’t consistent with raising VC capital or going big. A lot of immature language from the CEO, especially on social media. Hiring is tough.

Social Media 336

Social Media B2B Investment Scaling 336

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

Product-led growth (PLG) is the consumerization of software—a strategy B2B software companies can learn from growth teams at successful consumer tech companies. . He advises bringing these features to a B2B growth team and then shares mistakes that B2B companies make while adding go-to-market (GTM) to PLG. Free user retention.

Technical Review 290

Technical Review Technical Advisors Scale Compensation 290

SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2025

The Top 10 Customer Success Metrics Investors Care About in 2025 with Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta #3. The Future of AI in B2B SaaS: Insights from Synthesia and Theory Ventures. : An Honest 5 Point Test Top Pods & Vids: #1. Top 10 Things We Learned from the New SaaStr AI with Jason Lemkin + Assistant UI #2. Hosted by Jason Lemkin #4.

AI 146

AI B2B Enterprise Customer Success 146

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2022

years (maybe the better metric): The fastest of the bunch was Divvy’s $2b+ acquisition by Bill 5 years after funding. It just takes time to create true value in B2B and SaaS. years on average, with a median of 10.0 But so many took decades. Even Mailchimp’s incredible $12B acquisition by Intuit took … 20 years.

Startup 330

Startup SaaS Acquisition B2B 330

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

The core product is very B2C, but the upgrade to paid has very SMB B2B metrics, and 80% of the revenue is subscription based. We wrote a classic SaaStr post long ago saying you needed about 50,000,000 Freemium users to make the model work, more or less, and Duolingo’s metrics tie to this. But is Duolingo SaaS?

Scale 321

Scale B2C SMB B2B 321

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 335

Churn B2C B2B Metrics 335

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Working in my capacity at as an EIR at Balderton Capital , I have recently written a new publication, The Balderton Founder’s Guide to B2B Sales , with the able support of Balderton Principal Michael Lavner and the entire Balderton Capital team. Planning: planning and the role of key metrics and benchmarks.

B2B 140

B2B Sales Benchmarks Startup 140

Valuize Consulting

NOVEMBER 19, 2024

Our world is hyper-connected and data-driven, leading B2B companies are turning to technology to gain deeper insights into client needs and to deliver more proactive, tailored experiences. This technology is elevating B2B relationships, enabling companies to build lasting, profitable partnerships with a focus on both retention and expansion.

B2B 52

B2B Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Outsourced Development 52

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Take a look at just some of the topics and mentors hosting Braindates: Core metrics to track for SAAS with Tarush Aggarwal, Founder & Ceo at 5X Pricing as a growth lever – How, what, why? The goal is to help each other learn something new, find mentorships, create partnerships, and exchange strategies.

VP of Engineering 298

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder Outsourcing Services CTO Coach 298

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2024

B2B virality” is usually slow. So when you are out of ideas to grow, move your primary focus to growing your CSAT (customer satisfaction) and NPS (Net Promoter Score) metrics up substantially. Third, focus on metrics besides revenue that matter, and that you can grow right now. Even if other metrics seem OK.

Startup 312

Startup B2B Metrics Product Marketing 312

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2021

But over time, it’s added a large enterprise and B2B component for marketers and others to track, manage and market videos that we’ll spend a bunch of time digging in on, as it’s the fastest-growing segment, growing from little-to-none in 2017 to 25% of revenue today. And a few other interesting learnings: 6.

Enterprise 325

Enterprise Scale B2B Metrics 325

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2024

Which is what a lot of SaaS and B2B AI is really about. Modeling 3% Stock-Based Dilution a Year A metric almost every leader is tracking more carefully now. So UiPath was early to what we now think of as “AI”, but blazed the path in automation. Automating away human-driven processes. That’s how you get more efficient.

Scale 304

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring AI 304

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2020

B2B txns moving online ??APIs Report on employee engagement metrics. B2B transactions move online. . In case u missed @SaaStrAnnual State of the Cloud w @bdeeter @TheValuesVC. ??Future Future of work = remote ??Privacy Privacy debt = new technical debt ??Cloud Cloud proliferating globally ??B2B APIs driving innovation ??Automation

Technical Review 350

Technical Review Cloud Software Review Technology 350

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 30, 2020

A product leader at a B2B marketing mega-cap shared with me only 7% of marketing spend is targeted to sales prospects, which is why ABM has become so popular. 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

JUNE 30, 2022

June seems to show no signs of slowing down but we’re monitoring demand metrics like a hawk to see when or if we’ll experience a slow down. I have been working in B2B SaaS for almost 15 years (since we called it SaaS). Ended May $1.7M ahead of plan and growing ARR @ 53%. — Kyle Porter (@kyleporter) June 28, 2022. 10% of total.

B2B 354

B2B SaaS Branding Metrics 354

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2022

But this will be one of the last chances we get to see its financials and metrics as a public company. Once it goes private again later in 2022, Zendesk won’t publish many metrics anymore. While Zendesk still has thousands of SMBs, the tiny customers no longer even show up in the metrics. Zendesk has really grown up.

SMB 299

SMB Scale B2B Revenue 299