Startup Metrics

Monthly Churn Rate is the percentage of subscribers canceling services monthly; high churn indicates product-market misfit or competition, requiring improved retention strategies.

Represents the mean duration from creation to resolution of technical support tickets, measuring operational efficiency in resolving technical issues.

Months to Recover CAC measures how long it takes to recoup customer acquisition costs, including expenses for acquiring and servicing the customer.

% of Roles with OKRs tracks the job functions with Objectives and Key Results tied to your core strategy. It reveals if OKRs are integrated across all teams or limited to leadership.

The "% of Users 'Very Disappointed' if Product is Removed" measures the percentage of users who would be very disappointed without the product, indicating product-market fit.

Net Burn Rate measures how quickly a SaaS company uses cash reserves after revenue, reflecting net cash loss per month or quarter.

EBITDA measures a company's operational profitability by excluding interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, focusing on core business performance.

Team Engagement Score measures emotional commitment, goal alignment, and willingness to go extra mile, combining survey responses into a single score (0-100)

This metric measures the percentage of product features used by over 50% of users, indicating feature relevance, product-market fit, and development efficiency.

Latency Under Load measures application response time during high traffic, using percentiles (P95, P99) to accurately reflect real user experience, not averages.

User Adoption Rate is the percentage of users querying the Single Source of Truth (SSOT) at least twice weekly, indicating active engagement and effective utilization of the centralized data source.

Unaided brand recall is when people name software companies without prompts-brands that instantly come to mind and are easily mentioned.

Net Dollar Retention measures revenue retained from existing customers over time, accounting for upsells, downgrades, and churn, reflecting customer loyalty and spending growth.

Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) measures employee loyalty by asking likelihood to recommend the company. Promoters advocate, passives are neutral, detractors are disengaged and at risk of leaving

The "Percentage of Features with Clear Monetization Path" measures the portion of your SaaS product’s features that directly generate revenue.

GTM Efficiency Ratio measures sales and marketing costs needed to generate one dollar of net new Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).

Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is the normalized 12-month value of recurring subscription revenue, excluding one-time fees, reflecting upgrades, downgrades, and churn for long-term business health.

% of Engineering Time on Rework measures the portion of developer effort spent revising or fixing code, features, or architecture due to defects, changes, or technical debt.

% Strategic Founder Time measures the proportion of total work hours dedicated to long-term initiatives such as market positioning, product roadmaps, partnership development, and scalability planning.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) gauges customer loyalty by subtracting Detractors (0-6) from Promoters (9-10), predicting business growth potential.

% Revenue From Non-founder Deals measures the share of SaaS revenue from deals closed without founder involvement in sales or customer acquisition.

Decision Consistency Score is the frequency with which teams generate conflicting analyses from identical data, measuring reliability and alignment in data-driven decision-making processes.

% of Strategic Changes Driven by Data measures the share of major decisions-like product pivots or pricing-guided by quantitative analysis rather than intuition.

System Uptime is the percentage of time an app remains available and operational, with industry targets like AWS aiming for 99.9%+ through global redundancy.

Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) is the smoothed annual growth rate of a metric, like revenue, over multiple years, assuming consistent growth.

Cross-selling is offering customers additional products or complementary features that enhance or supplement their original purchase.

The Ratio of GTM Spend to New ARR measures sales and marketing costs needed to generate one dollar of net new Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).

Span of Control measures how many full-time equivalent employees report to each manager, standardizing staffing levels for organizational comparison and management.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) as a Percentage of Revenue measures the portion of revenue consumed by direct costs to produce goods or services sold.

It refers to website visits from search engine queries using specific brand-related keywords like company names, product names, or unique service identifiers.

Burn Multiple quantifies capital efficiency by measuring how much cash a company burns to generate $1 of new Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).

Funnel Analytics Completeness systematically tracks all essential stages and metrics across SaaS customer acquisition and retention journeys, ensuring coverage, integrity, quality, and timeliness.

The LTV:CAC ratio compares a customer’s lifetime gross profit (LTV) to the cost of acquiring them (CAC), measuring profitability versus acquisition expenses.

Data Coverage Ratio is the percentage of systems both sending and receiving updates from the Single Source of Truth (SSOT), reflecting true integration and comprehensive data synchronization across platforms.

% of Roadmap Influenced by Data measures the share of product initiatives driven by structured analysis, using primary data like user metrics and secondary data like market research.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures customer sentiment on interactions or experiences via surveys, providing immediate feedback on product performance and service quality.

Average Release Cycle Time measures the average duration between software releases, reflecting development efficiency, quality control, and agility in responding to market and customer needs.

CAC payback period (CPP) measures the months required to recover customer acquisition costs, including expenses for acquiring and servicing the customer.

Customer Retention Rate (CRR) measures the percentage of existing customers retained over time, excluding new acquisitions, calculated as ((E - N) / S) × 100.

Conversion Rate Across Funnel Stages tracks user progression through customer journey phases, measuring how effectively prospects move from awareness to final actions like purchase or advocacy.

% of KPIs with Real-time Visibility measures critical metrics monitored instantly (<1s for operations, <5m for analytics), enabling immediate insights into customer behavior and performance.

Time to Recover CAC measures the months needed to recoup customer acquisition costs, considering both acquisition expenses and ongoing service costs.

Competitive Win Rate shows the percentage of deals you win against direct competitors, not all deals, in a specific segment when customers compare options

Average completed user stories/tasks (1–3 day efforts) per sprint, measuring a team's planning accuracy and delivery capacity within Agile frameworks.

ARR Growth Rate (YoY) measures the percentage change in Annual Recurring Revenue over consecutive 12-month periods, showing yearly revenue growth.

% of Unused Features Over 90 days measures features with less than 5% user adoption within a 90-day window.

Combines EBITDA Margin + Revenue Growth Rate to evaluate the tradeoff between growth and profitability.

GTM Spend Ratio measures sales and marketing costs needed to generate one dollar of net new Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by channel reveals the true growth cost, showing which marketing efforts are effective and which waste resources.

MRR Growth Rate (MoM) measures monthly percentage growth of recurring revenue, tracking how quickly MRR increases month-to-month or cumulatively over a year.

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) measures revenue growth or loss from existing customers over time, accounting for expansion, contraction, and churn, calculated as current revenue divided by prior revenue times 100%.

The FTE per Manager Ratio measures how many full-time equivalent employees report to each manager, standardizing staffing levels for organizational comparison and management.

The MQL to SQL Conversion Rate tracks the percentage of marketing-engaged leads that sales deems ready for direct engagement and likely to buy.

Decision Cycle Time (DCT) tracks the complete duration from identifying a decision need to full implementation, mirroring the sales "Time-to-Close" metric.

% of Team Aligned on Top Three Priorities measures how many employees in your startup can clearly name the company's top three strategic priorities, unprompted.

Shows EBITDA as a percentage of its total revenue.

Revenue efficiency in SaaS measures Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) per employee by dividing total ARR by full-time employees, indicating operational efficiency and workforce productivity.

Gross margin is the percentage of revenue left after deducting direct service costs (COGS), showing SaaS companies' efficiency in converting revenue to gross profit before fixed expenses.

% Operational Founder Time measures the percentage of total team time dedicated to maintaining existing systems, including support, technical debt, feature deployment, and incident response activities.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the predictable revenue from active subscriptions each month, excluding one-time payments, trials, and discounts, enabling stable financial planning and tracking.

Upselling is the strategy of encouraging existing customers to upgrade to a higher-tier version of the product they currently use.

Overall Single Source of Truth (SSOT) Adoption Score combines Data Coverage Ratio, User Adoption Rate, and Decision Consistency Score to quantify centralized data integration, active usage, and consistent decision-making across the organization.

This metric tracks the percentage of planned product features delivered quarterly, measuring execution effectiveness, development speed, and the ability to meet strategic commitments.