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The most important bottom-up SaaS metrics to track
Q: I’m curious what metrics early-stage bottom-up SaaS startups track and how they visualize these metrics –– especially metrics other than MRR and revenue?
www.lennysnewsletter.com
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Pre-revenue:

1. Retention

User retention: % of new users who are still active 3-6 months later
Logo retention: % of new companies who are still active 3-6 months later
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L7/L30 retention
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: Number of days that users are active per week/month

2. Virality within an organization

Invite rate: % of new users who sent at least one invite in the first X days
Invite conversion rate: % of users who receive an invite that sign-up in the next X days
Virality factor: % of new users who have come from an invite

3. Top-of-funnel growth

Traffic: Visits to site/week
MoM user growth: Month over month growth rate in total users
Activation: % new users who “activate”, whatever that means for your product

Post-revenue:

1. Revenue growth

MRR: Total and MoM MRR growth
ARR: Total and MoM ARR growth
New customers: New customers/week

2. Retention

Customer retention: % of new paying customers who are still customers 3-6 months later
Net Dollar Retention: MRR of each cohort at 12 months

3. Monetization

Paid company conversion: % of free companies that convert to paid within X days
Payback period: Average time to pay back CAC
Gross margins: Net sales revenue minus the cost of goods sold

Additional metrics to track and have available:

1. Engagement

DAU/MAU
Key actions per day/week (e.g. tasks created, pics sent)
Average time spent/user/day

2. Virality within an organization

Invite volume: When an invite was sent, median number of invites sent per user
Velocity of virality: Median days from 1 —> N seats at a company
Traction: Number of total companies with at least 3 users signed-up
Leads: Top domain name with most users (to target outreach)

3. Monetization

ARPU: Average revenue per user
User conversion: % of free users that convert to paid within X days
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Quick ratio
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: (New MRR + Expansion MRR) / (Contraction MRR + Churned MRR)
Growth spend efficiency: CAC/LTV
Speed to next tier: If usage-based pricing, speed to next tier/plan
Company adoption: Number of users per domain name

4. Funnel conversion

Landing conversion: % visitors click CTA
Activation: % visitors who “activate”, whatever that means for your product
% visitors complete your sign-up flow
% visitors signup

🛠 What tool should founders use to track their metrics AND 🎨 How do I best visualize and share these metrics?

I put a call out on Twitter asking SaaS founders to share their metrics dashboards:
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Below I’ve synthesized the best examples, and grouped them by the tools that these teams use to track these metrics. Surprisingly (though not that surprisingly) Google Sheets was by far the most used tool, followed by Profitwell and Google Data Studio (sitting on top of Google Sheets). If you have any more examples to share,
shoot me a note
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!

1. Google Sheets

Courtesy of
@craigzingerline
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Courtesy of
@garrett_wj
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