, and welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about product, growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out at the office.
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?
With so many tools, potential metrics to track, and perspectives on measuring your progress, it’s no surprise founders often struggle to know where to start.
Not having run a SaaS startup myself, I came at this question from a few directions: crowdsourcing the answer, asking my smartest founder friends, and doing a bit of primary research. Below you’ll find answers to the following three questions
🔬 What metrics should early-stage bottom-up SaaS founders focus on?
🛠 What tools should they use to track their metrics?
🎨 How does one best visualize and share these metrics?
I don’t have all of the answers so I’d love to hear from you. Is there anything below that looks off or incomplete? I’ll use this post as a living document and update it with anything I learn. Just reply to this email, leave a comment, or
🔬 What metrics should early-stage bottom-up SaaS founders focus on?
Below are the most important metrics ranked in priority order, divided into three buckets: pre-revenue, post-revenue, and additional metrics to track. You don’t need to track all of these immediately — pick a few to start with and add more over time.
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