31 Comments
User's avatar
Amit Mina's avatar

Great summary. Thanks. with such structured data you can pretty much automate investing in SaaS upto a certain amount. If SaaSgrid has APIs we can build it :)

Justin Lane's avatar

Great article. A question I have is... if a person can have multiple user accounts would you count people or user accounts in your MAU/DAU metrics? I'm thinking it might depend on how the accounts are monetised? I'm guessing this isn't a new question..... interested in any thoughts.

Anant's avatar

Hi Ethan! Great article. Quick question- What is the timeline for logo retention? Is it monthly, quarterly or annually? Thank you very much!

Ethan Ruby's avatar

Since most SaaS companies have annual deals, I find it easiest to think about on an annual basis.

Anant's avatar

Thank you. For clarity sake, 70-80% for SMBs annually is good logo retention?

Ethan Ruby's avatar

Yes, it can be an OK figure if NDR is high.

Lachlan's avatar

On the spreadsheet, if we sign annual subscriptions should we break that down by moth? Or just input the total amount in the month of renewal?

Ethan Ruby's avatar

Divide the annual contract value by 12, and assign that value to each month.

Rajeev Prasad's avatar

This would move already realized revenue to the future. I have a similar problem and wondering if there is a better way to accommodate for it.

Fariba Toofanian's avatar

I understand ARR for annual contracts. But is ARR relevant to a truly month-to-month subscription business? How should I calculate Burn Multiple (net burn / net new ARR)? Do you suggest I calculate the year-end ARR as last month's MRR x12?

Ethan Ruby's avatar

You can certainly multiply MRR * 12 to get ARR for the purpose of calculating burn multiple. However, if the month to month nature of your subscription business means you have high churn (<80% NDR at month 12), then many of these metrics won't be applicable. If that's the case, I recommend focusing on MRR, LTV, and burn rate as your north star metrics.

Fariba Toofanian's avatar

Thank you for the quick reply. This makes a lot of sense.

Sam's avatar

If LTV includes CAC, then 3x LTV:CAC implies 4x cumulative gross profit : CAC. Is that correct?

Ethan Ruby's avatar

Yes, that's correct.

Prakash Chandran's avatar

Hey founders! Want to easily bring in your Stripe data? The team at Xano.com has created a tool that will automatically fill in the customer revenue part of the SaaSGrid CSV with a simple Stripe export. Video instructions included.

https://www.xano.com/snippet/kRNV975S

Scott's avatar

for enterprise software, would you include API/Integration accounts for DAU/MAU and DAU/MAU? Or should DAU/MAU and DAU/MAU only be for human accounts?

Ethan Ruby's avatar

If customers primarily interact with you via API, it makes sense for that to count as active use.

Flora Azucena's avatar

Very helpful, thank you!

Pablo Núñez's avatar

Great article! Congrats :)

Steven Forth's avatar

I fear this is missing the most important metric, which is Value to Customer (V2C). One will only have a sustainable business if one is actually providing value to customers. These metrics are too inwardly focussed.

Steven Forth's avatar

Note, MIT refers to this as Economic Value to the Customer (EVC).

Sumit's avatar

Emailed you the csv. its erroring out for us

Francis C.'s avatar

These resources are excellent!

Daniel Soliman's avatar

Great resource. Thanks! How would you enter a customer paying upfront for 3-years? They may also choose to add additional capacity during that period.

Spread it out over the 36 months, or just enter when and what was actually collected?

Ethan Ruby's avatar

Yes, you would spread it out over 36 months, and add upsells as they occur.

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