Growth reference
Growth dossier
Keywords and metrics that define how growth actually works — with definitions, formulas, and founder-usable examples.
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Growth reference
Keywords and metrics that define how growth actually works — with definitions, formulas, and founder-usable examples.
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Acquisition · Finance
The average fully loaded cost required to acquire one new paying customer.
Monetization · Finance
The total gross margin a business expects to earn from a customer over their entire relationship.
Finance · Monetization
The ratio comparing customer lifetime value to the cost of acquiring that customer.
Finance · Monetization
The number of months required for a customer's gross margin to repay their acquisition cost.
Activation · Product
The percentage of new signups who complete the defined activation action within a set window.
Activation · Product
The average elapsed time between signup and a user first experiencing the product's core value.
Activation · Product
The percentage of new users who finish every step of the defined onboarding flow.
Activation · Product
The percentage of users who abandon the onboarding flow at each individual step.
Retention
The percentage of customers who cancel or stop paying within a given period.
Retention · Finance
The percentage of recurring revenue lost to cancellations and downgrades in a period.
Retention · Monetization · Finance
The percentage of recurring revenue retained and grown from an existing customer cohort over a period, including expansion.
Retention · Finance
The percentage of recurring revenue retained from an existing customer cohort, counting only churn and downgrades, excluding expansion.
Retention
The percentage of distinct customer accounts retained over a period, regardless of revenue size.
Product · Retention
The count of unique users who perform a meaningful action in the product on a given day.
Product · Retention
The count of unique users who perform a meaningful action in the product within a rolling 7-day window.
Product · Retention
The count of unique users who perform a meaningful action in the product within a rolling 30-day window.
Product · Retention
The share of monthly active users who are also active on a given day, indicating engagement frequency.
Virality
The average number of new users each existing user generates through invitations.
Virality
The average time between one user sending an invitation and the invitee converting and sending their own.
Virality · Acquisition
The percentage of active customers who refer at least one new customer within a period.
Brand · Retention
A survey-based score measuring customer likelihood to recommend a product, calculated from promoters minus detractors.
Brand · Retention
A survey-based score capturing satisfaction with a specific interaction, typically rated 1-5.
Retention · Ops
A survey-based score measuring how much effort a customer had to expend to complete a task or resolve an issue.
Finance · Monetization
The predictable subscription revenue expected each month from active customers.
Finance · Monetization
The annualized value of recurring subscription revenue.
Finance · Monetization
Average revenue generated per active user over a period.
Finance · Monetization
Average recurring revenue generated per paying account, commonly used in B2B billing models.
Monetization · Finance
New recurring revenue added from existing customers upgrading, adding seats, or buying more usage.
Monetization · Retention
Recurring revenue lost from existing customers downgrading their plan or reducing usage without fully cancelling.
Finance · Monetization
Recurring revenue added from newly acquired customers in a period.
Finance · Monetization
The total change in MRR for a period after accounting for new, expansion, contraction, and churned MRR.
Finance
The percentage of revenue remaining after subtracting the direct cost of delivering the product.
Finance
Revenue minus all variable costs, showing how much each sale contributes toward covering fixed costs and profit.
Finance · Ops
The net amount of cash a company spends per month beyond what it earns in revenue.
Finance · Ops
The number of months a company can continue operating at its current burn rate before running out of cash.
Finance · Ops
A combined efficiency benchmark summing a SaaS company's growth rate and profit margin.
Finance · Ops
A go-to-market efficiency ratio comparing net new annualized revenue to prior-period sales and marketing spend.
Acquisition · Monetization
The percentage of users who complete a defined desired action out of all who had the opportunity to.
Acquisition · Channel
The percentage of raw leads that meet marketing's qualification criteria.
Acquisition · Channel
The percentage of marketing-qualified leads that sales confirms as sales-qualified.
Acquisition · Channel · Finance
The percentage of sales-qualified leads that close as won deals.
Monetization · Activation
The percentage of free trial users who convert into paying customers.
Monetization · Product
The percentage of free-tier users in a freemium model who upgrade to a paid plan.
Channel · Finance
The percentage of sales opportunities that close as won deals out of all opportunities that reach a final decision.
Channel · Finance · Ops
The average number of days between a lead entering the pipeline and the deal reaching a final decision.
Channel · Finance · Ops
A composite measure of how much revenue moves through the pipeline per unit time, combining volume, size, win rate, and cycle length.
Finance · Monetization
The average annualized value of closed customer contracts.
Channel · Finance
The ratio of total open pipeline value to the remaining revenue target for the period.
Channel · Ops
The percentage of an assigned sales quota that a rep or team actually achieves in a period.
Acquisition · Channel
The average marketing spend required to generate one new lead.
Channel · Acquisition
The average amount paid for each click on a paid advertisement.
Channel · Acquisition
The average cost to reach one thousand ad impressions.
Channel · Acquisition
The percentage of people who saw an ad or link and clicked on it.
Channel · Finance · Acquisition
The revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.
Channel · Acquisition
The percentage of total site traffic coming from unpaid search and referral sources.
Channel · Acquisition
The count of target keywords ranking in top search positions, typically top 10, for the site.
Channel · Brand
The change over time in a third-party score estimating a domain's ranking strength based on backlinks and other factors.
Channel · Acquisition
The percentage of content readers who go on to sign up for the product.
Channel
The percentage of delivered emails that were opened by recipients.
Channel
The percentage of delivered emails where the recipient clicked a link inside.
Channel · Retention
The percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from a list after a given send.
Channel · Brand
The percentage of an audience that likes, comments, shares, or clicks on a social post relative to how many saw it.
Product · Activation
The percentage of eligible users who try and continue using a specific feature.
Product · Retention
The percentage of the active user base that qualifies as a power user based on a defined usage threshold.
Product · Acquisition · Monetization
The percentage of active free or trial users whose behavior meets criteria signaling readiness to buy or upgrade.
Monetization · Channel
The percentage of total revenue generated through self-serve checkout without sales team involvement.
Monetization
The percentage of existing customers who upgrade to a higher-priced plan or tier within a period.
Monetization
The percentage of existing customers who purchase an additional product or add-on beyond their original purchase.
Monetization · Retention
The state where expansion revenue exceeds revenue lost to churn and contraction, expressed as revenue growth from the existing base.
Retention · Finance
The percentage of distinct customer accounts lost in a period, regardless of their revenue size.
Retention · Finance
The percentage of recurring revenue lost specifically to full cancellations, excluding downgrades.
Retention · Finance · Ops
The percentage of churned revenue caused by failed payments rather than an active decision to cancel.
Retention · Finance
The percentage of customers whose contracts come up for renewal and actually renew.
Retention · Ops
The breakdown of the active customer base across health score tiers, such as healthy, at-risk, and critical.
Ops · Retention
The total number of customer support tickets opened in a period.
Ops · Retention
The average time between a customer opening a support request and receiving a first reply.
Ops · Retention
The average time between a support ticket being opened and being fully resolved.
Ops · Finance
The percentage of the total addressable market a company has currently captured.
Finance · Ops
A capital efficiency metric comparing net cash burned to net new annual recurring revenue generated.
Finance · Ops
A ratio comparing new revenue generated to the sales and marketing cost required to generate it.
Finance · Ops
The percentage of total revenue generated by the largest handful of customers.
Retention · Monetization
The percentage of purchased seats or licenses that are actively used by real users.
Product · Monetization
The total number of API requests made by customers within a period.
Activation · Product
The elapsed time between account creation and a user completing the first action that demonstrates real product value.
Activation
The average time between account creation and a user reaching the defined activation milestone.
Virality · Acquisition
The percentage of people who click or receive a referral link that go on to become active customers.
Virality · Product
The percentage of sent invitations that result in the recipient creating an account.
Virality · Acquisition
The percentage of people who join a pre-launch waitlist that go on to activate once given access.
Channel · Acquisition
The percentage of app store page visitors who download or install the app.
Retention · Activation
The percentage of new users who return to the product exactly one day after signing up.
Retention · Activation
The percentage of new users who return to the product seven days after signing up.
Retention
The percentage of new users who remain active thirty days after signing up.
Retention · Ops
The percentage of a specific signup cohort still active at successive intervals after their signup date.
Product · Retention
The average duration of a single user session within the product.
Product · Retention
The average number of distinct sessions a user has with the product within a period.
Channel · Acquisition
The percentage of website visitors who leave after viewing only a single page without taking further action.
Acquisition · Product
The percentage of all sessions that end on a specific page, regardless of how many pages were viewed before it.
Channel · Acquisition
The elapsed time between a lead submitting interest and receiving a first response from sales.
Acquisition · Channel
The total count of leads reaching marketing-qualified status within a period.
Acquisition · Channel
The total count of leads reaching sales-qualified status within a period.
Finance · Channel
The total dollar value of all open sales opportunities at a point in time.
Finance · Channel
The average dollar value of closed-won deals in a period.
Finance · Monetization
The average percentage discount off list price given across closed deals.
Finance · Monetization
The percentage of list price actually collected after accounting for discounts and concessions.
Monetization · Finance
The ratio of expansion MRR to contraction MRR within a period, showing whether existing accounts are net growing or shrinking.
Virality · Product
The percentage of people exposed to a viral loop touchpoint, like a shared document, who go on to sign up.
Virality · Acquisition
The percentage of eligible customers who actively use a referral program at least once.
Channel · Brand
The return generated from an influencer partnership relative to what was paid or given to the influencer.
Brand · Channel
The number of searches for a company's own brand name or product name over a period.
Brand
A brand's visibility in its category relative to competitors, measured across media mentions, search, or ad presence.
Brand · Ops
A survey-based score measuring how likely employees are to recommend the company as a place to work.
Brand · Retention
The percentage of community members who engage, such as posting or replying, within a given period.
Brand · Ops
The average time it takes for a question or post in a community to receive its first reply.
Ops · Product
The percentage of A/B tests or experiments that produce a statistically significant positive result.
Ops
The number of experiments a team ships and concludes within a given period.
Ops · Product
The period-over-period growth rate of a company's chosen north star metric.
Ops · Product
The percentage change in a guardrail metric observed during an experiment or rollout meant to improve a different primary metric.
Finance · Monetization
The total new annual recurring revenue added from newly acquired customers in a period, before subtracting any losses.
Finance · Monetization
The total change in annual recurring revenue for a period, combining new, expansion, contraction, and churned ARR.
Finance · Ops
Total annual recurring revenue divided by the total number of full-time employees.
Finance · Ops
Total revenue divided by the total number of full-time employees, a broader efficiency measure not limited to recurring revenue.
Finance · Monetization
The total count of distinct customer accounts currently on a paid plan.
Acquisition · Monetization
The total count of users active on a free tier or trial who are not currently paying.
Acquisition · Monetization
The percentage of total site visitors who become paying customers, spanning the entire funnel from first visit to purchase.
Product · Ops
The total number of distinct feature requests submitted by customers within a period.
Product · Ops
The number of bug reports submitted per active user within a period.
Ops · Product
The percentage of time a product or service is fully operational and available to customers.
Retention · Finance
Net revenue retention calculated separately for distinct customer cohorts, such as by signup quarter or segment.
Finance · Monetization
A growth efficiency ratio comparing revenue gained to revenue lost in a period.
Finance · Ops
A ratio comparing new revenue generated to the total sales and marketing spend required to generate it, similar to the magic number but often computed over a trailing year.