Like my post yesterday about the must have strategic plan which is simple and easily measurable, I found a 2013 post by David Cummings on SAAS Metrics dashboard. With all the discussions I have with SAAS founders, it is the rare ones who had these numbers on their finger tips or those who are measuring them at least on a monthly cadence.
David Cummings built his spreadsheet which he shares in his post which itself was a derivative of a post by Christoph Janz who writes in his blog The Angel VC (and is a partner at Point Nine Capital) and wrote the first version of this SAAS KPI Dashboard. His spreadsheet was focused on organic self serve products which David Cummings enhanced for sales aided processes. Christoph Janz also updated his versions and pointed to ChartMogul which can provide a real time dashboard. He also points to David Skok’s great blog – For Entrepreneurs and his take on these numbers in his post SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters – which hestarts with this quote “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” – Lord Kelvin.
So what are the key Metrics you need to have on your Dashboard :
Visitors & Signups
- Visitors
- m/m growth
- Signups beginning of the month // Leads beginning of the month
- New signups // New web leads
- Organic // General
- Paid
- Total new signups // Total new web leads
- m/m growth // m/m growth new web leads
- Visitor-to-signup conversion rate //Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate
- // Sales generated leads
- Signups end of month// Leads end of the month
Paying Customers
- Customers beginning of the month
- New customers
- Conversion rate
- Lost customers
- Churn rate
- Net new customers
- Customers end of month
- m/m growth
Monthly Recurring Revenue
- MRR beginning of the month
- New MRR
- New MRR from new customers
- New MRR from account expansions
- Total new MRR
- Lost MRR
- MRR churn rate
- New new MRR
- MRR end of month
- m/m growth
- Avg. revenue per customer
- Avg. revenue per new customer
Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)
- Marketing spendings
- Marketing spendings per signup (blended)
- Marketing spendings per paid signup
- Sales spendings
- Sales spendings per new paying customer
- Total CAC (blended)
- Total CAC (paid signups)
- Time-to-recover CAC for paid signups (months) // Paid Leads
- CLTV (e)
- CLTV/CAC (paid signups) // ( Paid Leads )
Cash
- Cash beginning of month
- Cash coming in
- Cash going out
- Net cash burn
- Cash end of month
- Runway at current burn (months)
(This list is derived from both the spreadsheets. The // bold are the modifications – alternate metrics that David Cummings included in his modified version.)
The one that David Cummings modified for use by SaaS products that are using a sales assisted method. He added Leads to the signup metrics. So, in place of New Signups it is New Web Leads and Visitor to Signup Conversion rates is Visitor to Lead Conversation rates.
Both are fundamentally the same and if you follow the chain in the links you will find more versions by Christoph Janz that include multiple pricing tiers and annual subscription plans.
So what are you measuring? What else is critical? What about some data about the team, culture and competence?
Links :
David Cummings –
SaaS Metrics Dashboard With Inside Sales https://bit.ly/2K9NehW
Killer SaaS KPIs Spreadsheet Dashboard https://bit.ly/2KFlmlj
Christoph Janz –
A KPI dashboard for early-stage SaaS startups https://bit.ly/2X4wRJq
A KPI dashboard for early-stage SaaS startups – new and improved! https://bit.ly/2Wyemhf
David Skok –
SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters https://bit.ly/2jFAYq0
