As your SaaS business moves into growth and scale mode, you will be very focused on SaaS gross margins, EBITDA, and EBITDA margins. With this financial focus, there are two ways that I think about profitability and margins. I manage my P&L by splitting it into two distinct sections to understand my operating leverage. The […]
Author: Ben Murray
SaaS CAC Ratio | How to Calculate and Why It Matters
The cost of customer acquisition is one of the most analyzed SaaS metrics. But it doesn’t have to be complex or hard to calculate. Enter the SaaS CAC Ratio. Or Cost of ARR as I call it. Slightly different than CAC (customer acquisition costs), the CAC ratio studies the relationship between new and expansion bookings […]
Free Focus on Cash Course
Greetings, I created a free course over the weekend to help those businesses thtat might be facing a cash crunch due to the corona/covid virus. Check out the course here. It’s posted at The SaaS Academy. 350+ have enrolled as of last night. Eleven video lessons ranging from 5 to 10 minutes. Also, if you […]
How to Prepare for Preliminary SaaS Due Diligence
You’ve decided that it’s time to take on investment or sell your SaaS company. Or maybe that cold email from a private equity associate finally has you thinking about the next steps for your business. What’s next? Preliminary SaaS due diligence. Depending on your role and what side of the table you’ve been on, the […]
How to Calculate Your Renewal and Upsell Rate
In the SaaS space, we talk a lot about the health of our recurring revenue. This comes in the form of churn and retention. And it makes sense, right? Macro level valuations of your SaaS business are based on a multiple of recurring revenue. But as an operator of your business or an investor in […]
Cohort Analysis Explained for Your SaaS Business
We all know that churn and retention are critical concepts to understand in SaaS. As customers churn each month, we track logo and dollar counts in our churn and retention reports. And we document the reasons why. This is an aggregate view of retention. Let me introduce SaaS cohort analysis. Cohort analysis is an analytical […]
Founder’s Guide to Venture Debt
How Venture Debt Helps Founders Grow Their Businesses Many founders of SaaS businesses I speak with look only to equity to finance the start-up and early growth of their businesses. They may not be aware of, or do not appreciate the value of, venture debt financing which is complimentary to venture financing. In this guide […]
How to Price Discounts in Multi-year SaaS Contracts
SaaS Multi-year Pricing Discounts SaaS pricing can be a pretty complex subject. Mix multi-year contracts, discounts, and churn into your internal pricing discussion, and you need a degree in math to determine the optimal pricing for you and your customer. Multi-year SaaS pricing discounts is a really interesting topic that does not receive enough financial […]
What is the Net Promoter Score?
The Net Promoter Score, or NPS(®), is a customer satisfaction benchmark that rates the likely-hood of your customer recommending your product or service to someone else. Your customer rates you on an NPS scale that begins at 0 (unlikely) and ends at 10 (likely). The scores are then transformed into a -100 to +100 NPS […]
Guide to SaaS Accounting Software
Have I Outgrown My SaaS Accounting Software? It’s one of the most common questions that I receive from SaaS finance professionals and founders. They ask, “We’ve outgrown our current accounting software. What SaaS accounting software do you recommend?” There are so many choices in the marketplace, but I feel that few software vendors focus on […]