Читать книгу Startup CXO - Matt Blumberg - Страница 22

At any stage of growth, it's important to identify the unit economics and key performance indicators (KPIs) and have a clear understanding of the story they tell about the business. Each business and industry could have a different set, but some of the common KPIs that cross industries include the following.

 Customer acquisition cost (CAC). For venture‐backed companies looking to grow a business, this is one of the most important metrics, for both B2C and B2B companies. Your CAC will evolve and change over time (either higher or lower as you get past early adopters) so the earlier you start measuring it, the better off you'll be. Even though your CAC will evolve, investors will want to understand how fast the payback period will be against a CAC.

 Customer lifetime value (LTV). Lifetime value is an important companion metric to CAC and will include other common metrics like gross margin, average product price, customer growth dynamics, and customer retention rates. There's no one‐size‐fits‐all LTV approach since it includes other measures, but it can be helpful to include it in financial projections and be able to substantiate how and why you came up with the metric.

 Customer retention rates. You will have a few rates that each tie to the key customer segments you're targeting. Things to consider are customer size, region, or product set, or other segments that tell a different customer retention story. Net Retention Rate (sometimes called Net Revenue Rate), or NRR, is the customer retention rate, taking into account revenue net of upgrades, downgrades, termination, and cross‐sells. Gross Retention Rate (GRR) only includes downgrades and terminations. Both metrics are useful to track, and many later stage investors (and possible acquirers) will spend a lot of time on these metrics.

 Average price. This can include average new vs. existing customer pricing, and you might consider segmenting by region, product, or other key factors specific to your business.

 Assorted segment analysis. As alluded to above, investors often want to understand metrics by segment and even if they don't explicitly ask for segmented data, the best investor presentations will give them that information.