The recent $2.4B deal by Google to purchase Windsurf's two co-founders, key staff and a non-exclusive license to the Windsurf software is an example of the new Reverse Acqui-hire structure. Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the tradition vs new acqui-hire structure model as evidenced by the Google-Windsurf deal. During this episode, CAC and Growth cover not only the Goggle-Windsurf deal, they also discuss the broader impact to the future of acquisitions across the software industr...
Jul 23, 2025•29 min•Ep. 85
AI and AI-Native companies are changing the software industry and the metrics to measure AI market momentum are still evolving. During this weeks episode, our co-hosts Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss a recent article on AI Metrics by Benedict Evans . AI measurements and metrics discussed include: Daily Active Users / Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU) Tokens - what they are and how they are calculated Weekly User Retention Dave and Ray take us on a stroll down "metrics memory lane" ...
Jul 17, 2025•25 min•Ep. 84
Figma is a web-based collaborative design platform used by product designers, UX/UI teams and developers. They also just recently filed their S-1. During this episode, Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss several aspects of the S-1 including: Customer count & revenue by customer segment (< $10,000 ARR, > $10,000 ARR, > $100,000 ARR, > $1M ARR) Net Revenue (Dollar) Retention Rate Calculation (132%) Gross Revenue (Dollar) Retention Rate Calculation (96%) Rule of 40 = 79...
Jul 09, 2025•22 min•Ep. 83
Go-to-Market is a term often used to describe the strategy, processes, and organizations that B2B companies employ to acquire, retain, and expand their customer base. In this episode, Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the recently published ICONIQ report on the State of GTM 2025...and yes, it includes a lot about how AI-native and AI utilization are impacting all things GTM. Topics include: Funnel Conversion Rate Trends AI-Native Funnel Performance Advantages Cost per Opportunity ...
Jul 02, 2025•29 min•Ep. 82
The definition of Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) has never been standardized - but in an era of variable pricing models such as Usage-Based Pricing, the innovative approaches to calculating and reporting ARR continue to evolve. During this episode, Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike cover the topic guided by a few recently industry influencer posts - coupled with their own experiences including: Ben Murray, The SaaS CFO - Please Don't Tell me ARR is Dead CJ Gustafson - How Public Companies...
Jun 25, 2025•24 min•Ep. 81
Mary Meeker’s experience dates back to her role as a leading technology analyst at Morgan Stanley with her “Internet Trends Report”, she was in the middle of the Netscape, Amazon, and Google IPOs, and became a VC at Kleiner Perkins (2010) and then founded Bond in 2018 which has raised $5.75B to fund companies including Canva, Stripe, Plaid, Ironclad and Nextdoor to name just a few. During this episode of SaaS Talk with the Metrics, CAC and Growth discuss some of the KEY highlights of the 339-pag...
Jun 11, 2025•25 min•Ep. 80
Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike break down the recent Benchmarkit B2B Marketing Budget and Productivity Benchmarks Report. Key trends and insights into how the Marketing budgets are established, consumed and reported upon including: Marketing budget as a percentage of revenue including YoY changes and segmented by company size Growth Rates compared to Marketing budget allocation - the chicken or the egg discussion People vs Program vs Technology budget allocation - and which company pro...
Jun 04, 2025•21 min•Ep. 79
How do you calculate the efficiency of pipeline generation in a B2B SaaS company? Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike take this metric(s) topic on head first by discussing both the Cost per Opportunity and Pipe to Spend metrics - key to understanding how much investment is required to generate pipeline! During this episode CAC and Growth also touch upon the closely aligned metric of "Pipeline Conversion" which is a critical metric to partner with both the Cost per Opportunity and the Pipe t...
May 26, 2025•25 min•Ep. 78
Customer Acquisition Cost efficiency continues to be challenged in the B2B SaaS environment, while alignment across the Go-to-Market organization continues to be a topic of conversation. So, Dave "CAC" Kellogg a long time Marketing executive and Ray "Growth" Rike, a long time Sales executive decided to take on the the topic of Marketing and Sales alignment from their respective experiences as department executives. Topics discussed include: What is Marketing and Sales Alignment What isn't Market...
May 16, 2025•30 min•Ep. 77
Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike recently did a LIVE episode of SaaS Talk with the Metrics Brothers at the Baker Tilly Technology Finance Symposium in San Francisco. The topic of their discussion was aligning Finance and the Go-to-Market functions and included how SaaS metrics can be used as a core "alignment" strategy. During this "extended" version of SaaS Talk with the Metrics Brothers, Ray and Dave discussed several different strategies to align Finance and the GTM functions, includi...
May 08, 2025•45 min•Ep. 76
Stock-based Compensation (SBC) has been a hallmark of the SaaS and Cloud industry since the early days. Stock Options, Restricted Stock Units, Strike Price, and vesting periods continue to be a key discussion point for potential hires. Today's episode covers how Stock-based compensation impacts Operating Expenses on the Income Statement...and how SBC can impact SaaS metrics. Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike dive into the details of Stock-Based Compensation in today's episode including: W...
Apr 30, 2025•31 min•Ep. 75
B2B SaaS Benchmark reports are popping up like mushrooms - but how do you know if the benchmark report is good, contains valuable insights and how to use the benchmarks to inform your own objectives and SaaS metrics goals? Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike take on a topic that is near and dear to their hearts and discuss several key factors that are a tell for a good benchmark report including: Top things to consider when reading a benchmark report Attributes of a good benchmark report At...
Apr 09, 2025•23 min•Ep. 74
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a term commonly used across the SaaS industry - but what does it really mean, how can a company effectively build a customer acquisition strategy around it and what METRICS can be used to determine a company's ICP and then measure if it really is the best target customer segment? During this week's episode, Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the following ICP elements to understand, execute and measure the ROI on the "Ideal Customer Profile": What va...
Apr 04, 2025•23 min•Ep. 73
Net Customer Base Expansion = (Expansion ARR - Churned ARR) which helps SaaS companies to understand how the existing customer base is impacting ARR growth excluding the impact of new logo customer ARR. Why not just use Net Revenue Retention? CAC and Growth dive deep into this SaaS metric including: Calculation formula for Net Customer Base Expansion (NCBE) How is NCBE different from Net Revenue Retention (NRR) What is CAC's definition of lazy NRR Cohort vs Segment Calculations - what is the dif...
Mar 12, 2025•23 min•Ep. 72
B2B SaaS Pricing models have evolved over the past few years with 67% of SaaS companies now saying they have introduced at least one element of Usage-Based Pricing. Though this benchmark does not tell the whole story of pricing, as the primary pricing model is still based upon a subscription fee per user or a subscription fee per user + a Usage-Based or Value-Based pricing variable. During this episode, CAC and Growth cover a wide range of current pricing trends and benchmarks including: Subscri...
Mar 06, 2025•26 min•Ep. 71
Common practice is to measure Sales and Marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue, which in the SaaS industry ranges between 20% - 60% based upon stage, growth and efficiency. CAC and Growth discuss an alternative metric which measures the ratio between Sales expenses and Marketing expenses, known as the Sales/Marketing Expense Ratio. During this episode topics discussed include: Sales and Marketing expense as percentage of revenue benchmarks Sales and Marketing expense ratio - value and ins...
Feb 28, 2025•23 min•Ep. 70
The Sales Velocity metric calculation formula is (win rate x average contract value x # opportunities)/ average sales cycle length. The resultant Sales Velocity metrics highlights the amount of new bookings a Sales team can deliver per day....one key question about Sales Velocity is " is this a metric to help understand sales capacity, sales effectiveness or sales efficiency? Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike break down Sales Velocity in this episode covering key topics including: Sales V...
Feb 19, 2025•24 min•Ep. 69
Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the latest revenue growth trends and the related metrics driving the growth as highlighted in GONGs 2025 State of Revenue Growth Report. Topics discussed include: 2024 Growth Rates Sales Velocity Trends including Win Rates, Sales Cycle Length and ACV AI Adoption Top Growth Initiatives SaaS Magic Number trends If you are responsible for the GTM and Revenue growth teams in your SaaS company, or just interested in the latest Sales benchmarks - this e...
Feb 12, 2025•27 min•Ep. 68
Implied ARR is the SaaS metric used to convert GAAP revenue for public SaaS companies into an equivalent to Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) used by investors and private SaaS companies. Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the what, why and how behind Implied ARR. During this episode CAC and Growth discuss multiple Implied ARR topics including: Implied ARR Calculation Formula Why Investors Calculate Implied ARR SaaS Metrics that use Implied ARR Challenges with Implied ARR Implied ARR ...
Feb 06, 2025•22 min•Ep. 67
Max Schireson and Jason Mendel, from Battery Ventures recently published an article on Managing and Measuring R&D spend including key metrics from the DORA and SPACE frameworks and they also introduced their own 5 step R&D measurement framework including: Allocate top down Break R&D into granular buckets (not a lump sum) Listen to product-adjacent teams that are customer-facing Be deliberate about measuring success of R&D projects Hold the full team accountable The article also i...
Jan 29, 2025•23 min•Ep. 66
In this episode, Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss the SaaS Quick Ratio, a SaaS metric first introduced in 2015 with the goal to measure ARR growth efficiency by comparing New ARR growth versus existing customer ARR contraction. The SaaS Quick Ratio borrows a concept used in general finance known as the "Quick Ratio" - which measures a company's ability to pay it's current liabilities. The formula used to calculate the SaaS Quick Ratio is: (New Logo ARR + Expansion ARR)/ (Churned ...
Dec 31, 2024•21 min•Ep. 65
Marketing budget and productivity benchmarks are hard to find, so when Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike first saw the ICONIQ Growth Marketing Budget and Productivity Report - they knew it was a great topic for this episode of SaaS Talk with the Metrics Brothers. During today's episode, Dave and Ray discuss several critical Marketing Planning, Budget, and Productivity benchmarks including: Marketing budget as a percentage of Revenue On-line versus off-line spend Program vs People budget a...
Dec 18, 2024•27 min•Ep. 64
ServiceTitan, a vertical SaaS company for the trades recently filed their S-1 and went public on December 12, 2024. Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike discuss many details regarding the S-1 including the basic enterprise value creating performance metrics and some very interesting aspects of the IPO structure. During this episode, Dave and Ray discuss several aspects of the S-1 and IPO measured against industry benchmarks including: ARR Growth Rate Rule of 40 Net Dollar Retention Rate CAC ...
Dec 12, 2024•27 min•Ep. 63
KeyBanc Capital Markets in partnership with Sapphire Ventures recently published their 2024 SaaS Metrics Benchmark report. During today's episode, Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike dive into this years highlights including: Growth Rates Net and Gross Revenue Retention Rule of 40 Go-to-Market Organization Ratios Marketing Strategies and Productivity Human Capital Efficiency Valuation Multiples - By Growth Rate If you are a SaaS executive, employee or investor this episode is a great listen...
Dec 01, 2024•27 min•Ep. 62
The Sales Operations function evolves dramatically as a company scales and Meghan Gill, SVP Sales Ops and Sales Development at MongoDB has lived that reality. Meghan started in Marketing at MongoDB as employee number 8 as the first non engineering hire, and then seven years later took over Sales Operations in preparation for their IPO. CAC and Growth discuss the evolution of Sales Ops with Meghan and discuss several key topics including: The career journey from Marketing to Sales Operations The ...
Nov 20, 2024•24 min•Ep. 61
CAC and Growth discuss the recent Scaling SaaS from $1M to $20M ARR ICONIQ Growth report that provides a long term view on the performance metrics benchmarks that SaaS companies exhibit at granular stages of growth including $5M, $10M, $15M and $20M ARR. Benchmarks covered include: Enterprise Five Benchmarks (Median and Top Quartile) Growth Plateau Challenges started at $25M ARR New Logo Growth Operating Expense Trends Annual Contract Value Growth by Stage New ARR vs Expansion ARR ARR per FTE Bu...
Nov 14, 2024•24 min•Ep. 60
The Remaining Performance Obligation (RPO) metric has become a more standard metric that public company Wall Street analysts have started to follow closely to help evaluate the bookings growth of recurring revenue companies. CAC and Growth cover the following topics regarding RPO including: Why was the Remaining Performance Obligation created What does the Remaining Performance Obligation (RPO) metric tell investors How is RPO calculated The difference between RPO and deferred revenue How multi-...
Nov 05, 2024•25 min•Ep. 59
Customer Retention is a hallmark of the SaaS recurring revenue business model. But what is the primary metric to measure the cost of retaining each customer, how is the efficiency to renew ARR calculated, and what goes into that metric? Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike go deep into the components of Customer Retention Costs and the value in measuring including: The benefits of measuring Customer Retention Costs Customer Retention vs Customer Renewal Costs The Components of Customer Reten...
Oct 28, 2024•23 min•Ep. 58
New investment announcements in B2B SaaS companies are not quite what they seem!? Over the past few years, public announcements have moved from how much capital was raised to what the valuation of the company was at funding. BEWARE - those valuation headlines are full of nuance and details that are not disclosed!!! Dave "CAC" Kellogg and Ray "Growth" Rike - also known as The Metrics Brothers go deep into the details that are left out and are present behind the headline valuation announcements in...
Oct 03, 2024•23 min•Ep. 57
Contracted Annual Recurring Revenue (CARR) and Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) are commonly used terms in the SaaS and Cloud Industry but are not standardized leading to inconsistent calculation. In fact, they were the first two metrics the SaaS Metrics Standards Board published standards upon. Dave and Ray discuss the current definitions, calculations and how Usage-Based Pricing is impacting the historic ARR reporting model. During today's episode CAC and Growth cover the following topics: Contr...
Sep 25, 2024•25 min•Ep. 56
