The SaaS metrics that matter at an early stage

Great share — lead growth rate is definitely underrated at early stage. One thing I'd add: the tricky part isn't knowing WHICH metrics to track, it's getting the formulas right. I've seen so many founders miscalculate churn (using simple customer count instead of cohort-based MRR churn) or underestimate CAC by 2-3x because they only count ad spend and forget sales salaries, tools, and onboarding costs. I ended up building an Excel-based SaaS Metrics Dashboard that auto-calculates 25+ KPIs from basic monthly inputs — MRR, ARR, churn, LTV, CAC, burn rate, runway, the works. 360 formulas, zero errors, works in Google Sheets. It's part of a "SaaS Starter Toolkit" on Gumroad if anyone wants to skip the spreadsheet-building phase and just start tracking.

Great read, thanks :-)

Lead growth rate is one of those underrated stats. People are often quick to celebrate a businesses wins, and I'm not suggesting that stop, but if a business isn't producing new leads at a predictable rate, then the business may not be producing revenue consistently enough to be viable.