The ten metrics
- Contribution margin — revenue minus variable cost, by channel, segment, and SKU. The number that tells you what's actually making money.
- True ROAS — net revenue after COGS, returns, and fees divided by ad spend. Calculator.
- Blended CAC + payback — fully-loaded acquisition cost with the months to recover. The denominator for every growth decision.
- LTV:CAC ratio — gross-profit LTV ÷ CAC, by cohort. Calculator.
- Forecast accuracy — MAPE or bias of the rolling forecast vs actual. Below 10% MAPE is healthy.
- Pipeline coverage — weighted pipeline vs target, by quarter. Healthy: 3.0×+ for new business.
- Burn multiple — net burn ÷ net new ARR. Bessemer benchmark: under 1.5× is healthy.
- Rule of 40 — growth + margin (SaaS). Calculator.
- NRR by cohort — gross + expansion − contraction − churn, by acquisition cohort. Above 110% is best-in-class.
- Cash conversion cycle — DSO + DIO − DPO. The most-ignored metric in most operating reviews.
How to read them together
No single metric tells the story. The ten metrics work as a system: growth metrics (1, 2, 4, 9) tell you if the engine is on; efficiency metrics (3, 7, 8) tell you what it costs to run it; reliability metrics (5, 6) tell you if you can trust the plan; and the cash metric (10) tells you how long you have to fix whatever's broken.