At Companyon Ventures, we created the Expansion Team to help our portfolio companies identify and implement operational best practices faster and more effectively at the early stages of their evolution. As part of our fundamental expertise, we help our portfolio stress test the assumptions of their business model and investment thesis against established SaaS benchmarks.

We’re big fans of OpenView’s SaaS Benchmark Report. We continue to augment these reports with our SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool to measure our portfolio’s current and projected performance against other high-performing SaaS startups.

We keep the same focus on the SaaS Key Metrics:

• Year-on-Year Growth Rate
• Sales and Marketing Spend
• R&D Spend
• Gross Margin
• Monthly Burn Rate
• CAC Payback (months)
• Gross Dollar Retention
• Net Dollar Retention

2022 Shift in Focus

In today’s market, the focus has shifted from growth-at-all-costs to capital-efficient growth, where capital efficiency metrics have come to dominate how SaaS companies are assessed. This tool is a great way to see how you‘re performing on those critical metrics: Gross Margin, Monthly Burn Rate, CAC Payback, and Net Dollar Retention.

Companyon’s SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool

The tool allows a startup to input data to derive its own ‘Six SaaS Metrics’ and see how they contrast to the class of SaaS vendors in their cohort of size based on current ARR.

The SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool operationalizes OpenView’s Data Explorer in an Excel format that can be used in any Excel or Google Sheets operational or financial model. It allows a company to input 11 of its broader metrics (e.g., revenue derived from subscriptions, spending on R&D, and churn rate) in order to immediately and simultaneously derive its six specific key SaaS metrics, quickly and easily capturing all of that company’s performance metrics in comparison to its peers.

Download the SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool Here >>

How to Use The SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool

Tab 1 – Data Input

Input the 11 requested metrics. You should already have these metrics measured in your financial model (beyond just revenue and expenses). If not, you should start tracking them immediately to understand the intricacies of your business and become data-driven.

Tab 2 – Data Output

Based on the previous inputs, The SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool plots a company’s performance against peers in its revenue category. If a metric is higher or lower than the benchmark range, it may be in need of improvement.

Sometimes a metric being out of benchmark range may not signal a significant red flag. Rather, falling outside of the benchmark range should prompt you to further investigate as it may mean that your company is performing better than peers. Yet if that metric is indeed relatively poor, you should analyze inputs and prepare to defend your Pro-forma metrics to potential investors.

For example, if a company’s logo retention is low but its net dollar retention is very high, its customers are churning quickly but its core customers are spending more than ever. As a result, that company’s situation is not as dangerous as The SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool may initially indicate.

Tab 3 – OV 2022 SaaS Benchmarks

Ignore this tab, which contains additional input data via OpenView and is included so that you can integrate The SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool into your financial model.

Incorporating The SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool into a Financial Model

Select the three tabs in The SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool to move them into your financial model, linking relevant cells to their corresponding 11 inputs.

If you join our mailing list, I’ll notify you when I’ve uploaded a video tutorial explaining how to integrate the tool into a financial model.

By integrating this tool with your financial model, you’ll be able to see how inputs beyond the 11 captured here can further impact performance. In addition, the integration will ensure that your metrics automatically update when you transition to a new (ideally higher) revenue bracket.

Download the SaaS Benchmarks Modeling Tool Here >>

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