Introduction

What gets measured gets managed. — Peter Drucker

As a founder, your instinct might be to chase growth, close customers, and build product fast. But what separates high-growth startups from those that stall is one thing: rigorous understanding of their numbers.

We have put together a no-fluff, data-first dictionary of 100+ startup KPIs — built for founders. Whether you're prepping for a board meeting or chasing product-market fit, this guide will help you speak the language of investors and make sharper decisions, faster.

70% of failed startups cite premature scaling as the cause — almost always a result of poor metric discipline. — Startup Genome Report

We’ve categorized metrics across 7 essential areas:

1. Financial & Revenue
2. Customer Acquisition
3. Customer Retention & Loyalty
4. Product Growth & Engagement
5. Operational Efficiency
6. Product & Engineering
7. Cohorts, Segments & Market Sizing

Each KPI is broken down with concise, actionable definitions to help you track what truly matters.

Let’s dive in.

1. Financial & Revenue Metrics

1. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): The predictable, subscription-based revenue a company earns each month.
2. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): MRR multiplied by 12 — shows annualized subscription revenue.
3. Revenue Growth Rate (MoM/YoY): The percentage increase in revenue month-over-month or year-over-year.
4. Gross Profit / Gross Margin %: Revenue minus cost of goods sold (COGS); margin is the % of revenue kept after direct costs.
5. Net Profit / Net Margin: Profit after all expenses (including taxes and overhead); margin is net profit as a % of revenue.
6. EBITDA / Operating Income: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization — a proxy for core profitability.
7. Rule of 40 (Growth + Margin): A SaaS benchmark: Revenue growth rate + profit margin should be ≥ 40%.
8. Burn Rate (Gross & Net): The rate at which a startup is spending cash each month; net includes revenue, gross does not.
9. Burn Multiple / Efficiency Score: Capital burned ÷ net new ARR added — shows efficiency of growth.
10. Operating Cash Flow: Cash generated or consumed by a company’s normal business operations.
11. Operating Ratio / Expense Ratio: Operating expenses as a percentage of revenue — shows cost efficiency.
12. Revenue per Employee: Total revenue divided by headcount — gauges productivity and efficiency.
13. Capital Efficiency: Revenue or ARR generated per dollar of capital raised or spent.
14. Revenue Concentration (Top-customer share): The share of total revenue coming from your largest customers — high % = dependency risk.
15. Revenue Churn Rate: Percentage of recurring revenue lost from existing customers in a given period.
16. Total Contract Value (TCV): Total revenue expected over the life of a contract, including one-time fees and recurring charges.
17. Annual Contract Value (ACV): The average yearly value of a customer contract (TCV divided by contract length in years).
18. Average Selling Price (ASP): The average price at which your product or service is sold to customers.
19. Cash Runway / Runway Months: How many months your company can operate at its current burn rate before running out of cash.
20. Payback Period (CAC Recovery Time): How long it takes to earn back the cost of acquiring a customer.
21. Magic Number (ARR Growth / S&M Spend): ARR growth over a quarter divided by prior quarter's sales & marketing spend — efficiency metric.

2. Customer Acquisition Metrics

1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The average cost to acquire one paying customer, including sales and marketing spend.
2. CAC Payback Period: The time it takes to recoup the CAC from that customer’s gross margin.
3. Cost per Lead (CPL): The average cost to generate a new lead (e.g., via ads, content, or outbound).
4. Cost per Impression (CPM): Advertising cost per 1,000 impressions — a standard digital ad pricing model.
5. Click-Through Rate (CTR): Percentage of users who click on a link or ad out of total impressions.
6. Email Open Rate: The % of recipients who open a marketing or product email.
7. Customer Acquisition Volume: The total number of new customers acquired over a specific time period.
8. Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate: The % of website visitors who become leads by submitting contact info or signing up.
9. Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate: The % of leads who eventually convert into paying customers.
10. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs): Leads that meet predefined marketing criteria indicating sales readiness.
11. Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs): MQLs that have been vetted by sales and are ready for outreach or closing.
12. Trial-to-Paid Conversion Rate: The % of users who convert from a free trial to a paid plan.
13. Viral Coefficient / Referral Rate: The average number of new users each user refers — >1.0 means exponential growth.
14. Lead Velocity Rate: The month-over-month growth rate of qualified leads — a forward-looking pipeline metric.
15. Traffic by Source & Region: Website or app traffic segmented by channel (e.g., SEO, ads, social) and geography.
16. Organic vs Paid Traffic Split: The ratio of unpaid (organic) to paid traffic — reveals marketing channel mix and efficiency.
17. Marketing Channel ROI: Return on investment from a specific marketing channel (e.g., Google Ads, LinkedIn).
18. Content Marketing ROI: Revenue or leads attributed to content efforts, relative to content production costs.

3. Customer Retention & Loyalty

1. Customer Churn Rate (Logo Churn): % of customers who cancel or stop using your product over a given time period.
2. Customer Retention Rate: % of customers who stay subscribed over a specific time frame — inverse of churn.
3. Net Revenue Retention (NRR): % of recurring revenue retained from existing customers after churn, upgrades, and downgrades.
4. Gross Dollar Retention: % of recurring revenue retained from existing customers excluding expansions — shows pure churn.
5. Expansion Revenue Rate: % of revenue growth from upsells, cross-sells, or seat expansions in existing accounts.
6. LTV (Customer Lifetime Value): The projected revenue a customer generates over their lifetime.
7. LTV:CAC Ratio: Compares customer value to acquisition cost — benchmarks efficiency and profitability.
8. Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures customer willingness to recommend your product (−100 to +100 scale).
9. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): % of customers rating their satisfaction with a specific interaction or experience.
10. Customer Effort Score (CES): Measures how easy it was for customers to complete an action (e.g., support resolution).
11. Customer Health Score: A composite metric indicating the likelihood of renewal, churn, or expansion (often custom-built).
12. In-app Feedback Score: Qualitative or quantitative score based on user feedback submitted within the product.
13. Re-engagement Rate after lapse: % of previously inactive users who return and re-engage with the product.
14. Churn by Cohort: Churn rate segmented by customer group (e.g., signup month, plan type).
15. Segment-specific Churn: Churn rate for defined user segments (e.g., enterprise vs SMB, region, use case).
16. Feature Retention: % of users consistently using a specific product feature over time.

4. Growth & Engagement

1. DAU / MAU (Daily/Monthly Active Users): The number of unique users who engage with your product daily or monthly — core usage metric.
2. ARPU / ARPA (Average Revenue per User/Account): The average monthly revenue generated per user (ARPU) or per paying account (ARPA).
3. Activation Rate: % of users who reach a key onboarding milestone (e.g., completing profile, sending first message).
4. Engagement Time: Average time users spend actively using your product during a session or time period.
5. Week-over-Week Growth Rate: The % increase in a key metric (e.g., users, signups) compared to the previous week.
6. Month-over-Month Growth Rate: The % change in a key metric compared to the prior month — helpful for tracking momentum.
7. Bounce Rate: % of visitors who leave your website or app after viewing just one page or performing no action.
8. User Cohort Retention (Day 1/7/30): The % of users who return to your product after signup, segmented by cohort and time frame.
9. Feature Adoption Rate: % of users who begin using a new or existing feature within a certain time frame.
10. First Login Time: Time between account creation and first successful login — indicates onboarding friction.
11. Free Trial Engagement Rate: % of trial users who actively use the product during the trial period.
12. Funnel Drop-off Rates: % of users who abandon the product or site at each step of a defined conversion funnel.
13. Social Media Engagement Growth Rate: Rate of increase in likes, comments, shares, or followers across social media platforms.

5. Operational Efficiency

1. Revenue per Employee: Total revenue divided by total headcount — shows team productivity and scalability.
2. Operating Expense Ratio: Operating expenses as a percentage of total revenue — gauges cost efficiency.
3. Sales Team Productivity / Quota Attainment: % of sales reps hitting or exceeding their sales targets or quotas.
4. Sales Cycle Length: Average time it takes to close a deal, from first contact to signed agreement.
5. Sales Win Rate: % of deals won out of total opportunities pursued — indicates sales effectiveness.
6. Sales Pipeline Coverage: Ratio of pipeline value to quota — shows how much pipeline exists to hit targets (e.g., 3x coverage).
7. Hiring Efficiency: The cost and time spent to hire a qualified candidate — often benchmarked by role.
8. Hiring Velocity: Speed at which key positions are filled — critical for scaling teams.
9. Headcount Growth Rate: Month-over-month or year-over-year growth in team size — reflects scaling pace.
10. Customer Support Load per FTE: Average number of support tickets handled per support team member.
11. Ticket Resolution Efficiency: % of tickets resolved within a defined SLA or timeframe.
12. Average Handling Time: Average duration of customer support calls or chats — measures support team efficiency.
13. Call/Chat Abandonment Rate: % of customer calls or chats that are abandoned before an agent responds.
14. Time to Close Series A / B: Number of weeks or months it takes from start of fundraising to signed term sheet or funds wired.
15. Founder Dilution %: Percentage of equity the founding team has given up after one or more funding rounds.
16. Cap Table Concentration: Degree to which equity ownership is concentrated among a few investors or entities.
17. Founder / Executive Equity %: The percentage of the cap table still held by founders and core execs — often a governance signal.

6. Product & Engineering

1. Feature Prioritization Impact: Evaluates the business or user value generated from features prioritized on the roadmap.
2. Feature Use Frequency: How often users interact with a specific product feature — helps identify feature stickiness.
3. Technical Debt Ratio: Ratio of quick-fix or legacy code to clean, maintainable code — indicates long-term engineering risk.
4. Technical Debt Burndown Rate: Speed at which technical debt is being addressed and reduced over time.
5. Percentage of Automated Test Coverage: % of codebase covered by automated tests — higher means more reliable and testable software.
6. Development Cycle Time: Time taken from code commit to production release — reflects engineering velocity.
7. Cycle Time per Feature Release: Time required to design, build, test, and launch a single feature — key for delivery planning.
8. Sprint Velocity & Burndown: Measures how much work a team completes in a sprint and how quickly they "burn down" tasks.
9. Bug Fix Time: Average time taken to identify, resolve, and deploy fixes for bugs or issues.
10. Bug/Error Rate: Number of bugs or system errors reported per release or user session.
11. Release Frequency: How often your team ships new features or fixes — can reflect agile maturity.
12. Page Load Speed: Time it takes for your web page or app to load — affects UX and SEO.
13. Uptime / Technical Reliability: % of time your product or service is fully operational — standard reliability metric.
14. Uptime (SLA): Uptime guaranteed in your Service Level Agreement — often 99.9% or higher.
15. First Response Time (support): Average time it takes support to respond to a customer’s initial ticket or inquiry.
16. Resolution Time (support): Time taken to fully resolve a customer issue from ticket creation to closure.
17. Support Ticket Volume per Customer: Number of tickets submitted per customer — helps flag churn risk or usability issues.

7. Advanced / Cohort / Segment Metrics

1. Net Dollar Retention (NDR): Percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including expansions, downgrades, and churn.
2. Gross Dollar Retention: Percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers, excluding expansions. Focuses only on churn and downgrades.
3. Cohort LTV by Source: Lifetime value calculated for users grouped by their acquisition source to assess channel quality.
4. Segment-specific ARPU: Average revenue per user within a specific customer segment, such as industry, pricing plan, or region.
5. Activation Curves by Cohort: Visual representation of how quickly user cohorts reach activation milestones over time.
6. Churn by Cohort: Measures the percentage of users who churn, segmented by cohort based on signup date or acquisition method.
7. User Cohort Retention: Tracks what percentage of users from a specific cohort return and use the product after set time intervals.
8. TAM (Total Addressable Market): The total market demand for your product or service if you had 100% market share.
9. SAM (Serviceable Available Market): The portion of TAM targeted by your product based on current capabilities or geography.
10. SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market): The realistic market share you can capture in the short term.
11. Market Penetration Rate: The percentage of your SOM (or SAM) that your company has captured. Indicates how deeply you've penetrated your target market.
12. Competitor Share Ratio: A comparison of your company’s market share to that of your top competitors. Helps assess your relative positioning in the market.

Conclusion

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

Founders who track the right metrics grow faster, raise capital more easily, and make better decisions. This list gives you 100+ KPIs that can help you:

1. Spot problems early
2. Prove traction to investors
3. Focus your team on what matters

You don’t need to track everything — just what’s right for your stage and model. Start with 5–10 metrics. Review them weekly. Adjust as you scale.

Numbers don’t guarantee success — but not knowing them almost guarantees failure. Use this dictionary to stay sharp.

Good luck 🙂