Business models, unit economics, and strategic thinking
This article argues that powerful ideas, even if imperfectly measured, are more useful for business decision-making than perfect measures for less impactful ideas. It discusses the importance of focusing on high-leverage metrics and acknowledging the limitations of data, rather than getting overly bogged down in pursuit of perfect measurement.
This article discusses the data-informed product cycle, which involves translating high-level strategy into models, testing hypotheses, and iterating based on data. It covers key topics like freemium, free trials, usage-based pricing, activation metrics, and product-qualified leads (PQLs).
Establishing the core foundations for a successful go-to-market strategy, including defining the ideal customer profile, target market segments, and aligning the product's value proposition with the right sales and distribution channels.
This article discusses key unit economics and efficiency metrics for SaaS businesses, including CAC payback, LTV:CAC ratio, contribution margin, and the rule-of-40. It explains how to calculate and analyze these metrics to understand the underlying profitability drivers and unit-level economics of the business.
Methodologies for calculating and understanding the lifetime value of customers, including retention curves, discount rates, cohort LTV, and using LTV to evaluate the efficiency of customer acquisition.
An in-depth look at how to calculate, analyze, and leverage customer lifetime value (LTV) - a critical SaaS metric for understanding the long-term value of customers and optimizing acquisition and retention strategies.
This article explores why the common marketing channel groupings of 'Paid Search' and 'Organic Search' are too broad and undifferentiated to provide meaningful insights. It delves into the importance of splitting these channels into more granular segments to better understand their unique performance and contribution to the business.
This article explores the concepts and techniques for analyzing user activation and onboarding, including measuring time-to-value, identifying 'aha moments', and optimizing the user experience to drive faster activation and higher engagement.
Determining when to classify a customer as 'churned' is a critical yet tricky aspect of SaaS analytics. This article explores different approaches for identifying churn signals, diagnosing the drivers of customer contraction, and using churn analytics to inform retention and expansion strategies.
This article discusses the importance of distinguishing between sessions and users when analyzing user behavior and product usage. It covers key concepts and metrics related to sessions vs. users, and provides guidance on how to leverage these metrics to gain deeper insights into your product's performance and user engagement.
Analyzing the gross-margin contribution of a customer over their expected lifetime, including retention curves, discount rates, cohort LTV, and probabilistic vs. deterministic models. Understanding how to leverage LTV to optimize customer acquisition and inform revenue forecasting.
Covers key revenue metrics for marketplace businesses, including gross vs. net revenue, recurring vs. non-recurring, bookings vs. billings, and other accounting-aligned measures. Explores cohort analysis, revenue waterfalls, and drivers of expansion and churn.
Discusses key metrics and analytical techniques for understanding customer retention, churn, and expansion drivers. Covers topics like logo vs. dollar churn, net revenue retention (NRR), cohort-based survival analysis, and identifying expansion opportunities through upsell and cross-sell.
An in-depth look at the technical and analytical considerations around revenue recognition, such as aligning with ASC 606/IFRS-15 rules, handling multi-element allocations, and analyzing ratable vs. point-in-time recognition patterns. Explores how to build revenue waterfalls, cohort aging tables, and other financial reporting to ensure data integrity and accounting compliance.
This article covers the fundamentals of defining a unique selling proposition (USP) - the single, defensible promise that sets a product or service apart from competitors. It discusses mapping feature vs. benefit differences, crafting a clear positioning statement, and aligning the USP to the ideal customer profile.
As companies innovate and introduce new products and features, the resulting complexity can make further growth more challenging. This article explores the hidden costs and scaling pitfalls associated with successful product experimentation.
How to group customers and users based on their behavioral patterns, including click-stream data, purchase history, feature usage, and session frequency. Covers RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) analysis and customer lifecycle stage clustering.
A deep dive on how Airbnb measures and uses listing lifetime value to identify the most valuable accommodation listings for their guests. The article covers the framework and methodology Airbnb uses to calculate LTV, including retention curves, discount rates, and segment-level LTV comparisons.
This article provides an in-depth look at how WeTransfer leveraged a custom growth model to predict marketing ROI and identify their biggest revenue opportunities. It covers the process of building the growth model, how it was used by the product and marketing teams, and the key insights and results that were uncovered.
This article presents a framework for understanding and visualizing unit economics (UE) for a variety of businesses. It covers key concepts around contribution margin, fixed-cost leverage, break-even volume, and scaling effects to help analysts and founders assess the profitability and scalability of their business models.
This article provides a quantitative framework for analyzing and measuring product-market fit, a critical milestone for early-stage companies. It covers the key signals and metrics that can help founders and product teams objectively assess the degree of product-market fit, informing strategic business decisions.
Calculating the gross-margin contribution of a customer over their expected lifetime; including retention curves, discount rates, cohort LTV, probabilistic vs. deterministic models, and segment-level LTV comparison.
Develop a deep understanding of how a company creates, delivers, and captures value through its core business model. Explore the key components such as the value proposition, target segments, distribution channels, key resources & activities, partner ecosystem, and profit formula.
Build your experimentation system to get new insights at a fast pace. Kickstart the compounding effect that will generate long term business outcomes and customer value.
Techniques for measuring and forecasting the lifetime value of customers, including retention curves, discount rates, cohort LTV, and probabilistic vs. deterministic LTV models. Linking LTV to other key metrics like CAC and LTV:CAC ratio to assess the efficiency of the business model.
Understand key SaaS metrics that influence profitability, such as recurring revenue, churn, and the 'triangle of despair' - the balance between customer acquisition, retention, and revenue growth.
Strategies for designing pricing tiers, packaging features, and aligning monetization with customer value. Includes topics like good-better-best pricing, value-based vs. cost-plus models, willingness-to-pay segmentation, and packaging mechanics like usage thresholds and feature add-ons.
Strategies and tactics for acquiring, activating, and retaining customers through freemium, free trials, usage-based pricing, and in-product activation loops. Covers the key principles and metrics for building a successful product-led growth motion.
Strategies and tactics for acquiring customers at scale across various marketing channels including paid, organic, partnerships, and viral growth. Covers channel economics, saturation curves, and optimizing the channel mix.
This case study explores how Duolingo used a product-led growth (PLG) framework to drive a 4x increase in daily active users (DAUs). It examines their approach to activation, monetization, and growth strategy, providing insights that can inform data-driven product and marketing decisions.
Explores how Amplitude leverages product-led growth strategies, including freemium models, free trials, usage-based pricing, in-product activation loops, and the handoff from product-qualified leads to marketing-qualified leads.
This article discusses the importance of measuring incrementality and causal impact in marketing campaigns, rather than relying solely on ROAS. It covers methods like geo-split tests, hold-out audiences, and ghost ads to establish true lift and isolate the causal effect of marketing investments.
This article revisits the 'fallacy of freemium' and explores how businesses can optimize their pricing and revenue models beyond just offering a free tier. It covers key considerations around subscription tiers, usage-based pricing, hybrid models, and aligning pricing with customer value.
This article dives into how to leverage historical CRM data to uncover deeper insights about your sales pipeline performance. It covers techniques for analyzing sales funnel velocity, deal qualification, forecasting, and other key revenue operations metrics to drive growth.
This article provides an in-depth overview of the key SaaS metrics that founders need to understand when preparing for fundraising. It covers critical areas like revenue recognition, unit economics, customer lifetime value, and growth metrics - all essential for showcasing the health and potential of a SaaS business to investors.
Explores the concept of customer lifetime value (LTV), including how to calculate it, the importance of retention and margin in driving LTV, and using LTV as a key metric for making data-driven business decisions.
Understanding the business context behind data is essential for analytics professionals to deliver impactful insights. By exploring the interconnected factors shaping the organization's operations and objectives, analysts can uncover meaningful patterns and make informed recommendations that drive strategic decision-making. This holistic approach empowers product, marketing, and revenue teams to optimize their strategies and achieve tangible business results.
Actionable insights are the backbone of successful organizations, but they're only as powerful as the ownership and action they inspire. This blog post underscores the vital importance of embedding analytics within cross-functional teams, ensuring insights drive real business impact. Marketing analysts, product managers, and brand strategists will learn proven techniques to transform data into impactful decisions that move the needle for their organizations.
Understanding unit economics is essential for analytics professionals in SaaS and product-driven businesses. This post emphasizes how focusing on granular, per-customer profitability metrics can outlast vanity growth metrics, providing a more sustainable view of business performance. By mastering techniques to analyze customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, and other unit-level metrics, analysts can uncover crucial insights to inform strategic decision-making and drive long-term success.
This blog post reveals the untapped potential in the "wrapper economy" – the lucrative middle layer where AI-powered tools and services are packaged and sold. Analytics professionals can uncover hidden revenue streams and gain a competitive edge by understanding the dynamics of this rapidly evolving market, leveraging insights on successful monetization strategies and identifying critical points where AI-powered "wrappers" can make or break a business's bottom line.