The golden rule of startup metrics: KYN (know your numbers)

Startup metrics should be every founder's true north. We call it KYN (know your numbers). Some founders do it, and some don't. As we've seen time and time again here at Forecastr - the founder who knows their numbers is the founder who succeeds.

KYN isn't just about crunching numbers and plugging them into a forgotten spreadsheet once a month. It's a way of life for some founders. You can see it for yourself on Shark Tank anytime. One founder comes across as competent, confident, and capable. They face challenging questions with ease, and back up every claim with data. The next founder has a great idea, and no idea how to make it happen. They visibly crumble when the pressure gets turned up. The difference between these two founders is KYN.

If you fall into the second group, this post is for you. And you're in for a treat because we're about to take a deep dive into the reasons why your metrics are your best friend. We'll show you why they matter, and how you can master them to attract great investors and make sharp, informed decisions that steer your startup toward success.

From financial health to customer retention, and everything in between—this post provides clear definitions and practical advice so you can stand in front of any investor with confidence and poise because you know your numbers like the back of your hand.

Table Of contents:

• What it means to know your numbers
• Financial health indicators every founder must track
• Customer-centric metrics for growth and retention
• Revenue metrics for startups
• The role of engagement and marketing metrics
• Utilizing metrics for strategic decision-making
• Monitoring startup metrics over time
• Conclusion

What it means to know your numbers

Imagine being the captain of a massive ship. You're standing in the control room and a storm is visibly brewing on the horizon. Everyone in the room is looking at you, waiting for your orders.

Without the appropriate tools and resources, your best option is to simply shout, "Steer us away from the storm!" You have no idea what lies ahead in your new direction, which direction the storm is heading, how long it will last, or how your decision will impact your arrival time. You're just doing the best you can with what's available. Everyone looks at you as if to say, "You sure about that?"

If you're a startup founder, you can probably identify with this feeling.

Now imagine the same scenario, but you have access to a compass, an interactive map with GPS, an up-to-the-minute weather forecast, and the charted routes of every other ship in the area. Now we're talking! You can digest the available information, consider the pros and cons of your potential choices, and make the optimal decision for the safety of your passengers and the eventual arrival at your port of call.

Hands on hips, chest out, you gaze into the heart of the storm and declare, "Helmsman, make your heading two-one-eight. Full ahead." Everyone cheers.

It's a bit silly, but it is a fair comparison. As a founder, you are responsible for the (financial) security of other people; you are the one who makes important directional decisions; and you're all alone with those responsibilities—you're the captain. Will you be captain #1, with no tools or resources, or captain #2, well-prepared and well-informed? It's your choice.

In the vast ocean of the startup ecosystem, the sea floor is littered with startups that sank because they lost sight of crucial metrics like customer acquisition cost or recurring revenue versus total revenue. In a word, they did not KYN.

When an investor listens to your pitch, this is what they're looking for more than anything else. While you're talking about total addressable market and competitive advantage, they're slowly forming an opinion about whether you are captain #1 or captain #2. Your task is to make it abundantly clear that you are, in fact, captain #2.

Why metrics matter to investors & stakeholders

Investors and other stakeholders are like guests of honor on your startup ship. They put their trust—and money—into your journey. They always want to know how it's going, and they value clarity above all else. This means you need to track, analyze, and report detailed data. You need to know which metrics matter most for your business and you need to showcase those metrics to prove that your ship is on course.

Investors love to see a passionate, energetic founder. Who doesn't? But they put their money behind founders who show them a solid foundation of data that demonstrates the venture's potential for growth and sustainability. Seeing that you're collecting, analyzing, and reporting key metrics gives them peace of mind. It also provides an opportunity for them to spotlight opportunities and threats that you might be overlooking. 

Essentially, well-defined and tracked startup metrics serve as a compass and map on your entrepreneurial journey. There will be challenges along the way, and you're likely going to encounter some choppy waters—no founder should set sail without harnessing these critically important tools.

Financial health indicators every founder must track

Understanding burn rate and cash runway

Burn rate and cash runway are two metrics every founder should be intimately familiar with. Startups fail for any number of reasons - some of them are completely understandable. Sometimes a competitor dominates the marketplace. Sometimes consumer preferences swing rapidly in a different direction. But the number one reason startups fail is because they run out of money unexpectedly.

They don't know how much money they're spending, so they don't know how long their current cash will last. They're working as hard as they can to acquire customers and generate revenue, and then it happens. A check bounces, a charge is declined, a vendor calls and says a scheduled payment didn't go through. The business can't make payroll and it's all over. It's really sad—especially because we know that it's entirely avoidable.

Your burn rate is how fast your company is going through its cash reserves. Your cash runway is how much time you have, at your current burn rate, before you run out of cash.

A good way to understand these metrics is to think about the fuel gauges on your car's dashboard. Your burn rate is like a Miles-per-Gallon reading, and your runway is the fuel level. You know how you obsessively check those when you're on a road trip? That's right—they can't be ignored. When your fuel starts to run low, there's an audible "ding" and a warning light on your dashboard. With your cash reserves, however, there's no ding and no flashing light. If you're not watching the gauge, you're out of luck.

To calculate your monthly burn rate, subtract this month's total cash balance from last month's. Do this for several months to find an accurate average. To find your cash runway, divide your total cash balance by your average monthly burn rate. That's how long you have to hit profitability or secure funding from another source. Never lose sight of that number.

Gross profit vs net profit

Gross profit and net profit give different views of profitability but are equally vital for understanding how money flows in—and out—of a startup. Gross profit shows what's left after subtracting costs directly related to providing the goods or services you sell (like materials or labor), revealing your efficiency at producing value for customers while managing your core expenses.

Net profit provides a broader view by considering all operational costs—not just direct production costs—which can help you measure your overall financial health beyond just being good at selling.

You should be intimately familiar with both of these metrics, and you should know these numbers up to the minute when you step in front of a potential investor. If you're not on top of these, that's a giant red flag. You need to demonstrate that you understand your costs, your margins, and your pricing strategies—and that you're actively managing them all.

Customer-centric metrics for growth and retention

Calculating customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Digging into the cost of acquiring a new customer, or CAC, can be like opening Pandora's box—but you have to do it. Here's why it matters: every dollar you spend on snagging a customer slices into your profit margin. Grasping this number empowers you to identify where you get the biggest bang for your buck on the growth side. With this knowledge, you can build out an optimized marketing spend where you lean heavily on your most profitable channels while continuously testing to find other channels that can compete.

To get down to brass tacks, calculating CAC involves adding up all the costs spent on acquiring more customers during a period (think advertising expenses, team salaries, creative costs, etc.) and dividing that by the number of customers acquired in that same period. You do this by channel, so you can compare one channel against another. It's simple, yet so revealing.

This metric becomes even juicier when we consider that bringing in a new customer can be five times pricier than holding onto an existing one. So next time you're plotting your conquest for market dominance, remember: optimizing acquisition costs isn't just smart; it's essential.

Figuring out your customer lifetime value (CLV)

Making a sale feels awesome. It feels so awesome that many founders get held up on sales numbers and overlook the more important metric of customer lifetime value. It's not just how much money a new customer is giving you today. It's how much money each customer brings in over their entire business relationship with your company. This isn't just a vanity metric—understanding CLV lets you break down which segments of your customer base are most valuable to you over the long haul.

You can calculate CLV by multiplying your average purchase value by the purchase frequency rate and then again by your average customer lifespan. The formula can get much more complex if you have a lot of add-ons, upgrades, and service options. CLV data should inform your product development, your service offerings, and your marketing strategies.

Find your golden geese, retain them, multiply them.

Revenue metrics for startups

Grasping the significance of revenue metrics is like unlocking a treasure chest for your startup. Far from just crunched numbers in a financial spreadsheet, these metrics pulse at the core of your business. They show vitality, reveal expansion options, and attract potential investors.

First off, you need to know that MRR (monthly recurring revenue) is more than just a buzzword (although it certainly is a buzzword). MRR gives you a clear reading of your predictable income, which is a huge piece of the profitability puzzle—and it's also one of the most important metrics for investors. Top VC firms expect your year-over-year MRR growth to be sky-high. So pay close attention to this metric!

It's also important to understand your total revenue. Earnings from services and one-time add-ons are part of the complete picture. When you know both metrics—MRR and total revenue—you can pinpoint what's driving your success and where in your offering there might be room for improvement.

You should know these numbers. And beyond just knowing them, you should engage with them. You should be able to talk at length about where your company stands today, where it's going, and how it's going to get there. Test changes in your product offerings and pricing strategies to measure how they impact revenue.

You need to stay up-to-date with your revenue metrics, but if you can talk about them intelligently, about the insights you've gained through testing and how you plan to leverage those insights for future growth—you'll demonstrate to investors that you're a leader who is making smart, data-driven decisions to steer your business toward success.

The role of engagement and marketing metrics

Tracking engagement and marketing metrics is like having a GPS for your startup journey. These metrics are beacons, illuminating the murky path of creating a product, promoting it to your audience, and making sure they love it.

Engagement metrics give your audience a voice in your product development process. They reveal the depth and manner in which your audience is connecting with the products and services you're providing. Think of engagement metrics like direct feedback from your customers, without them needing to ever say a word. Elevated metrics suggest users are not only engaging with but relishing their time with your product. This is the path to brand loyalty and minimal churn.

On the other hand, the success or failure of your marketing messages shows whether or not the value you are proposing is in line with the actual needs of your audience. This can answer critical questions about whether you're reaching your ideal clients, whether their pain is strong enough to prompt action, and whether they view your product as a solution to their problem.

Diving into marketing metrics can reveal important information that helps you make smart choices. For instance, if you're generating a high clickthrough rate in a funnel that has low conversion, you might have identified an important pain point—but customers might not see your product as a viable solution. In this case, fixing your funnel might require making some changes to your product offering. If you're closely monitoring engagement metrics, you'll have a good idea of whether or not the product is delivering on its promise.

Knowing your engagement and marketing metrics is an important first step toward truly understanding your customer. You're equipped with data-driven tools to navigate your way to product-market fit, and you're in a great position to impress investors with your knowledge of your audience.

Utilizing metrics for strategic decision-making

In the fast-paced world of an early-stage venture, having a firm grip on your startup metrics is an instant strategic advantage. Harnessing the insights in your data helps you steer your business toward its objectives with efficiency. Every data point is potentially one step toward financial health, growth, and a successful exit.

But the real value isn't just knowing individual data points, it's about stringing them together to understand whether you're heading in the right direction or veering off course. Knowing what you spend to acquire a customer is important. But without knowing what those customers are worth, you could accidentally be throwing money into the abyss to capture customers who don't justify their own acquisition cost.

Your total revenue numbers might look so good this month that you think it's time to expand your team. But if your MRR isn't keeping pace with total revenue, expanding now could be a big mistake. With a clear view of total revenue, recurring revenue, active users, and churn—you're in a much better position to make decisions about hiring.

A data-driven approach isn't just smart; it's crucial for survival in today's landscape where profitability is elusive and funding is hard to come by. Keeping tabs on the most important metrics for your business is the best way to identify trends and adjust strategies before minor issues balloon into major threats. Yes, diving deep into these metrics might seem daunting at first glance. But you'll find that they're all fairly simple. It's well worth the effort to have a set of vital signs that let you know whether or not you're heading the right direction.

Monitoring startup metrics over time

Metrics aren't something that you measure once. The true value of metrics lies in measuring consistently and monitoring growth over time. Let’s talk about how month-over-month growth churn analysis can provide an invaluable roadmap.

The pulse of progress: Month-over-month growth

This one's pretty simple. You just measure your metrics every month, and then compare them against the previous month to see if they're moving in the right direction. By capturing the difference in terms of percentages, you shine a light on which areas of your business are outperforming and underperforming.

This exercise alone is enough for many founders to reclaim their rest and start to sleep well at night.

Consistency is key here. Fluctuations happen, so try not to panic. It's about watching your trends, identifying when the swings become too wild, and measuring the impact of the changes you're making along the way.

Navigating troubled waters: Churn analysis

If MoM growth shows where you're going strong, churn analysis reveals the leaks that could potentially sink your ship. Churn measures how many customers or subscribers are jumping ship over a specific period. If your customers love what you're doing, they stick around. If they're not feeling it, they ghost you.

Reducing churn is one of the best levers you have to control your MRR. And it makes sense financially—it's much more expensive to acquire new customers than retain existing ones. Getting churn under control can also provide a huge boost to your team's morale—when customers start to stick around, everyone involved senses that they're headed in the right direction.

Conclusion

Gathering metrics gives you a snapshot of your startup’s performance. Monitoring them over time gives you a sense of your trajectory. But diving deep and implementing strategic actions based on those metrics is how you set yourself apart. Whether it's tweaking your marketing efforts for better conversion or adjusting your cash flow strategies to prolong your runway, every decision counts towards reaching your goals.

In this post we plunged straight to the heart of startup metrics, unraveling the critical factors for understanding your revenue, runway, and product-market fit. Key takeaways? Know your metrics cold—this is how you keep your business breathing, it's how you stay on a path of continuous improvement, and it's how you attract and impress potential investors.

The best way to leverage these insights is to use a financial model. A financial model gives you one central location where you can measure, track, and project every metric that matters for your business.

Startup success isn’t just a dream—it’s a data-driven reality when you master these numbers. Harness the insights they provide, grasp them firmly, and use them to make smart decisions that steer your startup toward success.