SaaS Metrics School

By Ben MurrayBusiness Entrepreneurship Technology Management

SaaS Metrics School episodes

July 02The Latest GRR Benchmarks
Is gross revenue retention under attack at your SaaS company? The latest benchmark data says the ground has shifted under everyone.
In episode #380, Ben Murray breaks down the latest SaaS gross revenue retention benchmarks from Ray Rike's Benchmarkit report, the same data set Ben uses to benchmark his own client base. GRR is one of the power three metrics, and it is hard to scale without it. Pricing models are changing; seat-based pricing is under pressure, and AI is reshaping how revenue holds. If your board still treats 88% median GRR as the baseline, you are benchmarking against last year's reality.
Why median GRR fell from 88% to 84% year over year, and why the top quartile slipped from 95% to 91%
Whether the 95% GRR "elite" rule of thumb still holds, backed by three years of top-quartile benchmark data
Which pricing model retains revenue best, comparing pure subscription against usage-based and subscription-plus-usage
Why vertical SaaS is outperforming horizontal SaaS on retention, with a 90% median GRR versus 84%
How to benchmark GRR the right way by ACV segment instead of relying on dangerous aggregate numbers
Tune in to see where your gross revenue retention really stands, before your next board meeting or investor update.
Resources Mentioned
Benchmarkit SaaS Metrics Benchmark Report, Ray Rike: https://www.benchmarkit.ai/2026-saas-ai-native-metrics
Ben's KPI app: https://softwaremetrics.ai/
Ben's blog post on 2026 GRR benchmarks: https://www.thesaascfo.com/saas-grr-benchmark-2026/
6 min
June 24Why AI ARR Alone No Longer Lifts Your Software Valuation
AI ARR is easy to announce. Proving it is where most SaaS finance teams are about to get exposed.
In episode #379, Ben Murray tackles the new bar for AI financial transparency and what it means for your next budget season. The public markets have already moved the goalposts. Launching AI was the 2024 story. Reporting AI ARR was the 2025 story. Now investors and boards want to see AI margins, customer outcomes, and proof that AI revenue is actually dropping to the bottom line. That same pressure is heading straight for private SaaS, and your board will bring it to budget season whether you are ready or not.
Understand why AI ARR by itself no longer satisfies boards or investors, and what they now demand to see in the numbers.
Separate pure AI revenue, AI-influenced revenue, and AI upsell so your reporting survives scrutiny, using clean SKUs, product IDs, and chart of accounts.
Know which AI costs belong in COGS, including inference, infrastructure, and observability, so you can show your real AI margins.
Walk into budget season ready for the board questions on AI revenue, AI cost, and margin by revenue stream.
Instrument heavy, medium, and light AI users so you can defend margins and LTV to CAC as usage scales.
Listen now and build the AI transparency your board will expect before budget season starts.
Resources Mentioned
Ben's blog posts on capturing AI costs in COGS: inference, infrastructure, and observability: https://www.thesaascfo.com/what-should-be-included-in-ai-cogs/
Ben's training on AI metrics: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas
5 min
June 23Here's What Separates the 9 Public SaaS Companies that Trade Above 10x
Is your SaaS company stuck in the valuation doghouse while a handful of names trade at a massive premium?
In episode #378, Ben Murray breaks down Meritech's June 2026 public software comps report and the widening valuation gap across SaaS. The median revenue multiple has fallen 64% from its pre-ZIRP peak, and most public software now trades below 5X. If you are a SaaS founder or CFO, the multiple attached to your business depends on a short list of traits the market now rewards. This episode shows you which ones, and why the rules quietly changed.
Why only 9 of roughly 100 public software companies trade above a 10X revenue multiple, while 77 sit below 5X
How the Rule of 40 shifted under the surface, with revenue growth now 3.3x more correlated with the multiple than free cash flow margin
Why two companies with the same Rule of 40 score can trade at 7.3x versus 3.7x, depending entirely on how they got there
What the top 9 share in common: free cash flow margins above 20% and ARR growth above 20% at the same time
How AI exposure now sorts the market, and why a weak AI ARR story lands horizontal SaaS in the doghouse
Tune in to see exactly what separates the premium names from the rest before you benchmark your own SaaS valuation.
Resources Mentioned
Meritech June 2026 Public Software Comps (Pulse Report): https://meritech.substack.com/p/meritech-software-pulse-12-june-2026
Ben's academy: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/
5 min
June 1212 Steps to Creating an Outcome-based Pricing Plan
Everyone says seat-based pricing is dead, but do you actually have an outcome you can charge for?
In episode #377, Ben Murray breaks down the 12 steps to building an outcome-based pricing plan, drawn from analyzing real, live outcome-based pricing pages and the fine print buried in their terms and conditions. Outcome pricing is complex to design and even harder for customers to understand: when are they charged, and where is the failure point at which they aren't? For SaaS founders and CFOs weighing a move to outcome- or agentic-AI pricing, getting the unit, success criteria, and spend controls right is the difference between a model customers trust and one that creates budget anxiety and billing disputes.
How to decide whether you even have a billable outcome, and why a completed customer result is not the same as an activity.
How to define the outcome unit and write success criteria twice, with real examples from Intercom's Fin, Help Scout's AI Answers, and Zendesk's 72-hour resolution window.
Why failure forgiveness is a conversion tool, not just billing logic, and how measurement windows protect you from outcomes that unravel later.
How to choose your commercial structure, anchor price to labor savings, revenue, or risk avoidance, and plan for the training lag before charges begin.
Why spend controls and auditable billing events are non-negotiable, and how to know when outcome pricing is the wrong model entirely.
Tune in for the full framework, then grab the deep-dive blog post before you design your next AI pricing plan.
Resources Mentioned
Ben's blog post: 12 Steps to Creating an Outcome-Based Pricing Plan: https://www.thesaascfo.com/how-to-build-outcome-based-pricing/
7 min
June 105 Takeaways for CFOs from the 2026 AI Pricing Report
Is your 2027 software budget ready for the AI spend that's about to blow past every forecast you've built?
In episode #376, Ben Murray covers five takeaways for CFOs from the Pricing I/O AI Pricing Report, produced in partnership with Benchmarkit, which surveyed 296 software buyers in Q1 2026. With budget season around the corner and demand for tokens, agentic AI, and tools like ChatGPT and Claude climbing fast, the gap between what buyers want and where AI pricing is heading has never mattered more. If you own a software budget or sell AI software, these findings reshape how you should think about predictability, governance, and the guardrails buyers are actually asking for.
Why buyers rank predictable total cost as a top-3 priority, far above low entry price, and why the seat-based pricing obituary may be premature for enterprise deals.
What the 89% budget-overrun rate really signals: a forecasting problem on the buy side, not vendors changing the rules after signing.
Why credit and token pricing is the single hardest model to evaluate, and what Salesforce's new agentic work units mean for your bill.
The surprising finding that IT, not Finance, owns AI cost risk, and why department-level allocation of token spend is the fix.
Why buyers want soft caps, alerts, and approval steps over hard cutoffs, and where hard caps get genuinely painful in outcome-based pricing.
Tune in to get the buyer-side data shaping AI pricing before you lock in your 2027 budget.
Resources Mentioned
Pricing I/O AI Pricing Report: https://www.benchmarkit.ai/widget/ai-pricing/cy-26?utm_source=TheSaaSCFO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_campaign=TheSaaSCFO
Ben's blog post: 12 Steps to Creating Your Outcome-Based Pricing: https://www.thesaascfo.com/how-to-build-outcome-based-pricing/
7 min
June 02Your AI Subscription Pricing Is Losing Money on the Customers You Care About Most
Do you actually know which of your AI customers are making you money and which are quietly destroying your gross margin?
In episode #375, Ben Murray breaks down the shape of AI usage and why the distribution curve of your customers determines whether your AI subscription product is profitable. This is why Anthropic and GitHub changed their pricing. Heavy users on a flat subscription can quietly turn a 40% gross margin into a negative one, and most finance teams are not tracking token usage by customer in enough detail to see it coming.
The three AI usage distribution scenarios every SaaS CFO needs to model: normal, right skew, and left skew, and what each does to your gross margin
Why a right-skewed distribution means your light users are subsidizing your heavy users, and how to spot when that subsidy stops working
How a left-skewed distribution can leave 80% of customers unprofitable and drag overall gross margin into the negatives
Why median, mean, and P90 token usage by customer are now core SaaS finance metrics, not just product analytics
What finance needs from product and engineering — usage by customer, model mix, input and output token pricing — to run real pricing scenario analysis
Tune in before your next pricing review and find out where your AI margin is actually leaking.
Resources Mentioned
Ben's AI metrics course with the usage distribution template and free preview: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas
AI readiness quiz: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas
6 min
May 314 SaaS P&L Metrics That Break When You Kill Per-Seat Pricing
The pricing model that built the SaaS industry is being replaced in real time. Is your finance team ready for what it does to your core metrics?
In episode #374, Ben Murray breaks down the four SaaS P&L metrics that break when per-seat pricing dies. Public tech leaders are already shifting fast. ServiceNow now drives 50% of net new business from non-seat-based pricing, Workday is reporting hundreds of millions in AI ARR, and GitHub is moving Copilot to usage-based billing. If you are a SaaS CFO or finance leader still modeling on a single blended gross margin, your benchmarks are about to stop working.
Why the AI product gross margin sits around 52% and how a 30% revenue mix shift can compress your blended margin by 10 to 15 points
How AI COGS scale directly with product usage, breaking the near-zero incremental cost assumption traditional SaaS finance was built on
Why one blended LTV no longer works once you have heavy, medium, and light AI usage cohorts, and how to rebuild LTV to CAC by cohort
How CAC payback period shifts when gross margin is no longer a single number across the customer base
The new frameworks finance teams need to model hybrid subscription plus usage and outcome-based pricing before the board notices the margin compression
Tune in to get ahead of the pricing shift before your next forecast and board deck go out.
Resources Mentioned
Ben's blog post on the SaaS pricing revolution: https://www.thesaascfo.com/saas-per-seat-pricing/
Ben's AI course for SaaS finance leaders: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas
6 min
May 29Per-Seat Pricing Is Dying: What the Shift to Usage-Based SaaS Means for Your Margins
Is per-seat pricing dying a slow death, and is your SaaS expense structure ready for its replacement?
In episode #373, Ben Murray breaks down the shift from per-seat subscriptions to usage and outcome-based pricing, and what it means for your finance org. Bloomberg projects subscription pricing falling from 60% to 30% of SaaS models over the next decade, while outcome-based pricing climbs from 10% to 60%. This is no longer a thesis on a slide. GitHub, Salesforce, Zendesk, Intercom, Figma, HubSpot, and others are already repricing, and public companies are reporting AI ARR in the hundreds of millions. If you cannot answer what your AI margins are when the board asks, you are already behind.
See exactly how legacy SaaS leaders are repricing, from Zendesk charging per automated resolution to Salesforce billing per AI conversation plus flex credits, and what GitHub's June 1 move to token-based billing signals for the rest of the market.
Understand why a single bucket of cloud hosting that blends traditional infrastructure with inference spend leaves you blind, and what instrumentation to put in place before budget season.
Learn the questions your board will ask about AI margins, and how to answer whether low-usage customers are quietly subsidizing your heaviest users.
Get the case for reconvening your pricing committee now to align product roadmap, AI features, and the expense framework that tracks them.
Know which AI unit economics to track by revenue stream and by usage bucket so you can defend margin as your pricing model changes in real time.
Listen now and put the tracking framework in place before the AI margin questions land on your desk.
Resources Mentioned
Ben's blog post: https://www.thesaascfo.com/saas-per-seat-pricing/
New course on AI unit economics and metrics: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas
6 min
May 20The Two SaaStr Annual Slides Every SaaS Operator Needs to See Today
Are you a legacy SaaS company quietly hoping for a recovery that isn't coming?
In episode #372, Ben Murray breaks down two slides from Jason Lemkin's State of SaaS keynote at SaaStr Annual that every SaaS operator and CFO needs to confront. The four categories Lemkin laid out will tell you exactly where your company sits in the AI transition, and whether your ARR growth is real or borrowed time. If you're building, leading, or financing a SaaS business right now, this is the reality check that should reshape how you frame your strategy for the next board meeting.
Understand the four SaaS+AI categories Jason Lemkin used to map every software company, and which one quietly signals the end of the road
Learn why AI driving expansion revenue versus net new customer acquisition matters more than top-line ARR growth right now
See which public SaaS companies are pulling off the AI-powered rocket ship growth and what they share
Hear the "tired versus wired" narratives that separate operators stuck in 2024 talking points from those building what's next
Get a clear lens for whether your AI features are real revenue drivers or just a story you're telling investors
Tune in to find out where your company actually sits before the next board meeting forces the question.
Resources Mentioned
SaaStr Annual / Jason Lemkin: https://saastrannual.com/
Ben's new AI metrics course: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas
4 min
May 102 AI Metrics Every SaaS CFO Should Track Today
If you're shipping AI product lines, are you measuring the two metrics that actually tell you whether your AI is making money — or burning it?
In episode #371, Ben Murray covers two AI unit economics metrics every SaaS CFO and founder should be tracking today: the Inference Expense Ratio and the Work-to-Inference Ratio. Traditional SaaS metrics aren't enough anymore — and a year from now, when your board, investors, and potential acquirers start asking for AI margin and efficiency data, the companies that built the chart-of-accounts structure now will have clean answers. Everyone else will be scrambling.
The Inference Expense Ratio (AI revenue ÷ inference cost) — and why you can start calculating this from your GL today if your chart of accounts is set up properly
The healthy benchmarks: 10:1 for AI-infused products, 5:1 for AI-native, and why 3:1 is the warning zone where inference is silently eating your gross margin
Why this metric only works if your chart of accounts cleanly separates AI revenue from non-AI revenue — and the SKU tagging that makes it possible
The Work-to-Inference Ratio — how Salesforce's "agentic work units" concept lets you measure whether your AI is getting more efficient over time
Why every AI product needs its own definition of a "work unit" — record updated, report generated, MCP called — and how the wrong definition will distort your margin trends
The chart-of-accounts evolution every SaaS company needs right now: from SaaS-only structure to SaaS + AI, with new GL accounts for inference cost in DevOps COGS
How the Inference Expense Ratio connects to Ben's ROSE metric — measuring revenue produced per dollar of employee, contractor, and agentic AI spend
Tune in to get the AI unit economics framework in place — before your board and investors start asking the questions you can't answer.
Resources Mentioned
Ben's new AI course: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas
ROSE metric: https://www.thesaascfo.com/saas-rose-metric/
5 min

About SaaS Metrics School

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Ben Murray brings you actionable SaaS metrics lessons that he has learned through years of being in the SaaS CFO trenches. Whether you are new to SaaS or a SaaS veteran, learn the latest SaaS and AI metrics, finance, and accounting tactics that drive financial transparency and improved decision-making.