Startup finance benchmarks
What good looks like for the numbers founders track, on one page. Each range is the accepted industry convention, named where it has an author, and each links to the full definition with its formula and a worked example. Where no honest range exists, there is no row: a metric like CAC varies too much by market for a single number to mean anything.
ARR
ARR = MRR × 12The venture-scale reference is T2D3: from about €1M ARR, triple it twice, then double it three times, reaching €100M around year five (Neeraj Agrawal, 2015).
Burn multiple
burn multiple = net burn / net new ARRUnder 1x exceptional · 1 to 1.5x great · 1.5 to 2x good · 2 to 3x suspect · above 3x trouble past seed.
CAC payback period
CAC payback = CAC / (ARPA × gross margin)Under 12 months is generally considered healthy for SaaS.
Churn rate
customer churn = customers lost / customers at startSMB SaaS commonly runs 3 to 5 percent monthly. Products sold to larger companies target under 1 percent.
Gross margin
gross margin = (revenue − cost of revenue) / revenueSoftware businesses typically run 70 to 85 percent. Services and hardware run considerably lower.
LTV:CAC ratio
LTV : CAC = lifetime value / customer acquisition cost3:1 is the widely used target. Below 1:1 every customer loses money. Above 5:1 often means underspending on growth.
MRR
MRR = number of active accounts × average revenue per accountPaul Graham's yardstick for YC-stage startups: 5 to 7 percent growth a week is good, 10 percent is exceptional. Most companies at that stage measure it on MRR.
Net revenue retention
NRR = (starting MRR + expansion − contraction − churn) / starting MRRAbove 100 percent means the existing base grows without new customers. Best-in-class B2B SaaS reaches 120 percent or more.
Above 30 percent from one customer is commonly treated as a material risk in diligence.
Runway
runway (months) = cash on hand / net monthly burnMost investors expect 18 to 24 months after a round. Below 6 months you are raising from a weak position.
These are conventions, not guarantees. They come from the sources named in each entry — investor rules of thumb, published frameworks and widely used diligence thresholds — and they describe what the market treats as normal, not what your company must be. Citing this page: each range above has a stable URL at its definition page, which states the formula and the source.
Know where you stand, live
Plainhub computes runway, burn, MRR and the rest from money you record in plain words, so comparing your numbers with these ranges takes a glance, not a spreadsheet session.