Exclusive Takeaways from our Q1 Private Company Benchmark Report

The Benchmarks Are Back (And They Got Tougher)

CAC payback is up. NDR is down. And apparently the Knicks won the NBA title.

The two metrics that determine whether your unit economics hang both moved in the wrong direction to start the year. Is there a reckoning coming for startups?

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Last quarter +$50M companies were recovering CAC in 17 months. This quarter it's 39.

At the same time, NDR fell across every band $5M and up.

Customers are getting more expensive to acquire and less profitable to keep. If you can't manufacture NDR, you have to manufacture new logos. But, like, new logos cost more.

Some of this is sample mix (the broader cohort that filled out the survey this quarter brought down a few headline numbers). Downers! But yea, most of it is reality.

Here are my top takeaways from synthesizing the private company data submitted over the past few months.

Paid readers can download the full report below.

1. CAC payback got dramatically worse at scale.

Top quartile under $25M still pays back in 17 months. Above $25M, even the best operators are at 24 to 31. The "CAC back in a year" club has gotten very small.

If you're over $25M and recovering CAC under 30 months, you're top quartile now. That used to be median.

2. NDR fell across every band $5M and up.

Expansion is getting harder, especially at scale. The dispersion between median and top quartile narrowed at the bigger bands too.

If you can keep your head above 100%, you're in fine shape. If you're clearing 110%, you're leading the pack on expansion.

3. $5M-$25M is the only band that accelerated growth Q/Q.

Median growth slowed in three of four private bands. Pre-scale fell from 38% to 32%. $25M-$50M dropped from 32% to 24%. +$50M went from 28% to 23%. Only $5M-$25M moved in the right direction: 33% to 37%.

4. Half of private SaaS isn't burning.

Median burn multiple is between 0.4x and 0.7x across every private band. About half of every band is cash-flow positive or breakeven.

The other half is still burning, some at multiples that put their total spend well over 150% of revenue. Yet two halves cancel out at the median.

Burn more than 1.5x and you're in the bottom quartile, full stop.

5. Rev per employee at $50M+ keeps climbing.

+$50M median rev per employee jumped from $300k to $366k Q/Q.

Top quartile ripped from $395k to $494k.

These companies are adding 6% headcount on 23% revenue growth - every new dollar of ARR costs less in payroll than it did three months ago.

So is there a reckoning coming for startups?

For half of the private companies in this dataset, no… in fact, they're already cash-flow positive or breakeven, and rising CAC just means a slower path to expansion, not an existential threat. For the other half, the math is getting harder.

Bigger checks to win customers + smaller expansion from existing customers = a longer road to whatever milestone the board is asking about.

What follows is a 33 page report covering the following:

Sales Efficiency Benchmarks