The SaaS Metrics that Matter Most with Elaine Kunda, Disruption Ventures
Elaine Kunda is Managing Partner at Disruption Ventures, which invests in high growth, women founded companies in North America at the seed and Series A stages. Disruption Ventures believes that diverse teams fuel success. They know the stats and understand that women are particularly underfunded when it comes to raising venture capital dollars. They see women as high value and high potential investments.
Elaine advises companies to do their testing to discover their most efficient growth levers at the seed stage. This speeds up their path and gives them a deep understanding of where to invest funds later to maximize growth.
Notable portfolio companies include:
ePact – Headquartered in North Vancouver, BC, ePact Network is an online emergency network. Users build networks of family, friends, and organizations, store and exchange information and access web and mobile communication tools for use in a crisis.
Fable – Headquartered in Toronto, ON, Fable is an accessibility platform powered by people with disabilities and expert-level accessibility services and training.
Elaine highlights 5 metrics in particular she recommends Series A founders deeply understand and track.
Gross Churn – You should deeply understand what’s causing churn and try to keep it under 2% per month.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – Unit economics are key, and it’s advantageous to find efficiencies early. You don’t want to look back 10 months from now and wonder why you waited so long.
Customer Acquisition Cost Payback Period – The shorter the better.
Runway – Given the number 1 reason companies fail is running out of cash, founders need to have a strong sense of their runway, so they know when to pull back or step on the gas.
Sales Cycle Length – This is a key metric to help you deeply understand your sales efficiency.
About SaaSCan
SaaSCan was created to bring deep experience in customer-centric growth and SaaS metrics to Canada’s growing SaaS ecosystem.
SaaSCan for Startups services were born in the early days of COVID-19 to help Canadian SaaS companies understand COVID’s impact on churn and retention. We have expanded to provide enablement for SaaS startups on SaaS metrics and benchmarks.
SaaSCan for Early Stage Growth services emerged from the need startups have to adopt a customer-centric approach as they grow, so they can deliver ongoing value to existing customers and optimize key SaaS retention, expansion, and efficiency metrics.
SaaSCan for Later Stage Growth services empower SaaS companies to be customer-centric and metrics-savvy at scale, further optimizing customer retention, SaaS metric performance, and company valuation.
To learn more about our Advisors, Partners, and Services, please visit www.saascan.ca.
