The SaaS Metrics that Matter Most with Shaheel Hooda, Sprout Fund
Sprout Fund invests in seed- and early-stage companies with Series-A funding potential, primarily based in Western Canada. The fund leverages the collective experience of its Managing and Limited Partners to mentor and fund high-potential technology companies. Investments from Fund I range from $50,000 to $100,000 per company.
Notable seed-stage Canadian SaaS portfolio companies include:
MazumaGo – A financial-services start-up based in Victoria, B.C., which brings business payments to the digital age. MazumaGo’s payment software reduces administrative costs and improves cash flow by replacing legacy systems and eliminating hidden costs of cheque-based payments.
Smart Access – Based in Edmonton, Alberta, Smart Access is a leader in the emerging “deskless workforce management” market. With Smart Access, employees receive context-specific and timely product information, job information, training, and safety instructions through their mobile device.
Simplicity – The Calgary-based Simplicity Mortgage system is an intuitive, cloud-based platform that streamlines the workflow between mortgage applicants, brokers, lenders and settlement companies, reducing mortgage processing from 4 weeks down to days.
Sprout Fund Managing Partner, Shaheel Hooda, explains that at the seed stage, SaaS founders and leaders should focus on understanding their Ideal Customer Profile by doing customer interviews and segmenting their customer base in detail. The goal at the startup stage is to understand the mission critical value you’re offering to customers and find product market fit before Series A. He calls out 7 metrics that seed-stage founders should focus on to gain insights into their unit economics, customer engagement & stickiness, the sales funnel, and growth.
Annual Contract Value (ACV) – sometimes referred to as Average Order Value, specifically for customers that meet your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Daily Active Users (DAU) / Monthly Active Users (MAU)
Sales Funnel Metrics, for example Sales Qualified Leads, Sales Cycle Length, and Conversion Rate
Monthly Recurring Revenue Growth Rate – Here the target is 15 – 20% growth month over month, or a pattern of annual revenue over 5 years that triples, triples, triples, then doubles and doubles again.
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.
