This is spot-on! The messy middle is indeed growing rapidly as AI transforms business models. I wonder though - if CAC payback becomes our north star metric in this new landscape, what happens to businesses with necessarily longer acquisition payback periods but genuinely sticky products? Are we potentially creating a new blind spot by over-indexing on quick returns at the expense of businesses that might take longer to monetize but ultimately deliver more sustainable value?
cac payback probably shouldn’t be North Star but its importance should rise. And everyone should be focus on decreasing relative to prior benchmarks and historicals
💯💯 the end of ARR is also the opportunity for the CLV metric to shine! I found that this one is a much better measurement of the relationship health and the company's potential for expansion. In particular these new products that are built with AI from day 0 create different value realization timelines than what we have with traditional SaaS.
We had two major innovations 20 years ago. Viable cloud computing. This gets the headlines. But the other innovation was how we accounted for the refined subscription business model. Things are changing on the tech side, so ARR has a Dad in the Disco problem. I ramble on about this here. https://open.substack.com/pub/thomasotter/p/arr-stand-and-deliver?r=1rwdrs&utm_medium=ios
All of this - "Folks need to actually start using their brains rather than defaulting to the same metrics and benchmarks we have been using for a decade."
My POV:
1. CAC Payback helps you make good capital allocation and short term investment decisions but..
2. Retention clarity is what you need to build a solid foundation for growth
In my experience, retention insight in most software businesses are vague and unhelpful - for business growth to be sustained [and properly predicted] we need to collectively up our game.
I know nuance doesn’t do well for click-farming, but ARR is neither dead nor thriving.
Part of (real) ARR is indeed disappearing. Because why pay for access if you can pay for real usage or even outcomes.
However, most successful AI companies actually use hybrid pricing models that include seat-based or just fixed subscription fees. That’s still ARR in the purest sense.
As the cost of compute for AI comes down, wont the pendulum swing back to seat based pricing from outcome based pricing? Seat based pricing is lower cognitive load on the buyer.
This is spot-on! The messy middle is indeed growing rapidly as AI transforms business models. I wonder though - if CAC payback becomes our north star metric in this new landscape, what happens to businesses with necessarily longer acquisition payback periods but genuinely sticky products? Are we potentially creating a new blind spot by over-indexing on quick returns at the expense of businesses that might take longer to monetize but ultimately deliver more sustainable value?
cac payback probably shouldn’t be North Star but its importance should rise. And everyone should be focus on decreasing relative to prior benchmarks and historicals
💯💯 the end of ARR is also the opportunity for the CLV metric to shine! I found that this one is a much better measurement of the relationship health and the company's potential for expansion. In particular these new products that are built with AI from day 0 create different value realization timelines than what we have with traditional SaaS.
Super interesting observation! Love reading your Substack - every single time! :)
Appreciate it Nils!
We had two major innovations 20 years ago. Viable cloud computing. This gets the headlines. But the other innovation was how we accounted for the refined subscription business model. Things are changing on the tech side, so ARR has a Dad in the Disco problem. I ramble on about this here. https://open.substack.com/pub/thomasotter/p/arr-stand-and-deliver?r=1rwdrs&utm_medium=ios
All of this - "Folks need to actually start using their brains rather than defaulting to the same metrics and benchmarks we have been using for a decade."
My POV:
1. CAC Payback helps you make good capital allocation and short term investment decisions but..
2. Retention clarity is what you need to build a solid foundation for growth
In my experience, retention insight in most software businesses are vague and unhelpful - for business growth to be sustained [and properly predicted] we need to collectively up our game.
A metric is not a meaning. Focus on your financial health, not just a financial metric.
I know nuance doesn’t do well for click-farming, but ARR is neither dead nor thriving.
Part of (real) ARR is indeed disappearing. Because why pay for access if you can pay for real usage or even outcomes.
However, most successful AI companies actually use hybrid pricing models that include seat-based or just fixed subscription fees. That’s still ARR in the purest sense.
As the cost of compute for AI comes down, wont the pendulum swing back to seat based pricing from outcome based pricing? Seat based pricing is lower cognitive load on the buyer.