The metrics that actually keep work in SaaS growth honest
I care about time-to-first-value, activation rate for the target persona, and retention of activated cohorts. If a team cannot answer those three questions with confidence, it is usually too early to celebrate top-of-funnel growth.
Three metrics worth pressure-testing:
- time-to-first-value for the target persona
- retention by activated cohort instead of all signups
- expansion or contraction after pricing changes
Source material behind the scorecard:
- PostHog growth handbook: posthog.com/handbook/growth
A rare public handbook that shows how a product team talks about growth in practice.
- Intercom on user onboarding: intercom.com/blog/user-onboarding/
Helpful for teams redesigning the first-run experience around actual user value.
If your team has a sharper dashboard, share the metric definitions and the decisions they actually change. That is what makes numbers reusable.