The metrics you can’t afford to ignore: What the best CEOs know

This week’s guest is so good I wish there was an 1-800 number to call him when I had questions on company building. Ray Rike is a founding member of the SaaS Metrics Standards Board. His team runs the industry’s largest SaaS benchmarking Index —  with 18,000 unique SaaS companies and more than half a million data points.

He is the person you should know if you want to run a business with high discipline, efficiency and reliability.

In this CarCast, we cover growth, profit, customer acquisition, churn metrics and the five metrics you need to know to be an exceptional CEO and operator.

We cover

• The rule of 40
• The customer acquisition cost (CAC) ratio
• The CAC payback period
• Net revenue retention (NRR)/ gross revenue retention (GRR)
• The CLTV:CAC ratio

I go “Warren Buffet” on Ray by asking to give his top 10 priorities, then tell him “trash 2 through 10 and let’s focus on just #1”.

Finally, you might want to check out the 8 steps in the latest McKinsey and Company research regarding setting up your generative AI tech stack. They include:

1. Determine the company’s posture for the adoption of gen AI.

2. Identify use cases that build value through improved productivity, growth, and new business models.

3. Reimagine the technology function.

4. Take advantage of existing services or adapt open-source gen AI models.

5. Upgrade your enterprise technology architecture to integrate and manage gen AI models.

6. Develop a data architecture to enable access to quality data.

7. Create a centralized, cross-functional gen AI platform team.

8. Tailor upskilling programs by roles and proficiency levels.

Bruno Aziza is a technology entrepreneur.