Updated: November 2025
Every founder wants growth.
But if you plan to measure it only through revenue, that won’t work. Revenue can tell how much you’ve made, but it doesn’t tell whether customers actually use the product, whether they return, whether they expand, or whether the model can scale without burning cash.
That’s what investors want to see, and that’s why you need to know which growth metrics to track. They show whether your product is healthy, sticky, and repeatable, long before the big revenue numbers show up.
In this guide, we’ll speak on the top 12 growth metrics for startups, how to track them, and why they matter for you and your business.
Let’s dive in!
What are growth metrics?
Growth metrics are quantitative measurements of how fast a company grows over a certain period of time.
In other words, these are the numbers that show whether your startup is actually growing in a healthy, scalable way, not just signing up users who disappear or buying short-term revenue through discounts.
But what does startup growth mean? When you have more revenue? Or a higher customer growth rate? All of that and even more. Business growth isn’t about a single number you need to constantly check whether it’s going up or down. It’s about multiple factors. More revenue is great, but if your customer acquisition costs skyrocket and eat up all your profits, and churn is high, can you say it’s sustainable? A bigger customer base sounds promising, but if retention drops, is your business really growing?
And if we’re getting into more detail, growth also means scaling operations, marketing, and sales. Your team expands, new roles open up, sales grow, product lines evolve, and your infrastructure may need changes. Thus, it’s about building something that doesn’t just get bigger, but gets stronger and more sustainable over time.
Related read: Startup KPIs: What to track at each stage
Why do startups need to track growth metrics?
Unlike established businesses, you’re building in uncertainty, with limited time, money, and patience from both customers and investors. Growth KPIs tell you whether things are actually working, not just whether you hope they are.
Here’s what they help you do:
✅ Prove product–market fit
If customers keep coming back, using the product, and paying for it, this means you’re solving a real problem. For instance, if churn spikes or usage drops, it’s a warning that something is off, maybe onboarding, pricing, positioning, or the product itself. Of course, the numbers won’t tell you the “why” yet, but they will tell you where to look.
✅ Understand whether revenue is real and sustainable
Revenue going up is nice, but sustainable revenue is what actually matters, and metrics like MRR, ARR, and revenue growth rate show whether your business can scale. If revenue rises but profit doesn’t, that’s a red flag: costs are too high, CAC is inefficient, or retention is weak.
✅ See if customers stay or leave
It’s hard to get new customers on board, but what’s even harder is to make the existing customers stay with you. If you see a high churn rate, meaning people are leaving, you must do something. Maybe you have problems with product-market fit? Or bad customer service? Or maybe your competitors perform better than you? Reasons vary. But when you track the right growth metrics, you see the warning signs early enough.
✅ Prove growth to investors
Investors want proof that your idea is really profitable and that your business is growing and will continue to grow in the long run. Growth metrics can give them this proof. They show that the model works, the product sticks, revenue scales, and churn is under control.
Of course, the exact growth KPIs depend on your business model, but the next section covers the most common and important ones for startups.
Which growth metrics startups should track
“How to measure business growth?” is one of the most common questions we hear from early-stage founders. And it makes sense; once you start googling growth metrics, you find a dozen different lists and no clear answer on what actually matters.
To keep things simple, we’ve divided growth KPIs into two practical groups: revenue metrics and customer metrics. Together, they show both sides of growth, how much money comes in, and whether customers stick around long enough to sustain it.
📌 Revenue metrics—to measure how fast your business is making money
Tracking the growth metrics below will help you see if your business is growing its revenue and how steadily it’s doing this.
1️⃣ MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
MRR is a growth metric that helps you see the total predictable revenue your business earns from subscription customers each month.
Especially for SaaS businesses or subscription-based services, MRR helps to check financial health—how well the company retains customers, adds up revenue, and spots trends in growth, upsells, or churn each month. That’s why you’d better track it regularly.
The MRR formula goes as follows:
2️⃣ ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
ARR tracks the same as MRR but in the yearly equivalent. Thus, it gives a broader view of your company’s revenue and helps you better understand the long-term perspective of your startup growth and potential.
There are two ways you can measure your ARR.
OR
3️⃣ ARPA (Average Revenue Per Account)
With the help of this growth metric, you can see how much revenue each customer (or account) generates on average. This is of great use when you want to evaluate your pricing strategies and understand if different customer segments (small businesses vs enterprises) bring in more or less revenue.
This metric is also typically more commonly used by SaaS and service-based businesses (just like MRR and ARR).
4️⃣ Revenue growth rate
The revenue growth rate is exactly what it sounds like—a rate of how quickly your startup’s revenue is growing over time. And pretty logical is that if this revenue metric is positive, your revenue is growing, while negative shows it declines.
5️⃣ Revenue Churn
Revenue churn measures how much recurring revenue you lose when customers cancel or downgrade their subscriptions. If you have a high revenue churn rate, it means your company is losing money—either due to poor retention, pricing issues, or declining customer satisfaction.
📌 Customer metrics—to measure how many customers use & stay with your product/service
Your startup growth depends not only on how much money you earn (revenue metrics) but also on how well your business acquires new users, keeps them engaged, and makes them stay with you for a long time. Below are the main customer growth metrics.
6️⃣ Customer growth rate
When you track your customer growth rate, you see how quickly your business is gaining new customers over time. A high growth rate means high demand—more and more customers want to use your product/service—while a slowing rate may mean your market is overcrowded or your acquisition strategies aren’t strong enough.
7️⃣ Active Users (DAU, MAU, WAU)
This growth metric can help you monitor how often people are actually using your product/service:
You should track them to see whether users are engaged and find value in your product/service.
8️⃣ Key action completion rate
It’s not only about how many people interact with your product/service but how many of them actually completed an important action (made a purchase, signed up, watched a video, etc.). When you track this growth metric, you understand if clients are engaging the way you expect them to engage or there’s something that stops them.
9️⃣ Customer retention rate
The retention rate shows how many customers stay with your company over time. Pretty logical that the higher the retention, the better—keeping customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones.
🔟 CLV (Customer Lifetime Value)
CLV measures how much money you expect to make from a customer over the entire time they use your product/service.
Although CLV is a mix of efficiency and growth metrics, we’ve decided to include it in this list because a growing CLV means growing revenue without depending only on attracting new customers. To elaborate, you make more money from existing customers through repeat purchases, upsells, or longer retention and, at the same time, keep your acquisition costs lower.
1️⃣1️⃣ Churn rate
This growth metric gives you the percentage of customers who left within a given period of time. When the churn rate is high, it typically means that your product/service doesn’t deliver enough value or there are issues with pricing strategies or competition (competitors perform better than you, and customers prefer to use their solutions).
1️⃣2️⃣ NPS (Net Promoter Score)
NPS is a simple way to monitor customer satisfaction and loyalty. You ask customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service on a scale from 0 to 10:
Promoters (9-10): People who like your product/service;
Passives (7-8): Those who prefer to remain neutral;
Detractors (0-6): These are unhappy customers.
And then calculate the score using the following formula:
“Okay, these are the metrics… but how do they actually influence each other?” you might be wondering.
Let’s take a look at a simple scenario. Say, last month your startup had:
10,000 new signups
20% activation → 2,000 users actually started using the product
$200,000 in MRR, with ARPU around $100
Now, imagine you improve activation from 20% to 30%. That means 3,000 activated users instead of 2,000 (1,000 more people experiencing value).
If only 30% of those eventually convert to paid, that’s 300 additional customers, or $30K in new MRR without spending more on marketing or acquisition.
And more MRR then improves:
LTV
CAC payback
revenue churn
expansion potential
So, as you see, just one small product improvement led to meaningful revenue growth. This is why growth metrics matter: they expose leverage points you can’t see by just watching revenue.
Growth metrics: What they warn you about
| Metric | What it warns you about |
| MRR growth | Whether growth is real, steady, or based on one-time spikes |
| ARR / Annual revenue | Long-term revenue health and predictability |
| Churn rate | “Leaky bucket” – users leave too fast / weak PMF |
| Revenue churn | You’re losing revenue faster than you gain it |
| Retention rate | Whether customers come back and stay active |
| Net Revenue Retention (NRR) | Whether existing accounts expand or shrink |
| Activation rate | Users sign up but never reach real value |
| DAU / WAU / MAU | Product stickiness – users not returning |
| ARPU (or ARPA) | You might be underpricing or attracting small, unprofitable clients |
| LTV | Customer value is too low to sustain marketing + support costs |
| CAC | Acquisition is too expensive, or sales funnel is inefficient |
| CAC Payback | Scaling might burn cash faster than revenue comes in |
How to measure business growth (tips for founders)
Tracking the right growth metrics is important, but how you track them matters just as much:
➡️ Choose the metrics that actually fit your model Different businesses grow differently. A SaaS company needs metrics like MRR, churn, and LTV. An e-commerce brand cares more about GMV, AOV, and conversion rate. That’s why you don’t just copy generic lists, pick the growth KPIs that match how your business makes money.
➡️ Never analyze metrics in isolation Revenue can rise while profitability collapses. DAU can look strong while conversions are weak. You’re not looking for numbers that go “up”, you’re looking for growth that is sustainable. That’s why efficiency metrics (CAC, payback, burn, LTV) should always accompany pure growth numbers.
➡️ Find your North Star metric Your North Star is the single metric that reflects the value you deliver to customers and ties directly to long-term revenue. For SaaS, this might be activated users; for marketplaces, completed transactions; for social apps, time spent. If the North Star moves, the business moves.
For example:
SaaS: Weekly active activated accounts;
Marketplace: Completed / fulfilled transactions or successful GMV;
PLG product: Weekly value-active users;
Social / media: Engaged sessions (e.g., ≥30s and meaningful interaction) or weekly returning users;
Transactional / e-commerce: Repeat orders per active customer.
➡️ Look at trends, not snapshots A metric is meaningless without context. 10% revenue growth sounds good until you realize costs jumped 20%. A DAU drop looks bad until you see it’s seasonal. Trends tell the real story, not individual data points.
➡️ Automate your tracking Manual spreadsheets break and give outdated snapshots. Analytics tools and real-time dashboards let you spot problems early, react faster, and share one source of truth with the team (and investors).
Related read:
Final thoughts
At the end of the day, growth isn’t just about watching revenue go up. It’s about understanding why you’re growing, whether it’s sustainable, and what you can do to keep that momentum alive.
When you track the right growth metrics and look at them in the right context, you make smarter decisions, spot problems early, and prove to investors that your business can scale.
If all of this feels overwhelming, we can help. At Waveup, we’ve supported hundreds of founders with growth analytics, financial planning, and pitch deck creation. Reach out and let’s discuss the details.
FAQs
What are growth metrics?
Growth metrics are the numbers that show whether your startup is actually growing in a healthy, repeatable way. They go beyond revenue and tell you if customers are using the product, coming back, paying, expanding, or leaving. When these metrics move in the right direction, it means your product has stickiness and your growth model works in the long run.
What are the most important B2B growth metrics?
For B2B startups, growth is usually slower and more sales-driven, so the metrics look a bit different from consumer apps. The most important ones are pipeline volume, demos booked, conversion rates through the funnel, CAC payback, MRR/ARR, and net revenue retention. Together, they show whether demand exists, whether sales are repeatable, and whether your accounts expand after they sign.
How should I measure business growth?
You measure business growth by tracking both revenue metrics (like MRR, ARR, revenue growth rate, churn) and customer metrics (like activation, retention, and product usage). The point is that growth is measured through a mix of metrics that show people are joining, staying, paying, and expanding.