Understanding SaaS Financial Models

Ben Murray (@br_murray, Founder of SaaS CFO and SaaS Academy) talks about how to understand the financial models behind successful SaaS companies, the tradeoffs on profit vs. growth, and how to spot the health of SaaS businesses.

SHOW: 498

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SHOW NOTES:

• SaaS CFO (homepage)
• SaaS Academy (homepage)

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. We don’t usually get CFOs on the show. Tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you into the SaaS world. 

Topic 2 - The more we study SaaS companies, the more it seems like everyone needs to understand the financial model and associated metrics (executives, product managers, marketing, customer service, etc.). How do you go about teaching best practices to SaaS companies?

Topic 3 - Let’s talk about the core financial concepts that SaaS companies need to think about (CAC, MRR, ACV, LCV, Churn, Gross Margin, etc.)

Topic 4 - Are there some common financial patterns (metrics, ratios, etc,) to tell how a SaaS company is doing (good or bad)? If so, are there established best-practices to get them out of bad situations?  

Topic 5 - Can you help us better understand why some people get excited when a SaaS company has revenue growth and loses money, and others freak out? Help us understand that in growth stages vs. stable stages. (SaaS Rule of 40?)

Topic 6 - Have you found that SaaS businesses are unique in their financial modeling, or can some of these best practices be applied to non-SaaS software businesses?

Topic 7 - You just started SaaS CFO and SaaS Academy. Give us an overview of what people will learn. 

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