Metrics & Performance
Cohort Analysis
Tracking the behavior of a specific group of customers (cohort) acquired in the same period over time — the gold standard for measuring retention.
Cohort analysis groups customers by acquisition period (e.g., all customers acquired in January 2024) and tracks their behavior over time. For SaaS companies, cohort analysis answers: are customers retained month after month? Do they expand their spending? How quickly do they churn? A healthy cohort chart shows revenue curves that flatten or increase over time rather than declining to zero. VCs love cohort data because it reveals the true retention story beneath aggregate metrics. A company can show growing ARR while all cohorts are churning — masking a fundamental leakiness problem. When fundraising, cohort charts that show flattening retention curves at high levels are one of the most compelling data visualizations you can show.