If they come, will they stay?

In the financial domain and beyond, SaaS companies have spent the past few years obsessing about how to get more customers. As it turns out, retention is the real game. 

🧲 Retention: the new growth engine

High growth doesn’t matter if your customers don’t stick around. A recent ChartMogul report shows that companies with ARR between $15M and $30M are now getting 40% of their growth from existing customers, a sharp jump from 30% just 3 years ago. If they want to survive the long haul, founders and managers need to focus on the customers they’ve already signed up and have them renew—and expand—year after year. The fact that Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is slipping to 78% on average for companies with large subscriber bases is a sobering reminder that acquisition is meaningless without retention.

⛽️ Efficiency: the new paradigm

Gone are the days of burning through money in a race to the top. Today, frugality is a competitive edge. Metrics like Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and unit economics make the difference between thriving and barely surviving. The best SaaS companies aren’t chasing vanity metrics anymore. This is where the right capital solutions make all the difference. Founders don’t need investors who just write checks; they need ones who can give the runway and expert advice to build disciplined, retention-focused growth.

🔏 Indispensability: the new competitive moat 

The key to SaaS success is not about building a product people like—it’s about building something they can’t live without and are willing to pay for because it solves their pain points and adds measurable value to their work. Companies with ARR over $1M, focusing equally on retention and acquisition, saw the strongest growth rates in 2024, despite a slowdown in new customer acquisition. Companies that hit 100% NRR in the first half of 2024 grew at 48% year-over-year—double the growth of those with lower NRR. 

In short: founders and companies who succeed will be the ones who go back to basics—building indispensable products, running lean operations, and partnering with investors who bring more than just capital to the table. The efficiency paradigm, paired with capital solutions that offer real operational expertise, is the new playbook for increasing company value. It’s a simple but powerful formula: retention-first companies are built to last.