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AARRR Pirate Metrics Example: B2B SaaS Product

A self-serve SaaS product whose funnel numbers reveal that the growth problem is not where the team thought.

This team believed they had an acquisition problem — traffic felt low, and the instinct was to spend on ads. Writing one honest number per stage showed something different: acquisition was fine, and activation was losing four of every five signups.

That is the entire value of the exercise. Five numbers, one afternoon, and the quarter's roadmap changed from 'more traffic' to 'fix the first ten minutes'.

Open this canvas in the editor
1

Acquisition

  • 9,400 visits/month: 61% organic search, 22% direct, 17% referral links
  • Visit → signup: 4.1% (386 signups/month)
  • Blended CAC £38; organic-heavy mix keeps it low
  • Decision: no new paid spend until activation is fixed
2

Activation

  • Aha moment defined: first dashboard connected to live data
  • Signup → activated: 18% (the leak)
  • Median time to first value: 2.3 days — mostly waiting on a data connection
  • Biggest drop: the API-key step, abandoned by 57% of signups
  • Fix chosen: sample-data mode so value arrives before any setup
3

Retention

  • Week-4 retention of activated users: 34%, and the curve flattens
  • Retained users all share one behaviour: invited a teammate in week 1
  • Churned users' top exit point: second session, empty dashboard
4

Revenue

  • Active → paid: 9% ; ARPU £49/month
  • LTV £780 vs CAC £38 — economics close comfortably
  • Upgrade trigger: hitting the 3-dashboard free limit
  • CAC payback: under 1 month
5

Referral

  • 21% of signups answer 'a colleague' on the source survey
  • No in-product share moment exists yet — all word of mouth
  • Planned: 'share this dashboard' link, measured by invite → signup
  • Target viral coefficient 0.3 — helpful, not a growth engine

What this canvas reveals

  • The leak is activation: 82% of signups never reach first value, so every acquisition pound is worth 18p downstream.
  • Retention among activated users is genuinely strong (the curve flattens at 34%) — evidence the product works once experienced, which makes fixing activation worth it.
  • Referral was measured for the first time and turned out to drive a fifth of signups unprompted — an argument for adding a share moment, not a coupon programme.

Block by block

1Acquisition

  • 9,400 visits/month: 61% organic search, 22% direct, 17% referral links
  • Visit → signup: 4.1% (386 signups/month)
  • Blended CAC £38; organic-heavy mix keeps it low
  • Decision: no new paid spend until activation is fixed

2Activation

  • Aha moment defined: first dashboard connected to live data
  • Signup → activated: 18% (the leak)
  • Median time to first value: 2.3 days — mostly waiting on a data connection
  • Biggest drop: the API-key step, abandoned by 57% of signups
  • Fix chosen: sample-data mode so value arrives before any setup

3Retention

  • Week-4 retention of activated users: 34%, and the curve flattens
  • Retained users all share one behaviour: invited a teammate in week 1
  • Churned users' top exit point: second session, empty dashboard

4Revenue

  • Active → paid: 9% ; ARPU £49/month
  • LTV £780 vs CAC £38 — economics close comfortably
  • Upgrade trigger: hitting the 3-dashboard free limit
  • CAC payback: under 1 month

5Referral

  • 21% of signups answer 'a colleague' on the source survey
  • No in-product share moment exists yet — all word of mouth
  • Planned: 'share this dashboard' link, measured by invite → signup
  • Target viral coefficient 0.3 — helpful, not a growth engine