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role guide

KPIs Every CEO Must Track

CEOs use a focused set of company-level KPIs to assess business health, allocate capital, and communicate performance to investors and boards.

Chief Executive Officer
why it matters

Why these metrics matter

The CEO needs a small number of high-signal metrics that tell the full story of business health without requiring deep functional expertise in each domain. ARR growth rate is the primary top-line measure for SaaS CEOs. NRR indicates whether the existing customer base is growing or eroding independent of new sales. Gross margin reflects the structural quality of the business model. Burn rate and runway determine the fundraising timeline and survival horizon. Pipeline coverage provides a 90-day leading indicator of revenue confidence. The CEO also uses LTV:CAC ratio and churn rate to assess the sustainability of growth investment. A business growing ARR at 50% with a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio, 105% NRR, and 18 months of runway is in a fundamentally different position than one growing at 40% with a 1.5:1 LTV:CAC ratio, 90% NRR, and 6 months of runway. The CEO must be able to read these signals together to assess overall business health and make the capital allocation decisions (invest more aggressively in growth, reduce burn, or raise capital) that determine strategic direction. Board-level reporting and investor communications depend on the CEO's ability to present these metrics clearly and to explain the causal story behind their movement.

diagnostic

Questions you should be able to answer

If you cannot answer these, you are missing critical visibility into your function.

  • Is our ARR growing at a rate that positions us competitively in our market, and what is driving changes?
  • What is our NRR and does it demonstrate that existing customers are genuinely expanding with us?
  • Are our unit economics (LTV:CAC, payback period) sustainable and improving as we scale?
  • What is our current runway, and does it give us sufficient time to reach the next value creation milestone?
  • Is pipeline coverage sufficient to give us confidence in hitting next quarter's ARR target?
  • What does our churn rate and churn distribution tell us about product-market fit in our core segments?
metric library

Your core KPIs

Every metric includes definition, formula, platforms, causal drivers, and Q&A.

Annual Recurring Revenue
ARR
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is the annualized value of all active subscription contracts, normalized to a one-year period.
Net Revenue Retention
NRR
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including expansion revenue from upsells and cross-sells, minus contraction and churn.
Gross Margin
GM%
Gross Margin measures the percentage of revenue remaining after subtracting the direct cost of delivering the product or service (Cost of Goods Sold).
Burn Rate
Burn Rate measures the rate at which a company is spending its cash reserves, typically expressed as a monthly net cash outflow.
Customer Acquisition Cost
CAC
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) measures the total sales and marketing expenditure required to acquire one new paying customer over a given period.
Customer Lifetime Value
LTV
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) estimates the total net revenue a business expects to generate from a single customer relationship over its entire duration.
LTV:CAC Ratio
LTV:CAC
The LTV:CAC Ratio compares the expected lifetime value of a customer against the cost to acquire that customer, providing a single efficiency score for the growth model.
Churn Rate
Churn Rate measures the percentage of customers or revenue lost in a given period due to cancellations, non-renewals, or downgrades.
Pipeline Coverage Ratio
Pipeline Coverage Ratio measures the total value of qualified pipeline at a given point in time relative to the sales quota for the period.
Operating Margin
Operating Margin measures the percentage of revenue remaining after subtracting all operating expenses including COGS, sales and marketing, R&D, and G&A, but before interest and taxes (EBIT).
Free Cash Flow
FCF
Free Cash Flow (FCF) measures the cash a company generates from operations after deducting capital expenditures required to maintain or expand its asset base.
Monthly Recurring Revenue
MRR
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the total predictable recurring revenue a SaaS business expects to receive each month from all active subscriptions.
causal intelligence

How causal analysis changes the game

For CEOs: CEOs who build a causal mental model of how product quality drives retention, which drives NRR, which determines the burn multiple required to hit growth targets, can make strategic decisions with greater confidence and communicate a more compelling narrative to investors.
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Explore other role guides

Each guide covers the full set of KPIs for that function with role-specific context.

CMO CFO CTO COO CPO VP Marketing VP Sales VP Engineering VP Operations VP Product Director of Marketing Director of Analytics Director of Sales Director of Engineering Director of Customer Success CRO Head of Growth Director of RevOps VP Customer Success Director of Operations VP Finance
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Know why every metric is moving

askotter gives CEOs causal visibility into every metric on this list, so you can act on root causes, not symptoms.

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