Track eight numbers every month for every portfolio company: ARR growth, net and gross revenue retention, gross margin, CAC payback, Rule of 40, pipeline coverage and forecast accuracy. Rate each one weak, acceptable or strong against published benchmarks, and escalate the weak ones.
One portco, one page
Growth, NRR, GRR, gross margin, CAC payback, Rule of 40, pipeline coverage, forecast accuracy.
Weak is below the bottom quartile, strong is above the top quartile, acceptable is in between.
One page per portco, same metrics and definitions every time. Weak ratings trigger a follow-up.
Thresholds below use the published bottom and top quartiles for private SaaS companies. Quartiles are the cleanest way to define weak and strong: weak means a company sits in the bottom quarter of its peers, strong means the top quarter.
| Metric | What it tells you | Weak | Acceptable | Strong | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net revenue retention (NRR) | Revenue kept and expanded from existing customers | Under 92% | 92–110% | Over 110% | Aleph x Benchmarkit, FY2025, n=230. Median 102%. 120%+ is best-in-class. |
| Gross revenue retention (GRR) | Revenue kept before any expansion | Under 76% | 76–91% | Over 91% | Aleph x Benchmarkit, FY2025, n=226. Median 84%, down from 88% a year earlier. |
| CAC payback | Months of gross profit to earn back acquisition cost | Over 24 months | 12–24 months | Under 12 months | Benchmarkit 2025 via BurnRateIQ: median 18, interquartile range 12–24. Varies by ARR band, see below. |
| Gross margin | Cost to deliver the product | Under 70% | 70–80% | Over 80% | High Alpha 2025: medians 74–80% by band; lower quartile 60–71%, upper 80–86%. Rounded. |
| Rule of 40 | Growth plus free cash flow or EBITDA margin | Under 10 | 10–40 | 40 or more | Benchmarkit 2026 via Acquire: median 25, top quartile 43. High Alpha: lower quartiles −3 to 15 above $1M ARR. Rounded. |
| ARR growth (YoY) | Pace of new, net revenue | Rated against the portco’s ARR band. See the band table below. | High Alpha 2025, Q2 2025 vs Q2 2024. | ||
| Pipeline coverage | Open pipeline vs target at the start of the period | Below 1 ÷ win rate | At 1 ÷ win rate | Above it, quality-weighted | JayOh working threshold. Win rates by deal size in the table further down. |
| Forecast accuracy | Forecast at period start vs closed-won | Under 70% | 75–85% | 85%+ | Outreach stage table. Vendor-published, not independently verified. |
Thresholds for gross margin, Rule of 40 and CAC payback are JayOh roundings of the published quartiles, not figures any source states as “weak” or “strong”. Retention figures cover all private SaaS in each sample. Details and caveats are in the sources at the bottom.
A $5M company and a $50M company should not be held to the same growth or payback number. High Alpha’s 2025 report splits the medians by ARR. Weak is below the lower quartile, strong is above the upper quartile.
| ARR band | ARR growth: weak / median / strong | NRR: weak / median / strong | GRR median | CAC payback median | Rule of 40 median | Gross margin median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $1–5M | <24% / 50% / >100% | <91% / 104% / >110% | 92% | 8 mo | 33 | 77% |
| $5–20M | <15% / 31% / >72% | <95% / 103% / >115% | 88% | 14 mo | 20 | 80% |
| $20–50M | <16% / 30% / >41% | <98% / 103% / >110% | 90% | 20 mo | 24 | 78% |
| Over $50M | <10% / 16% / >29% | <97% / 101% / >108% | 88% | 17 mo | 30 | 79% |
Source: High Alpha, 2025 SaaS Benchmarks Report (800+ respondents; sample per metric not stated). Companies under $1M ARR are left out. Some cells were read from a partial copy of the report, so check the figure against the original before putting it in an LP document.
Coverage you need equals 1 divided by your win rate. Win rates fall as deals get bigger, so required coverage climbs.
| Average deal size | Typical win rate | Coverage needed |
|---|---|---|
| Under $10K | About 31% | About 3.2x |
| $10K–$50K | About 24% | About 4.2x |
| $50K–$100K | About 18% | About 5.6x |
| Over $100K | About 15% | About 6.7x |
Win rates: Optifai, vendor-published and not independently verified. Coverage is JayOh’s arithmetic. More on this in good CAC payback, pipeline coverage and win rate.
Patriot Growth Capital, a lower-middle-market PE firm, describes a cadence of a weekly cash flash, a monthly P&L and KPI dashboard within 15 business days of close, a quarterly board review and an annual valuation and budget. It is one firm’s practice, not a benchmark, but it is a workable frame. Here is how the GTM metrics fit into it.
Definitions have to match across companies before the ratings compare. See how to standardize GTM reporting across portfolio companies.
Patriot Growth Capital lists these early-warning triggers. They are one firm’s thresholds, not industry statistics.
JayOh working triggers, using the bottom-quartile lines in the table above.
An operating partner with ten portfolio companies cannot read ten dashboards. The format that works is one page per company, the same on every page.
To score the whole portfolio on a common scale first, see how PE firms should measure GTM maturity.
JayOh builds the monthly reporting layer for operating partners: the same metrics, the same definitions and one page per portfolio company. For Samsung Next, JayOh standardized RevOps across five portfolio companies and built the GTM infrastructure underneath, lifting marketing ROI 25% and sales-process efficiency 35%.
Get a monthly GTM scorecard for your portfolioEight, every month: ARR growth, net revenue retention, gross revenue retention, gross margin, CAC payback, Rule of 40, pipeline coverage and forecast accuracy. Rate each weak, acceptable or strong against published benchmarks and escalate the weak ones.
In Aleph and Benchmarkit's FY2025 data, the median is 102%, the bottom quartile is 92% and the top quartile is 110%. Under 92% is weak, 92 to 110% is acceptable and above 110% is strong.
The median is 84%, down from 88% a year earlier, with a bottom quartile of 76% and a top quartile of 91%. Under 76% is weak and above 91% is strong.
Benchmarkit's 2025 data shows a median of 18 months with an interquartile range of 12 to 24 months. Under 12 is strong and over 24 is weak, but the median rises from about 8 months at $1 to 5M ARR to about 20 months at $20 to 50M.
One divided by its win rate. At a 31% win rate that is about 3.2x, and at a 15% win rate on large deals it is about 6.7x. Win rates here are vendor-published and unverified.
Monthly for the full set, weekly for pipeline coverage, and quarterly to re-rate each company against its ARR band. One PE firm describes a monthly KPI dashboard within 15 business days of close.
No. The figures come from private SaaS company samples. Services, marketplace and hardware businesses need their own bands, but the weak, acceptable and strong method still applies.
JayOh is a GTM systems engineering firm and HubSpot Platinum Partner, an Anthropic partner, working as an embedded growth pod since 2016. We build the scorecard, pull the numbers from each portco’s CRM and billing data, and fix the weak ones.
Get a monthly GTM scorecard for your portfolioRelated reading: GTM for operating partners, GTM in private equity, GTM KPIs for CROs, benchmarks database.
We engineer growth systems. JayOh builds the RevOps architecture, GTM execution and data infrastructure that turn messy revenue operations into predictable pipeline for B2B SaaS and PE-backed teams.
