A repeatable reason to win
Five deals in a row won for a reason you can write on one line. Until that line exists there is nothing to diagnose.
Pre-PMF
Deals do not close for the same reason yet.
Founder-led sales before product-market fit: you are still testing who the buyer is, what problem matters and what they will pay. A Diagnosis needs a pattern that repeats, and an experiment is not one.
The transition
No pattern, so nothing to price.
Four customers, four different reasons for buying. One came for the integration, one for the founder, one because the incumbent put its price up, one nobody can quite explain. The pricing page has changed three times this year. Every deal so far was closed by the same person, from a pitch that is a little different each time. That is what finding the model looks like.
A leak needs a system to leak from, and here the system is still being found. There is no cost to price at this stage, only a pattern to find, and a Diagnosis would have nothing stable to read.
Signs you are here
Six signs the model is still being found.
- The founder, and perhaps one other person, does all the selling
- The deals won and lost so far still read as separate stories
- The last proposal was priced on the call, not from a list
- Packaging changes with each prospect's objection
- Which leads are worth a week lives in the founder's head, not on paper
- The CRM, where there is one, holds contacts, not reasons
Most of these true, and you are reading the right page: there is a model to find before there is a leak to price.
By function
Six seats, and the founder sits in all of them.
Before the model repeats, every function is a hat the founder wears for an hour. What each seat will inherit is being decided now, deal by deal, and written nowhere.
What the next stage demands
A pattern that repeats, before anything else.
Leaving this stage is not a revenue number. It is the first thing a commercial model can be built on: a reason deals close that still holds once it is written down.
The founder made transferable
What the founder knows has to become something a second person can run. That is a documentation problem before it is a hiring problem.
A first decision written down
One deliberate choice about who the customer is, recorded, so the next experiment tests it rather than replacing it. It is the first draft of the customer profile a marketing team will one day inherit.
A baseline, before any euro figure
The first quarter that repeats is the first one that can be measured. A cost priced before that is a guess dressed as a finding, so the model gets built before anyone prices what it leaks.
The evidence
What the numbers look like before they mean anything.
Four published figures for companies under $1M ARR, the band this page describes. Each one is wider, younger or thinner than the same figure one band up, which is the point.
- 01
2.7
Median burn multiple under $1M ARR: $2.70 of net burn for every $1 of net new ARR, and 4.5 at the 75th percentile. At this stage the number says how long the runway is, not where the money goes; that question has no record to answer it.
Benchmarkit, 2025 B2B SaaS Performance Metrics Benchmarks, calendar 2024 data, N=130 for this metric
- 02
90%
Median gross revenue retention under $1M ARR, with the publisher's own caveat that the segment "can also appear higher as the maturity of GRR measurements are less defined and may not reflect the actual customer ARR churn until after the first and/or second renewal periods have been experienced". The retention figure in a pre-PMF deck is a date, not a result.
Benchmarkit, 2025 B2B SaaS Performance Metrics Benchmarks, calendar 2024 data, N=225
- 03
3.0 to 9.5
Lifetime value to CAC under $1M ARR, from the 25th to the 75th percentile, with the median at 5.0: the widest spread of any band. A ratio built on a dozen customers moves with the next one, which is why no cost of a leak holds at this stage.
Benchmarkit, 2025 B2B SaaS Performance Metrics Benchmarks, calendar 2024 data, N=101
- 04
13% of growth
Expansion's share of growth ARR at the median under $1M ARR, and 1% at the 25th percentile: nearly every euro of growth is a new logo, and nearly every new logo is the founder's. Leaving the stage means that share can start to rise without the founder on the call.
Benchmarkit, 2025 B2B SaaS Performance Metrics Benchmarks, calendar 2024 data, N=81
The usual entry at this stage
Build, once the deals start to repeat.
Build
€36,000 flat · scope agreed before work begins · comes before measurement
For a company closing deals with nothing a second person could pick up: the model as it stands, on paper, with a name against each part, so the first hire learns a model rather than a person. A price on the leak comes later, from the record Build leaves behind.
Book a strategy callDetails →Not sure it is the right one? Compare all five →
FAQ
Before you assume you need a number.
We have four customers and the price is still moving. Does a Diagnosis make sense for us?
Not yet. A Diagnosis reads two months of your own records, sits with your own people and prices what it finds from your own payroll. Four customers and a moving price give it nothing to measure. Build is the step that fits: the model as it stands, written down, with a name against each part.
How do we know when we have moved past pre-PMF?
When the last five or six deals closed for the same reason, and the reason fits on one slide without the founder in the room to explain it. Once that keeps happening there is a pattern to read, and the next page is early growth.
What does Build write down while the model is still moving?
The decisions made so far: who the customer is, what they pay, why the last deals closed and which leads were declined. Each gets a name against it, so the next experiment tests a written choice instead of replacing an unwritten one.
What does the call cover at this stage?
The last six deals: who bought, why, and whether the reasons are starting to match. If they are, you hear what Build would write down first. If they are not, you hear what to watch for, and that is the whole deliverable.
Get started
One call says whether there is a pattern.
Thirty minutes over the last six deals: who bought, why, and whether the reasons are starting to match. If they are not, the call ends there, and you know what to watch for.