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Growth & Metrics

AARRR Pirate Metrics

AARRR breaks the customer lifecycle into five measurable stages: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue and Referral, each with its own key metrics.

When to Use This Framework

Measuring product growth
Identifying growth bottlenecks
Planning growth initiatives
Calculating LTV and CAC

How to Apply This Framework

  1. 1

    Define Acquisition metrics (channels, CAC)

  2. 2

    Measure Activation rate (first value moment)

  3. 3

    Track Retention (D1, D7, D30 cohorts)

  4. 4

    Calculate Revenue per user and LTV

  5. 5

    Monitor Referral coefficient

  6. 6

    Optimize top bottleneck

Real-World Examples

SaaS companies tracking activation rates

Mobile games optimizing D1/D7 retention

Stripe measuring activation velocity

Strengths

  • Simple mental model
  • Covers full customer lifecycle
  • Actionable metrics at each stage

Limitations

  • Oversimplifies growth complexity
  • Can miss important nuances per segment
  • Referral often overlooked

Related Frameworks

Consider combining this framework with:

Product-Market Fit MatrixRevenue Waterfall AnalysisValue Hypothesis vs Growth Hypothesis

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