What does “good” performance look like in 2025?
It’s a simple question. Yet in this moment, the answer is anything but straightforward.
Over the past two years, we’ve seen AI reshape the software landscape, go-to-market strategies evolve in real time, and capital become more selective and expensive. Founders are forced to operate with precision, build with conviction, and scale with far more discipline than in prior cycles. At the same time, many of the traditional benchmarks we’ve used to define performance (think: CAC payback, burn multiple, NDR) are shifting under the weight of these changes.
That’s why we created Beyond Benchmarks. In partnership with Benchmarkit, we collected data from 560+ B2B SaaS companies. Our latest report offers a new lens on how performance is being redefined in the AI era, while also surfacing the real behaviors and mindsets that distinguish today’s durable, high-performing startups from the rest.
AI-Native Companies Are on a Different Curve
We’ve entered the age of the AI-native startup. These are companies that don’t just layer in AI. They’re built around it from day one focused on core AI products with data loops and also infusing AI into their operations for efficiency.
The results are stark.
According to the data, average AI-native companies are growing nearly 4x faster than traditional SaaS peers, posting 100% median ARR growth compared to 23%. They also report higher customer retention and lower cost structures. Anecdotally, we see the AI-native startups raising Series A’s are growing $0 to $3-4MM in the first year of monetizing.
AI-native startups are building systems that save time, reduce costs, and scale more efficiently, reengineering workflows, not just layering on features. It’s not a “cool tools” moment. It’s a platform shift, and the fastest-growing startups are using AI to fundamentally rethink how their product creates value and how their business runs.
Retention Is Eating Acquisition
For years, SaaS playbooks were centered on aggressive top-of-funnel growth. However, the data tells a new story: by the time companies hit $100M in ARR, 67% of their growth is coming from expansion, not net-new customers.
That shift is showing up much earlier, too. High-performing startups are investing in customer success, product-led growth loops, and long-term value creation much earlier in their lifecycle.
This doesn't mean acquisition is dead, but it does mean that expansion and the systems that support upsell are where great companies are winning today.
The Metrics That Matter Are Simpler Than You Think
With so much change underway, it’s easy for founders to over-index on the latest metric or benchmark. However, when we looked at the top-performing SaaS companies in our dataset, we found that just four metrics consistently correlated with healthy, durable growth:
- ARR Growth
- CAC Payback
- Net Dollar Retention (NDR)
- Burn Multiple
We call them The Emergence Core Four. If you’re a founder scaling in this market, these are the metrics to focus on. Get them right, and everything else tends to fall into place.
GenAI in GTM Is Still Finding Its Footing
While AI-native product strategies are delivering real results, our data shows that AI in go-to-market (GTM) motions is still early and often underwhelming. For example, sales teams report 59% of companies are using GenAI in some form, but the average satisfaction score is just 59 out of 100.
The issue isn’t the tech: it’s the workflow. Plugging AI into a broken sales process won’t fix it. The best GTM teams aren’t just buying tools; they’re redesigning how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how reps spend their time.
Efficiency Isn’t Just a Survival Tactic
The shift toward capital efficiency isn’t new but what’s notable is how top-performing companies are treating it. They’re not just cutting costs or chasing burn targets to stay alive. They’re building in efficiency as a core product and operating philosophy, designing leaner teams, clearer customer journeys, and more thoughtful growth models. This is evident in the data growth stage companies: median burn multiples are less than 1x and ARR per FTE is over $300K, an increase of ~20% from the previous year’s data.
A New Performance Paradigm
The takeaway from Beyond Benchmarks is not that SaaS is broken or that old metrics don’t matter. It’s that we’re operating in a new paradigm where AI-native architecture, product-led growth, and strategic efficiency are setting the pace.
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