ARR Autopsy

This episode breaks down how a $4.2M ARR B2B SaaS company moved net revenue retention from 98% to 121% in two quarters without adding a single new logo — the biggest takeaway being that fixing retention before layering on expansion levers can rebuild growth without touching acquisition. Derek and Elena dissect the exact levers used, the operational strain the fix created, and how to tell if a stro...

Derek opens with the cold-open shock stat: NRR cratered to 84% right after a usage-based pricing migration before rebounding higher six months later. Elena frames the episode's central tension and the two hosts stake out their roles — Derek reconstructing the story, Elena auditing the numbers — against the backdrop of Gartner's 40%-by-2030 usage/outcome pricing shift. In this episode, we cover Hoo...

This week's Wednesday episode (Week 26, 2026) features a founder who turned a CFO audit crisis into an 88% renewal rate — up from 71% — across B2B SaaS enterprise accounts, using three concrete retention moves built in sixty days. Topics covered in this episode: - Why token prices falling 80% still produced a 320% surge in enterprise AI bills, driven by agentic workflows multiplying per-interactio...

Three founders — Mara at $2.1M ARR, Dev at $4.8M ARR, and Jamie at $1.4M ARR — each watched enterprise deals go dark before a single positioning change closed all of them. This is the Wednesday episode for Week 25 of 2026, and it covers the consolidation data that B2B SaaS operators can no longer ignore: 68% of tech leaders have active vendor reduction plans, and enterprise stacks have already shr...

This week's guest burned through a hard-capped AI tool budget line and watched a mid-market deal collapse in real time. The single biggest takeaway: how your product is categorized in a buyer's spend management tool now determines whether you get to renewal, not just whether you close. - Why Uber capping engineers at $1,500 per tool per month reshaped the enterprise procurement conversation for B2...

This week's guest reached $1.4M ARR with two human SDRs before running a controlled 90-day AI versus human outbound test on identical lists — and the results reframed the entire cost argument once show rates entered the equation. This is the Wednesday episode for Week 23 of 2026. - Why AI-booked meetings show at 40-60% versus 70-85% for human-booked meetings, and how that single gap inverts the co...

This Week 22 Wednesday episode of ARR Autopsy examines how an $800K ARR B2B SaaS company reduced monthly churn by two points across 90 days, generating more ARR growth than its entire paid acquisition budget for the year. Topics covered in this episode: - How dunning automation pushed payment recovery from 28% to 71%, the lowest-risk first move in any churn reduction sequence - Why 60-70% of churn...

This week's Wednesday episode (Week 21, 2026) features a B2B SaaS founder who entered the show at $600K ARR with a 74-day sales cycle, an 18-month CAC payback period, and no formal activation tracking — and left with a repeatable PLG motion that pushed NRR past 100% in six months. - Why three consecutive fix attempts — a pricing cut to $12K ACV, an 800-sequence outbound blitz, and a reseller partn...

A $280K ARR, three-person B2B SaaS team ran on gut-feel pricing for fourteen months while trial-to-paid conversion sat at 3.1% — less than half the ChartMogul 2026 median of 8.9% — until a first-ever MRR dip in month fifteen forced a systematic approach to pricing experimentation. This is the Wednesday episode for Week 20 of 2026. - How a tier restructure moved one feature down one level and lifte...

This week's Thursday episode (Week 19, 2026) reconstructs the pre-breakthrough dashboard of an AI-native B2B SaaS company, opening with the data point that defines the gap: a median team of four hitting $1M ARR versus fourteen for traditional SaaS, translating to $238K versus $71K in revenue per employee. Derek Simmons and Elena Reyes cover four specific areas with hard numbers attached: how AI-na...