Awesome SaaS Growth

A curated list of the best resources about SaaS growth strategy, metrics, and fundraising for founders, CEOs, VP of Growth, and investors building or analyzing software businesses.

Inspired by awesome lists. Maintained by Rework.

The SaaS business model has produced more wealth creation than almost any other structure in the history of business. But it's also produced more confusion about what metrics matter and when. This list cuts through the noise - from the napkin math that helps you understand if your unit economics are healthy, to the playbooks for scaling past each revenue milestone.

Contents

• Articles
• Books
• Videos & Talks
• Tools & Software
• Templates & Frameworks
• Case Studies & Real-World Examples
• Communities & Newsletters
• Rework Resources

Articles

These resources connect recurring revenue growth to the retention, acquisition efficiency, pricing, and stage benchmarks that determine durability.

• The SaaS Metrics That Actually Matter in 2026 - Benchmarks for MRR, ARR, NRR, churn, CAC payback, and Rule of 40 from pre-seed to Series B.
• The SaaS Napkin: Unit Economics at Every Stage by Christoph Janz at Point Nine Capital - The famous framework for understanding what healthy SaaS unit economics look like at each ARR milestone.
• Product-Led Growth: The Definitive Guide for 2026 - OpenView's comprehensive breakdown of PLG, with case studies from Slack, Dropbox, Calendly, and Figma.
• Usage-Based Pricing: The Next Wave of SaaS Monetization - OpenView's research on why the best SaaS companies are moving away from flat-rate per-seat pricing.
• The SaaS Fundraising Checklist: What Investors Look For - Sequoia Capital's framework for what metrics and narratives resonate at each stage of SaaS fundraising.

Books

• From Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin - The playbook for creating predictable revenue through outbound sales and a repeatable go-to-market machine.
• Founding Sales by Pete Kazanjy - The founder's guide to building a sales function from scratch, before you have the resources to hire a VP of Sales.
• The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling - A founder-focused guide to building profitable, bootstrapped SaaS businesses without VC pressure.
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore - The classic framework for technology adoption curves and how to cross from early adopters to mainstream market.
• Obviously Awesome by April Dunford - How to position your SaaS product so customers immediately understand why it's the right choice for them.

Videos & Talks

• How to Build a $100M SaaS Company - SaaStr Annual - SaaStr's annual conference talks from founders who've crossed $100M ARR, organized by stage and function.
• Y Combinator: SaaS Startup School Lectures - YC's lecture series on SaaS, including sessions on pricing, metrics, sales, and fundraising from top practitioners.
• David Sacks on SaaS Metrics and Unit Economics - Sacks breaks down the metrics that matter at each stage and how to present them to investors.
• Sequoia Capital: How to Present to Venture Capitalists - What VCs actually look for in a SaaS pitch deck, with specific guidance on metrics and narrative structure.
• PLG vs. Sales-Led: How to Know Which Motion Fits Your Product by OpenView - A framework for choosing between product-led and sales-led growth based on product complexity, buyer, and market.

Tools & Software

The most useful SaaS stack connects billing events and product behavior to a shared view of customers, revenue, and expansion.

• Baremetrics - MRR and churn analytics for Stripe businesses, with benchmarking against other SaaS companies in their Open Benchmarks.
• ChartMogul - Subscription analytics and revenue recognition platform that works across Stripe, Braintree, and Recurly.
• ProfitWell - Free SaaS metrics dashboard with paid add-ons for churn reduction and price optimization.
• Amplitude - Product analytics platform used by PLG SaaS companies to track activation, feature adoption, and expansion signals.
• Stripe - The default payments infrastructure for SaaS companies at every stage, with built-in billing and subscription management.
• Recurly - Subscription management platform with sophisticated billing logic for companies with complex pricing models.
• HubSpot CRM - The most widely used CRM for sales-led SaaS companies from seed through Series B, with strong free tier.

Templates & Frameworks

Use these templates to test unit economics, model recurring revenue movement, and forecast whether growth spending can scale responsibly.

• SaaS Financial Model Template by Christoph Janz - Point Nine Capital's SaaS financial model, widely used as a starting point for early-stage planning.
• B2B SaaS Growth Model: Building Predictable Revenue - Our framework for understanding the key levers in a B2B SaaS business, from acquisition through expansion.

Case Studies & Real-World Examples

The common mechanism in these companies is product value that spreads through sharing, team adoption, usage, or freemium expansion.

• Slack - Grew from $0 to a $7 billion acquisition offer from Salesforce in roughly seven years, almost entirely through product-led growth. Slack's "aha moment" engineering - teams experience the product's value before ever speaking to a salesperson - became the textbook PLG case study. Its free tier generated enterprise leads faster than any sales team could have prospected, and NRR consistently exceeded 130% at scale. Source

Communities & Newsletters

• Lenny's Newsletter - The most-read product and growth newsletter, with data-driven breakdowns of what's actually working in PLG and SaaS.
• Mostly Metrics by CJ Gustafson - A CFO-focused newsletter on SaaS financial metrics, benchmarks, and what the numbers actually mean for decision-making.

Rework Resources

Explore more content on the Rework blog:

• ARR Forecasting: How to Project Annual Recurring Revenue - A practical guide to building ARR forecasts that investors trust and operators can actually use.

Contributing

Know a great resource that belongs on this list? Let us know.

This list is maintained by the Rework team. Resources span pre-revenue through $100M+ ARR and cover both PLG and sales-led growth motions.