Key Takeaways
- Beyond Downloads: Venture capitalists have shifted focus from vanity metrics like download counts to unit economics and engagement indicators. In 2024, only 6% of top VC firm deals went to consumer or mobile-first startups, making robust analytics dashboards essential for standing out in a highly selective funding environment.
- The Magic Ratios: Investors evaluate mobile apps using critical metrics including LTV:CAC ratio (targeting 3:1 or higher), DAU/MAU stickiness (20% considered good, 50%+ exceptional for social apps), and retention curves that demonstrate product-market fit. Strong unit economics can justify valuations and accelerate funding timelines.
- Dashboard as Differentiator: Building investor-ready analytics dashboards using platforms like Mixpanel, Amplitude, or Firebase transforms raw data into compelling growth narratives. Companies with systematic metric tracking have seen funding success rates triple compared to those relying on manual calculations.
In the competitive landscape of mobile app startups, securing venture capital has never been more challenging. The mobile app sector saw modest recovery in 2024, with global funding rising by 25% compared to the lows of 2023. However, deal volume dropped to an eight-year low, highlighting a more cautious and selective approach from investors. Capital is now concentrated in fewer companies with stronger fundamentals, and VCs are prioritizing proven winners over speculative early-stage plays.
This shift means that downloads alone won’t impress investors anymore. Consider that consumers worldwide download hundreds of billions of apps each year—257 billion in 2023 alone—yet many of those downloads never translate into active usage. In fact, the average mobile app loses about 77% of its daily active users within just three days of install, and roughly 90% within the first month. These sobering statistics explain why venture capitalists have evolved their evaluation criteria far beyond simple download counts.
Today’s mobile app investors demand early traction supported by real metrics. Strong retention curves, daily active users, and conversion rates are essential to unlock seed and Series A funding. For founders seeking investment, the question isn’t just whether your app works—it’s whether you can prove, with data, that it’s built for sustainable growth. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the essential metrics that VCs scrutinize, how to build analytics dashboards that tell a compelling growth story, and strategies for positioning your mobile app as an attractive investment opportunity.
Understanding the Current VC Landscape for Mobile Apps
The venture capital ecosystem for mobile applications has undergone a fundamental transformation. In 2024, U.S. VC firms closed 14,320 deals worth $215.4 billion, with the U.S. accounting for 57% of total worldwide deal value according to the NVCA 2025 Yearbook. However, only 6% of top VC firm deals in 2024 went to consumer or mobile-first startups—half the share from just two years prior. Firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures have notably shifted focus toward AI and B2B SaaS, leaving mobile app founders to compete for a smaller slice of the investment pie.
This environment creates both challenges and opportunities. Series B to D rounds jumped 83% year-over-year in 2024, with several deals exceeding $100 million. This trend reflects investor preference for apps that already show scale, monetization, and user loyalty. For early-stage companies, the bar has risen significantly. For every five seed-funded app startups, only one progresses to Series A. Founders must now show more than downloads—they need to prove retention, LTV, and unit economics early on to avoid being left behind.
Understanding what VCs look for starts with recognizing their investment thesis. Investors assess the Total Addressable Market (TAM) and its growth potential. Timing is critical: they want to know why now is the right moment for your app. They look for proprietary technology, patents, or unique insights. Most importantly, they scrutinize metrics like CAC (customer acquisition cost), LTV (lifetime value), churn, and margins. Even at early stages, a clear path to sustainable unit economics builds investor confidence.
The Core Metrics VCs Evaluate: Unit Economics Deep Dive
Unit economics form the foundation of any serious VC evaluation. These metrics answer the fundamental question: Is your business model sustainable at scale? Let’s examine each critical metric and understand why it matters to investors.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Customer Lifetime Value estimates the total revenue a user will generate over their entire relationship with your app. For a mobile game where the average player makes $5 of in-app purchases per month and stays active for six months, the average LTV per user would be $30. In a subscription app charging $10 per month with the average subscriber staying for one year, LTV is $120.
LTV is powerful because it links engagement and monetization over time. It reflects not only how much users spend but also how long they stay—combining revenue and retention into one forward-looking indicator. The ratio of LTV to customer acquisition cost is perhaps the most significant measure investors benchmark. A healthy ratio signals that your sales and marketing have positive ROI and that your business can scale efficiently.
To calculate LTV for subscription apps, use this formula: Average MRR × (1 ÷ Monthly Churn Rate) × Gross Margin. For e-commerce apps, the formula adjusts to: Average Order Value × Number of Repeat Sales × Average Retention Time × Gross Margin. The key is ensuring your LTV calculation accounts for gross margin, churn rate sensitivity, and any expansion revenue from upsells or cross-sells.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer Acquisition Cost represents how much you spend to acquire one paying customer. This isn’t just the pay-per-download rate for your advertisers—it should be the entire cost of a marketing campaign divided by the number of paying users that result. Include all marketing and sales expenses: ad spend, content creation, sales team salaries, software tools, and overhead costs.
Investors evaluate your CAC Payback Period, with top-quartile companies achieving this in 5-7 months. They also examine CAC by channel to understand which acquisition strategies deliver the best returns. A declining CAC trend over time signals that you’re becoming more efficient at reaching your target audience and converting them into paying customers.
The LTV:CAC Ratio—Your Most Critical Metric
The LTV:CAC ratio is perhaps the most important metric for evaluating mobile app businesses. It answers the question: Are your current customer acquisition strategies sustainable? A ratio of 1:1 means you lose money the more you sell. A good benchmark is 3:1 or better. Generally, 4:1 or higher indicates a great business model. If your ratio is 5:1 or higher, you could actually be growing faster and are likely under-investing in marketing.
For early-stage SaaS and subscription apps, top-quartile companies target an LTV:CAC ratio of 4:1 to demonstrate efficiency to investors. For instance, $3,000 customer lifetime value and $750 CAC achieves this metric and signals sustainable unit economics. If your ratio is below 3:1, focus on either increasing LTV through better retention and upsells, or reducing CAC through more efficient marketing channels.
Companies with an LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1 or higher tend to perform better in the market and gain stronger investor trust. One B2B SaaS platform struggling with an LTV of $3,600 and a CAC of $2,000 (resulting in a 1.8:1 ratio) implemented data-driven strategies—targeted customer segmentation, tiered pricing models, and refined acquisition channels. Their LTV jumped to $5,670, while CAC dropped to $1,800, pushing their ratio to a healthy 3.15:1.
User Engagement Metrics: Proving Product-Market Fit
Beyond unit economics, VCs scrutinize engagement metrics to assess whether your app has achieved product-market fit. These indicators reveal whether users find genuine, ongoing value in your product—or if they’re downloading once and disappearing.
Daily and Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU)
While downloads measure how many people have your app, active user metrics track how many are actually using it regularly. Daily Active Users (DAU) represents the number of unique users who open your app in a given day, while Monthly Active Users (MAU) tracks unique users within a month. These metrics show the size of your engaged user base over different time spans.
Growth in MAU indicates you’re expanding your user base, but growth in DAU shows you’re building habitual usage—users are coming back consistently. This is especially critical for apps relying on ad revenue or frequent transactions: more daily active users typically lead to more ad impressions or purchase opportunities.
The Stickiness Ratio: DAU/MAU
Equally important is the ratio of DAU to MAU, often called the app’s ‘stickiness.’ This metric tells you the proportion of monthly users who engage daily. A DAU/MAU of 0.5 means the average user is using the app 15 out of 30 days in a month—roughly every other day. A higher stickiness ratio indicates that users find your app important in their daily lives.
Industry benchmarks for stickiness vary significantly by category. E-commerce apps average around 10% DAU/MAU, meaning only 1 in 10 users returns daily. Fintech and finance apps typically achieve 22% based on industry data. Gaming and social apps can range between 20% and 50%, with Facebook historically maintaining above 50% DAU/MAU. A DAU/MAU ratio above 20% is generally considered engaging, while top-performing social media platforms often exceed 50%.
For SaaS products, the average DAU/MAU is approximately 13%. B2B SaaS products targeting an acceptable benchmark (ignoring weekends and holidays) should aim for approximately 40%, meaning the average user is active eight out of twenty workdays in a month. Understanding these benchmarks helps you contextualize your app’s performance for investors.
Session Duration and Frequency
Session duration measures the average time users spend in your app per session, while session frequency tracks how often users open the app. These metrics indicate how compelling your app experience is on a per-use basis. Longer average session duration generally means users find your content or functionality engaging enough to stay longer.
Different app categories have different healthy session patterns. A news or social media app might have short but very frequent sessions—people checking in for a minute or two, 10+ times a day. A mobile game might aim for longer sessions (20 minutes) but only once or twice daily. An e-commerce app might see brief but highly goal-oriented sessions—browse and buy within a few minutes.
Industry benchmarks suggest key targets: DAU/MAU ratio above 20%, 30-day retention between 27-43%, and average session length of 5+ minutes depending on category. The key is comparing against your own goals and past performance, then demonstrating improvement over time to investors.
Retention Metrics: The True Test of Product Value
User retention rate is often considered the most critical metric for long-term app success. It measures the percentage of users who continue using your app over time, answering the question: How many people are still using the app days, weeks, or months after they downloaded it?
Understanding Retention Benchmarks
Retention is typically tracked at intervals like Day 1, Day 7, Day 30, and beyond. If 100 people install your app and 30 are still active a month later, your 30-day retention rate is 30%. The industry reality is sobering: on average, apps lose about 90% of new users within the first month. Only approximately 5% of users stick around by the three-month mark on average.
Industry averages show only about 20-30% Day 1 retention, meaning 70-80% of users don’t return the next day. By Day 30, average retention might be in the 5-10% range. A ‘good’ retention rate is one that’s higher than these averages and ideally stabilizes over time. If you retain 40% of users by Day 7 and 20% by Day 30, that’s relatively strong. Top-performing apps in some categories manage to retain 30%+ of users by Day 30.
What matters more than an exact number is the trend: you want to see retention flatten out rather than continually dropping—that indicates you’ve found a core audience that loves the app. Investors are particularly interested in cohort retention: are users acquired this month retaining better than those acquired last month? Improvements indicate that your product updates and onboarding are working.
Cohort Analysis: The VC’s Favorite Tool
Cohort analysis allows you to examine the behavior and performance of groups of users related by common attributes—typically the date they first installed your app. This methodology is essential for understanding how customer behavior evolves over time and for making data-backed decisions about product development and marketing.
VCs love cohort analysis because it answers critical questions: Which features do your most loyal users engage with first? How do different sign-up channels affect long-term retention? What is your most accurate LTV/CAC estimate? Retention patterns like improving cohort curves play a big role in proving product-market fit to investors.
The best way to visualize cohort data is through retention curves, which show retention for these cohorts over time. When you chart your data this way, it becomes easy to see when users are leaving your product. About a third of users typically stop using an app after the first day. After that initial drop, a healthy curve decreases steadily, leaving ideally 25% or more still active on day 30.
Churn Rate: The Other Side of Retention
Churn rate is the opposite of retention—the percentage of users who stop using your app in a given period. For subscription companies, the average yearly churn rate usually falls between 5-7%, with the monthly average around 4% according to ChartMogul’s SaaS benchmarks. These numbers vary significantly by industry: digital media and entertainment report around 6.5%, while IT services show around 12%.
Best-in-class MRR churn for enterprise companies is 1% per month. For small and mid-size focused businesses, that number ranges between 2% and 2.5%. At 5% monthly churn, you’re losing half of your subscription revenue every year. A median early-stage SaaS company has a 6.2% net MRR churn rate and a 9.1% gross MRR churn rate. As companies find product-market fit and hone their customer category, churn reduces—a median company over $1M ARR has a 2.3% net MRR churn rate.
Revenue Metrics for Subscription and Freemium Apps
For mobile apps with recurring revenue models, understanding MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) and ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) is fundamental. These metrics represent the total predictable, recurring revenue your app expects to generate, providing an immediate and granular view of financial health, growth trajectory, and stability.
MRR and ARR: Your Growth Indicators
MRR normalizes all subscription income—regardless of billing cycle—into a consistent monthly figure. It excludes non-recurring revenue like one-time setup fees or consulting charges, focusing solely on reliable, repeat income. ARR is simply MRR multiplied by 12, providing an annual view of your recurring revenue.
For Series A startups, benchmarks like $1.8M ARR serve as common targets investors look for. Accurate MRR and ARR calculations are described as ‘the lifeblood of SaaS startups’ because they quantify financial health and investor appeal. Companies using automated tracking systems have seen funding success rates triple compared to those relying on manual calculations.
Conversion Rate: From Free to Paid
Conversion rate measures the percentage of users who complete desired actions—typically converting from free to paid users. In freemium apps, typically only a small percentage become paying customers; often a few percent is normal, and 5%+ is considered very good. If your free-to-paid conversion rate is 3%, increasing it to 4% can massively boost revenue without acquiring any new users.
Tracking conversion at each funnel step (install → sign-up → active user → paying customer) helps identify friction points. If thousands sign up but few complete a purchase, you know where users drop off. Reducing unnecessary steps, offering single sign-on, and clearly communicating value before requiring payment can significantly improve conversion rates.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
Net Revenue Retention measures the percentage change in recurring revenue from existing customers, accounting for both lost revenue from cancellations and gained revenue through expansions and upsells. The median NRR across all SaaS companies is 102%, while public SaaS companies average around 114%. Best-in-class NRR typically ranges from 110-120%.
Negative net revenue churn—when expansion revenue exceeds losses—is ‘SaaS nirvana.’ This means with each passing month, your existing subscribers become more valuable. Your business can grow organically because you don’t need to spend additional money acquiring new customers to maintain growth. Achieving this requires building an expansion loop within your product through upsells, cross-sells, and value-based pricing tiers.
Building Your Investor-Ready Analytics Dashboard
With the metrics defined, the next step is building a dashboard that presents this data in a compelling, investor-ready format. The right analytics infrastructure doesn’t just track numbers—it tells a growth story that builds investor confidence.
Choosing the Right Analytics Platform
Several platforms cater specifically to mobile app analytics needs, each with distinct strengths. Mixpanel excels at granular user segmentation through event tracking, offering sophisticated cohort analysis capabilities. It’s particularly strong for mobile startups needing quick answers about feature adoption, retention, and funnel conversion. Amplitude focuses on deep behavioral analytics with predictive insights, helping teams understand not just what users do, but why certain behaviors lead to better outcomes.
Firebase Analytics provides free mobile analytics within Google’s comprehensive development ecosystem, automatically collecting essential user events. It’s ideal for developers needing basic analytics without complex setup, though it lacks advanced features like cohort analysis and sophisticated funnel visualization. For teams wanting complete data control, platforms like Statsig offer warehouse-native deployment with sub-second data processing for real-time insights during critical launches.
When selecting a platform, consider your specific needs: If you want quick, clear metrics, Firebase is your go-to. For deep behavioral analysis, go with Mixpanel or Amplitude. Specialized tools have shown 28% improvement in forecasting accuracy according to industry reports. The key is finding the right balance between capabilities and complexity for your stage and resources.
Essential Dashboard Components
Your investor dashboard should present metrics in a logical flow that tells your growth story. Start with Unit Economics Overview—display CAC, LTV, and the LTV:CAC ratio prominently. A simple, color-coded bar chart comparing LTV to CAC with the ratio clearly displayed creates an immediate positive association. Include CAC payback period and trends over time.
Next, include your Revenue Growth trajectory. An MRR Waterfall Chart decomposes your growth into components (new, expansion, contraction, churn), revealing your growth composition and retention quality. Show both monthly trends and year-over-year comparisons to demonstrate momentum.
Add Cohort Retention Analysis showing how different user cohorts retain over time. When newer cohorts show better retention than older ones, it demonstrates continuous product improvement—exactly what investors want to see. Visualize this as both a retention curve and a heat map showing retention percentages by cohort.
Include Active User Metrics displaying DAU, MAU, and your stickiness ratio with trends over time. Show growth velocity—how quickly these numbers are increasing. Finally, present Engagement Depth metrics like session duration, session frequency, and feature adoption rates to demonstrate that users aren’t just opening your app but actually finding value within it.
Visualizing Data for Maximum Impact
The way you present data can significantly impact investor perception. For LTV:CAC ratio, use side-by-side bar charts with clear labels and the ratio prominently displayed. For retention curves, show cohort performance over time with multiple lines representing different months. For MRR growth, use stacked area charts that show the composition of growth.
Heat maps work exceptionally well for retention cohort analysis—each box represents a retention percentage, with darker shading indicating higher retention. This visualization immediately highlights which cohorts perform best and whether your retention is improving. Include trend lines on key metrics to show trajectory, not just current state.
Remember that investors spend an average of only 3 minutes and 44 seconds studying a pitch deck. Your dashboard needs to communicate key insights quickly. Lead with your strongest metrics. Use consistent color coding (green for positive trends, red for concerning areas). Include context—show benchmarks alongside your metrics so investors can immediately understand if your 35% Day-7 retention is good or needs work.
Presenting Metrics to Investors: Best Practices
Having the right metrics is only half the battle—presenting them effectively to investors determines whether you secure funding. The optimal metrics sequence for an investor pitch tells a complete story of a healthy, efficient, and scalable business.
Structuring Your Metrics Narrative
Lead with Unit Economics Overview, demonstrating that your business model is fundamentally sound. Show that your LTV comfortably exceeds CAC and that you can acquire customers profitably. Next, present your MRR/ARR Waterfall to demonstrate growth composition and revenue quality. Investors want to see that new revenue isn’t just replacing churned revenue.
Follow with Cohort Retention Analysis to prove product-market fit. Improving retention cohort over cohort is powerful evidence that your product is getting better. Then present Growth Efficiency Metrics—show your Magic Number, Rule of 40 performance, and other efficiency indicators. Finally, present Future Projections grounded in your current trajectory and realistic assumptions.
One B2B SaaS company transformed their deck by moving unit economics to slide 4, creating a prominent LTV:CAC visualization, adding an MRR waterfall, and including cohort retention curves. They went from six rejections to a successful $15M Series A, with the lead partner praising their metrics slide as ‘the most compelling they’d seen that quarter.’
Stage-Specific Expectations
Investor expectations vary significantly by funding stage. At Pre-Seed and Seed, it’s mostly about the team, vision, market opportunity, and early product validation. Numbers matter less at this stage—focus on explaining your unit economics potential and demonstrating early engagement signals even with limited data.
At Series A, expect heavy focus on product-market fit, revenue trends, and key growth metrics. This is where retention curves, cohort analysis, and LTV:CAC ratio become essential. Investors want proof that customers love your product and that you can acquire them efficiently. The $1.8M ARR benchmark for Series A startups serves as a common target.
At Series B and Beyond, VCs want proof of scalable economics, strong unit metrics, and market leadership. The focus shifts from ‘Can this company work?’ to ‘How big can this get?’ Advanced metrics like NRR, expansion revenue percentage, and segment-level analysis become more important. Demonstrate that you have the systems and processes to scale.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
Several common mistakes can undermine your metrics presentation. First, avoid presenting metrics without context—always include benchmarks or historical comparisons so investors understand if your numbers are good or concerning. Second, don’t cherry-pick only positive metrics. Sophisticated investors will notice omissions. It’s better to acknowledge areas for improvement while showing you understand them.
Third, ensure consistency in your calculations. Inconsistent definitions of ‘active user’ or ‘conversion’ across your deck create confusion and damage credibility. Fourth, avoid vanity metrics like total downloads or registered users without engagement context. These signal inexperience with investor expectations.
Finally, never present projections disconnected from current data. Your financial forecasts should flow logically from your current trajectory. Companies using automated systems for tracking have seen funding success rates triple, while manual calculations often result in errors that damage credibility.
Strategies for Improving Your Metrics Before Fundraising
If your current metrics aren’t investor-ready, focused improvements can significantly strengthen your position. Improving retention by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95% because returning customers buy more often, spend more over time, and cost less to serve than new ones.
Boosting Retention
Start by analyzing when and why users drop off. Are many users abandoning the app in the first 1-2 days? That might indicate issues with onboarding or fulfillment of your core value proposition. If churn spikes after a free trial ends, perhaps the premium features aren’t compelling enough.
Taking a step back to focus on activating users when they’re new—the moment they first perceive value—can improve new user retention and lead to the biggest gains. Your activation metric should capture the moment when a user understands your product’s value, usually involving a critical action performed early in the user journey. The more users engage with your core value features, the stickier they become.
Implement personalized push notifications strategically—brands leveraging custom apps with targeted engagement features have seen 79% retention during the critical initial 90-day period. Use in-app tutorials, customer support prompts, and re-engagement campaigns to bring back lapsed users. Gamification elements like streaks or rewards for regular use can also encourage more frequent engagement.
Optimizing LTV:CAC
To improve your LTV:CAC ratio, focus on both sides of the equation. Increase LTV through better retention, upselling, and pricing optimization. Value-based pricing can improve conversions by 25-40%, while tiered pricing for multiple customer segments can increase ARPU by 35%. Usage-based pricing models help retain 45% more customers.
To reduce CAC, optimize your marketing channels and focus on those with the best return. Track CAC by channel to identify which acquisition strategies deliver the best results. Invest in organic growth through referrals, app store optimization, and viral features—these can lower acquisition costs significantly. Native, a beauty brand, used micro-influencers to create authentic content, which boosted customer engagement while reducing marketing expenses.
Increasing Engagement Depth
To encourage users to spend more time in-app, focus on delivering value and reducing friction. Add relevant, personalized content so there’s always something interesting to explore. Improve app performance—slow load times or crashes will shorten sessions quickly. Studies show that up to 53% of users will uninstall an app after just one crash, freeze, or error.
Use strategic push notifications to alert users about things they care about—a friend’s message, a price drop, a new feature. Offer daily or weekly fresh content, limited-time promotions, or interactive elements like quizzes and challenges. Segment your audience and create personalized experiences for each segment, addressing the needs of new, loyal, and at-risk users differently.
Putting It All Together: Your Mobile App Metrics Strategy
Building an investor-ready analytics dashboard is not a one-time exercise but an ongoing process of measurement, analysis, and improvement. By focusing on the metrics that matter—unit economics, engagement indicators, retention curves, and revenue growth—you demonstrate to VCs that your app isn’t just another download statistic but a sustainable, scalable business.
The mobile app investment landscape has evolved significantly. With only 6% of top VC deals going to consumer or mobile-first startups, standing out requires more than a great product—it demands data-driven proof of your growth potential. Metrics like LTV:CAC ratio, DAU/MAU stickiness, and cohort retention aren’t just numbers; they’re the language that investors use to evaluate opportunity.
Start by implementing robust analytics tracking from day one. Choose a platform that matches your needs and resources, whether that’s the simplicity of Firebase or the depth of Amplitude or Mixpanel. Build dashboards that tell your growth story clearly and compellingly. Track your metrics consistently over time to demonstrate trajectory and improvement.
Remember that downloads are just the starting point. The real work begins after the install. By looking beyond downloads and optimizing the metrics that matter, you’ll be well on your way to turning initial user interest into long-term success, sustainable growth, and ultimately, the funding you need to scale your mobile app into a thriving business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good LTV:CAC ratio for mobile apps seeking VC funding?
A 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio is considered the gold standard for Series A companies, meaning you generate $3 in customer lifetime value for every $1 spent on acquisition. A ratio of 4:1 or higher indicates a great business model. If your ratio is 5:1 or higher, you may actually be under-investing in marketing and could be growing faster. Ratios below 3:1 suggest you need to either increase customer value through better retention and upsells, or reduce acquisition costs through more efficient marketing channels.
What DAU/MAU ratio should my app target?
Industry benchmarks vary significantly by app category. A DAU/MAU ratio above 20% is generally considered engaging. Social media and messaging apps often achieve 40%+ (with Facebook historically above 50%). E-commerce apps average around 10%, while fintech apps typically achieve 22%. SaaS products average 13%, with B2B SaaS targeting approximately 40% on workdays. The key is comparing against your category and demonstrating improvement over time rather than hitting arbitrary targets.
How do I calculate Customer Lifetime Value for my mobile app?
For subscription apps, use: LTV = Average MRR × (1 ÷ Monthly Churn Rate) × Gross Margin. For example, if monthly ARPU is $500, churn rate is 2%, and gross margin is 75%: $500 × (1 ÷ 0.02) × 0.75 = $18,750 per customer. For e-commerce apps: LTV = Average Order Value × Number of Repeat Sales × Average Retention Time × Gross Margin. Include expansion revenue from upsells in your calculation for a complete picture.
What retention rates do investors expect to see?
Average mobile apps lose about 77% of daily active users within 3 days and 90% within the first month. Therefore, retention rates better than these averages are noteworthy. A ‘good’ Day 30 retention rate is generally 15-20% or higher, with top-performing apps achieving 30%+. More important than absolute numbers is the trend—investors want to see retention improving cohort over cohort, indicating that your product and onboarding are getting better.
What analytics platform should I use to track these metrics?
Your choice depends on your needs and resources. Firebase Analytics offers free, basic tracking ideal for early-stage apps in Google’s ecosystem. Mixpanel excels at event-based analytics with powerful segmentation and cohort analysis, best for teams needing granular insights. Amplitude provides deep behavioral analytics with predictive capabilities, suited for larger teams focused on user journey optimization. All three can integrate with your investor dashboard. Specialized tools have shown 28% improvement in forecasting accuracy compared to manual tracking.
What metrics matter most at different funding stages?
At Pre-Seed/Seed, focus on team strength, market opportunity, and early engagement signals—numbers matter less. At Series A, product-market fit proof is essential: retention curves, cohort analysis, and LTV:CAC ratio become critical, with $1.8M ARR serving as a common target. At Series B and beyond, demonstrate scalable economics: NRR (targeting 110-120%), segment-level analysis, and clear path to market leadership. The focus shifts from ‘Can this work?’ to ‘How big can this get?’
