The Open Startups Initiative

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the Open Startups Initiative?

  The Open Startups Initiative is a movement where SaaS companies voluntarily share their real revenue metrics publicly, including MRR, ARR, churn, LTV, and customer counts.
  
  Launched by Baremetrics, the initiative started after Baremetrics made its own revenue data public and saw hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs follow along. The idea is simple: radical transparency builds trust with customers, keeps companies accountable, and gives early-stage founders real benchmarks to learn from instead of guessing. Rather than treating financial metrics like trade secrets, open startups share their numbers in real time. For subscription businesses, this means publishing the same core metrics that drive every growth decision, churn rate, expansion revenue, and monthly recurring revenue, out in the open.
• How does a SaaS company join the Open Startups Initiative and share its metrics publicly?

  To join the Open Startups Initiative, a subscription business connects its billing data to Baremetrics and opts in to share its live revenue dashboard publicly.
  
  Because Baremetrics pulls directly from payment processors like Stripe, Braintree, and Recurly, there is no manual reporting or spreadsheet work involved. Your MRR, ARR, churn rate, LTV, and customer counts update in real time and become visible to anyone who follows your public page. This approach to transparency reporting works especially well for B2B SaaS founders who want to build credibility with potential customers and investors without the noise of typical startup hype. If you want to be part of the initiative, you can get in touch with Baremetrics directly at baremetrics.com.
• What are the real business benefits of startup transparency for a subscription company?

  Publicly sharing subscription metrics builds customer trust, creates organic accountability inside your team, and signals to investors that your growth is real and not inflated.
  
  For subscription businesses, transparency has a few practical upsides worth considering:

  • Customers who can see your MRR and churn trends are more confident in your long-term viability as a product they depend on.
  • Publishing your numbers forces internal discipline around the metrics that actually matter, like net revenue retention and trial-to-paid conversion.
  • Open benchmark data helps your own team see where you sit relative to the broader SaaS market.

  The open startups model works because honesty is a differentiator when most companies still treat revenue figures like Fort Knox.
• How can I benchmark my SaaS churn rate against other subscription companies?

  You can benchmark your churn rate against similar SaaS companies using Baremetrics open benchmark data, which aggregates anonymised metrics from hundreds of real subscription businesses.
  
  Rather than relying on industry surveys that are often outdated or too broad, Baremetrics pulls live data across its customer base to show median churn rates, MRR growth, and LTV figures segmented by company size and revenue band. This gives founders and finance leads a concrete reference point: if your monthly churn sits at 4% and the benchmark for your MRR tier is 2%, you know you have a retention problem worth solving, not a perception problem. Comparing churn drivers across SMB versus mid-market customer segments adds another layer of diagnostic value that generic benchmarks simply cannot provide.
• Should an early-stage SaaS startup join a transparency initiative before reaching significant MRR?

  Early-stage SaaS companies can benefit from joining a startup transparency initiative precisely because smaller numbers build habits, audiences, and accountability before the stakes get higher.
  
  The open startups transparency model is not only for companies with impressive MRR to show off. Starting early means your audience grows alongside your revenue, and the discipline of tracking and publishing metrics like churn rate, LTV, and new versus churned MRR gets built into how your team operates from day one. For subscription businesses in the $10K to $500K MRR range, the real value is internal: when your metrics are public, vanity reporting disappears and the numbers that actually drive decisions take centre stage. The open startups definition, at its core, is about honest business building, not performance.