KBCM Survey Data

The Retention Reckoning is built entirely on primary sources: the KBCM Private SaaS Surveys (2019–2025), produced with Sapphire Ventures since 2023 and cross-verified against individual yearly datasets. The verification method and the per-figure registry are documented in Methodology & Data Integrity; the archive below lists each survey and what it anchors in the report.

The survey polls senior executives at privately held SaaS companies worldwide on growth rates, retention metrics, go-to-market efficiency, profitability, valuations, and operational benchmarks. Its lineage, and why this report is built on it rather than another source, is set out just below.

About the Survey

The benchmark has a longer memory than its current name suggests. It began in 2010 as the Pacific Crest Securities Private SaaS Company Survey. Pacific Crest was acquired by KeyBanc Capital Markets in 2014 and rebranded as the KBCM Technology Group, which has run the survey every year since; since 2023 it has been produced in partnership with Sapphire Ventures. The 2025 edition is the sixteenth annual. That unbroken lineage is the point: the same instrument, asked of the same population, for fifteen consecutive years.

Why this survey, and not another. Several SaaS benchmarks exist, but only one really fits a report about multi-year structural change. The KBCM survey is the sector’s longest-running longitudinal record, which is what lets a claim like “net retention has declined for three straight years” rest on one consistent measurement rather than a splice of incompatible sources. It is large and well-regarded, with hundreds of private-SaaS respondents worldwide each year (more than 500 in the 2020 edition), and it describes itself, as the industry does, as the benchmarking report by which SaaS companies measure their financial and operating performance. It reports the exact metrics this analysis is built on, gross and net dollar retention, the magic numbers, customer-acquisition cost, contract terms, and operating-expense structure, on a stable definitional basis from year to year. And it is primary and citable: every figure traces to a dated, published edition with a page number, which is what made it possible to certify 3,197 individual data points against their original source.

Lineage per KBCM press releases (2019–2021): survey “first developed by Pacific Crest Securities in 2010”; Pacific Crest “acquired by KBCM in 2014 and rebranded as KBCM Technology Group.”Verified

KBCM Survey Archive

Primary sources: KBCM/Sapphire Ventures Annual Private SaaS Surveys 2019–2025. Each edition reports the prior fiscal year’s actuals plus a forward outlook, so the NDR shown is the data year the edition anchors, not the publication year.Verified

Annual Press Releases

The report’s core analysis draws on the 12th through 16th annual editions (2021–2025), with the 10th and 11th editions (2019–2020) supplying the pre-ZIRP baseline. Each release below can be expanded to read the verbatim text published by KeyBanc Capital Markets; the “Download Full Report” links point to the survey PDFs and portal on key.com.

Source: KeyBanc Capital Markets / Sapphire Ventures press releases, 2019–2025Verified

Additional Resources

• KBCM SaaS Survey Portal provides full survey results, methodology, and historical data on key.com
• Sapphire Ventures Press carries co-sponsor press releases and additional SaaS market commentary

For the industry research and organizational science behind the chapters in Changing the System, see the Further Reading page. Those works inform the report’s interpretive layer only; every certified figure comes from the survey editions above.