AARRR (pronounced "Arrr!" like a pirate) is the growth framework that's helping startups turn chaos into systematic, measurable success. Created by Dave McClure, this "pirate metrics" model has become the gold standard for tracking what actually matters in your business.
But what exactly is AARRR, and why should every founder care about it?
AARRR breaks down your entire customer journey into five critical stages:
"How do users find you?"
Acquisition is all about attracting potential customers to your product. This could be through:
Key metric: Cost per acquisition (CPA) and traffic sources
"Do users have a great first experience?"
Getting users to your site is just the beginning. Activation measures whether users actually engage with your product in a meaningful way during their first visit.
This could mean:
Key metric: Activation rate (percentage of visitors who complete desired action)
"Do users come back?"
The most successful products don't just acquire users—they keep them. Retention measures how many users return and continue using your product over time.
Common retention periods:
Key metric: Retention rate at different time intervals
"Do users tell others about you?"
Happy customers become your best marketers. Referral tracks how often users recommend your product to others, creating viral growth loops.
This includes:
Key metric: Viral coefficient (how many new users each existing user brings)
"Do users pay?"
The ultimate test of product-market fit. Revenue measures your ability to monetize users and create a sustainable business.
Key revenue metrics:
Key metric: Customer lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio (CLV:CAC)
Instead of getting lost in vanity metrics, AARRR forces you to focus on metrics that directly impact growth and revenue.
By measuring each stage, you can quickly spot where users are dropping off and focus your optimization efforts.
AARRR provides a repeatable framework for scaling your business methodically rather than hoping for viral growth.
Every stage has clear metrics, making it easier to make informed decisions based on data rather than assumptions.
You might see both AARRR and AAARRR (with an extra 'A'). The six-stage version adds "Awareness" before Acquisition, breaking down the top of the funnel further:
Both frameworks work—choose based on your business model and tracking needs.
For each stage, identify the key metric that matters most for your business:
Use analytics tools to measure each stage:
Measure your current performance in each area to understand where you stand.
Focus on one stage at a time, starting with your biggest bottleneck.
Focus on your weakest stage first. Improving a 10% conversion rate to 15% has more impact than improving a 50% rate to 55%.
Look at how different user groups perform over time, not just aggregate numbers.
New users are expensive. Often, improving retention or referrals provides better ROI than acquiring more users.
Each stage affects the others. Poor activation hurts retention, which reduces referral potential.
Dropbox mastered referral by giving users free storage for inviting friends, growing from 100K to 4M users in 15 months.
Slack focused heavily on activation, ensuring teams experienced value within their first session, leading to incredible retention rates.
Airbnb optimized every stage systematically, from acquisition through revenue, becoming a $75B company.
AARRR isn't just a framework—it's a mindset shift from hoping for growth to systematically creating it. By breaking down the customer journey into measurable stages, you can identify exactly where to focus your efforts for maximum impact.
Ready to implement AARRR for your startup? Start by picking one stage to focus on this week. Measure it, understand it, then optimize it. Growth isn't magic—it's methodology.
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