Ray Rike

Benchmarkit.ai is based upon the culmination of my experiences in senior leadership positions across a wide range of companies from Fortune 500 to hyper-growth VC backed early-stage software and SaaS companies, including five successful exits.

As a member of multiple B2B SaaS executive leadership teams at companies ranging in revenue from $1M to $100B+, I discovered my passion for defining, instrumenting, measuring and using metrics and benchmarks to enable better metrics-informed, benchmark-validated decisions. The benefits included better aligned leadership teams, enhanced revenue growth efficiency and increased enterprise value.

Experiences and Expertise:
- Recurring Revenue Businesses
- B2B SaaS Applications
- Go-To-Market Strategy
- Go-to-Market Leadership
- Metrics-Informed Decision Making
- Team leadership from 20 - 500+ employees 
- 1st - 4th level leadership

Host and Creator

The Metrics that Measure Up podcast is a member of the Benchmarkit Podcast Network. Guests include SaaS and Cloud leaders that have and continue to shape the industry.  A common theme across every episode is how the guests use metrics and benchmarks to make metrics-informed, benchmark-validated decisions at every stage of a company's lifecycle.

Guests include founders, CEO's, Venture Capitalists and industry thought leaders from brand name companies including: LinkedIn, DocuSign, Marketo, Gainsight, Gong, Clari, Bessemer Venture Partners, Emergence Capital and OpenView Partners to highlight a few.

Public SaaS valuation multiples didn’t fall because the businesses got worse... 

...they have fallen because the bar is higher 👇 

Looking across public SaaS over the last 12 months, here’s what’s actually happened:

📉 Median EV / Revenue has fallen from ~6.2x to ~4.6x
👉 75th percentile barely moved: ~9.2x to ~8.3x
👉 25th percentile was flat: ~3.4x to ~3.2x

At the same time…
📈 Median Rule of 40 improved (32% → 34%)
📈 Top-quartile Rule of 40 jumped to ~50%

📈 Median FCF margins expanded (17% → 19%)
📈Top-quartile FCF margins pushed into the mid-30s

This is the part many miss:

🤯 Valuation compression happened while fundamentals improved.

The market has not totally soured on SaaS - but it has stopped subsidizing average SaaS

The middle got repriced while the bottom quartile was already discounted

The top quartile earned the right to stay valued at a premium

Today’s SaaS valuation equation is simple but unforgiving:

Growth + Cash Flow + Forward Leverage...all at the same time

For CFOs and operators, this changes the benchmark conversation:

The question is no longer primarily
  
“How do we compare to SaaS?" it is “How do we compare to the companies the market still rewards?”

Oh yeah - one more thing that might be interesting...

👍 SaaS companies with AI at their core: 12.5x EV:Rev multiples (median)
👎SaaS companies without AI at their core: 4.5x EV:Rev multiples (median)

Enabling B2B software companies to make better metrics-informed and benchmark-validated decisions using our industry benchmarks, primary research, events, media and advisory services to increase revenue growth efficiency

Tyler Nelson

11 top AI stories this week worth paying attention to in today's AI to ROI: Just the News 👇

🍎 Apple picks Google Gemini for Apple Intelligence & Siri

This isn’t a win for “better answers.” It’s a pragmatic admission that frontier model development is now a data-center-scale problem 

Apple keeps control of UX and privacy. Google gets the strongest enterprise validation imaginable and AI distribution at planetary scale

🛒 Google turns Gemini into a shopping engine

Payments, loyalty, ads, and agentic commerce all native

This is where AI moves from “assistive” to revenue-bearing infrastructure

🛜 OpenAI + Cerebras = the broadband moment for inference

This deal isn’t about faster chatbots. It’s about eliminating latency so agents can actually work. 

Specialized silicon is no longer optional. The Nvidia monoculture is cracking.

🩺 Anthropic goes deep in healthcare

Claude for Healthcare targets administrative toil, prior auth, billing, and clinical workflows. 

This is AI doing unglamorous work and that’s exactly where the ROI lives.

💲 xAI’s $8B burn rate reality check

Owning compute is expensive

Scale alone doesn’t guarantee leadership

The gap between the top tier and everyone else is widening fast

🤖 Alibaba’s Qwen crosses 700M downloads

The frontier gap is gone and intelligence is commoditizing

Pricing power and data sovereignty now matter more than raw model IQ

⚡ Microsoft covers grid costs for data centers to eliminate consumer impact

Infrastructure and energy are becoming competitive weapons

Only hyperscalers can make promises like this

🧵The common thread across all of this week's AI to ROI: Just the News?

AI winners won’t be defined by demos - they’ll be defined by who controls distribution, compute, energy, and unit economics.

That’s what we track every day in AI to ROI: Just the News...no hype, just signal.

👉 Subscribe on Substack if you care about where AI delivers ROI

Can Marketing budgets actually be going down in 2026?

Early data from our 2026 survey says Marketing budgets were set at 8% of Total Revenue (median) versus 10% last year

At the same time, AEO budgets are up 5%, AI tool budgets are up 3% and MarTech budgets are up 2% from 2025

Where is that increase in AI budgets in Marketing coming from? People or Programs and what specific program areas are taking a hit???

Carilu Dietrich, Jon Miller, and I are conducting the 2nd annual B2B Tech Marketing Budget and Productivity Benchmark Research to be published in February

If you are a CMO trying to validate how your 2026 Marketing budget compares to your peer group OR a CFO wondering how other companies are measuring the ROI on Marketing budgets - this research is for you..

🤝 If you would like the findings - please be a part of our survey at:

🔗 https://lnkd.in/epKrd9YJ

Life Unit Economics: When to Over-Invest in the “Personal Growth” Multiple

In the B2B software world we know all revenue growth is not created equal...

Growing 50% YoY with <10% profitability commands a higher EV: Revenue multiple than a company growing 10% YoY with 30% EBITDA

Why?

Early, intentional over-investment in growth can create a defensible moat that compounds over time

The same logic applies to life...

There are times when you must over-invest in your “Personal Growth"
  - even at the temporary expense of leisure, balance, sleep

As I work with company founders, I keep coming back to a question:

"𝐶𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑙𝑒 𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ-𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒?"

𝟏. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 - 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐔𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞

Some milestones - such as a successful exit, a promotion, mastering a critical skill don’t just move the needle - they can re-price your life's valuation

The Strategy:

Intentionally burn "personal human capital" today to create a step-function increase in future present value

The Goal:
 
Trade a high-stress, short-term "Growth Investment" for a lifetime of higher autonomy

𝟐. 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 “𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐌𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐞”

In business, the Burn Multiple measures how much you spend to generate each dollar of ARR

In life, it measures what you sacrifice in things such as health, relationships, and time to build long-term personal capital

Efficient Growth:

Sacrifice short-term to build an asset that generates long-term freedom and autonomy

Inefficient Growth:

Sacrifice 20 years of personal time for an annual raise or bonus for this year

If your Human Burn Multiple is too high for >8 consecutive quarters without a significant increase in "personal value" you’re likely investing your human capital into the wrong asset

𝟑. 𝐀𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 “𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥” 

You can survive "high personal capital burn" for a period of time, but cannot survive high burn indefinitely

You can let your social or family margin dip temporarily - but you cannot allow your Lifetime Value:CAC ratio stay low over the long term...

Once a key relationship churns or personal capital is exhausted, win-back costs are high and often unrecoverable!

𝟒. 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

The purpose of over-investing in your personal growth is simple:

Reach a point where your "Personal North Star Metric" becomes the dominant driver

You endure the blitzscaling phase so you can eventually transition from a high-burn Growth Stock to a durable, dividend-paying Value Stock

The Bottom Line:

Don’t be afraid to over-index on growth during your highest-leverage years...

...Just make sure you’re building lasting personal enterprise value

Burning the candle at both ends? Know the ROI leading indicators...

taplio

Ray Rike's Linkedin Analytics

Ray Rike

Performance ScoreRay Rike's LinkedIn Performance

What is Ray talking about?

Ray Rike's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

.css-6ytdur{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39, 43, 72, 1) 0%, rgba(33, 47, 183, 1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Ray Rike's Linkedin Analytics

Ray Rike

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ray Rike's LinkedIn Performance

What is Ray talking about?

Ray Rike's Best Posts .css-1emoo84{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:400;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);}(last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Ray Rike's Linkedin Analytics

Performance ScoreRay Rike's LinkedIn Performance

Ray Rike's Best Posts (last 30 days)