Is that any kind of compelling metric to measure the success or progress of a SaaS company? I don’t think so. More team members, more costs, more complexity, bigger culture challenges. If you are not forced to (market forces, product complexity i.e.), profit per employee is the metric I am looking for. A high profit per member means high company leverage and a lean operation (a few create a great outcome). High margins provide super-powers to experiment, invest, compete in price if you want or to increase member happiness. We do profit sharing and we are aiming for $100K/member/annual profit.

So don’t ask me how many employees we have, but how much them can do as a true productive metric.