SaaS ARR Growth Endurance 2026 Calculator
Growth endurance SaaS is the share of each year's growth that carries into next year — Bessemer's empirical median is 0.85-0.9, meaning a company growing 60% this year typically grows 51-54% next year. This calculator projects your ARR decay curve through any target year.
| Year-by-year ARR projection |
Growth endurance is the SaaS forecasting concept popularized by Bessemer Venture Partners — it captures how growth decays from one year to the next. If a company grew 60% this year and has 0.85 endurance, next year's growth is 60% × 0.85 = 51%. The compounding decay produces realistic long-range ARR forecasts that match observed cohort medians, instead of the naive "constant 60% growth forever" assumption that breaks any board model.
Where the 0.85-0.9 Endurance Range Comes From
Bessemer Venture Partners and Battery Ventures both publish multi-year cohort data on growth persistence across hundreds of cloud companies. The empirical median lands consistently at 0.85 — meaning roughly 85% of a given year's growth rate carries forward into the next. Top-quartile companies achieve 0.9, and a small elite cohort (Snowflake, ServiceNow, Datadog early years) sustained 0.93-0.95. Below 0.8 is a yellow flag; below 0.75 is bottom quartile and usually signals product or pricing issues, not just gravity.
Why Endurance Matters More Than Headline Growth
Investors look at the slope of the curve, not just the current rate. Two companies at $20M ARR growing 80% YoY look identical today, but if Company A has 0.9 endurance and Company B has 0.78, after 5 years Company A is at $400M+ ARR while Company B stalls around $150M. The Rule of 40 and Rule of X (companion calculators) both compound this effect. Endurance is also the single most important driver of revenue multiples beyond stage — high-endurance companies trade at 2-3x the median multiple in any market regime.
How to Improve Your Endurance Factor
Three levers move endurance: (1) Net Revenue Retention — every point of NRR above 110% adds durable expansion revenue that compounds. (2) Multi-product expansion — companies that ship a second product before $50M ARR sustain higher endurance because the new product is on its own early curve. (3) Total Addressable Market depth — vertical SaaS in $1B+ TAMs can sustain higher endurance than niche horizontal tools. The Battery State of the OpenCloud annual report tracks endurance by category and is the best public benchmark for what is achievable in your segment.
Common Endurance Forecasting Mistakes
Avoid these traps: (1) Using TTM growth as current — endurance applies to forward growth, not trailing. (2) Ignoring re-acceleration — late-stage launches of new products can reset endurance for 12-18 months, so model it as a step function not a smooth decay. (3) Applying public-company endurance to private — private SaaS growth is more volatile, so use a range (0.8-0.9) not a point estimate. (4) Forgetting the floor — endurance compounds toward 0, but in practice growth flattens around 12-15% for category leaders.
Last updated May 2026. Sources: Bessemer Venture Partners State of the Cloud, Battery Ventures State of the OpenCloud, Meritech Capital.