AARRR
AARRR, the “pirate metrics” (it reads like a pirate’s “arrr!”), is a framework of five metrics that track a customer’s whole journey with a product: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue. It gives a team a small set of numbers that reflect the real health of the business, instead of flattering vanity metrics like raw page views.
It was introduced by Dave McClure, a PayPal alumnus and angel investor who would later found the accelerator 500 Startups (2010), in a 2007 talk, Startup Metrics for Pirates (first given at Ignite Seattle).
Also known as
pirate metrics · AARRR metrics · the AARRR funnel
Don't confuse with
Vanity metrics: big-looking numbers (total signups, page views, downloads) that don’t map to real value or decisions. AARRR exists precisely to replace them with metrics tied to actual customer behavior.
The five stages
| Stage | The question it answers | Example metric |
|---|---|---|
| Acquisition | How do people find you? | visitors and signups by channel |
| Activation | Do they get value on the first try? | % who finish onboarding / reach the “aha” moment |
| Retention | Do they come back? | weekly/monthly active users, churn rate |
| Referral | Do they tell others? | invites sent, referral conversion rate |
| Revenue | Do they pay? | paying customers, revenue per user |
(McClure’s original order is Acquisition → Activation → Retention → Referral → Revenue. You’ll sometimes see Revenue placed earlier, but the five stages are the same.)
How it connects to what you’ve read
- It’s the natural content for the Key Metrics box of the Lean canvas, a ready-made shortlist of what to measure.
- Activation and Retention are where adoption and adoption friction show up: Activation = did they start; Retention = did they keep going.
- Acquisition happens through your Channels.
In plain English
Five questions about a customer, in order: Did they find us? Did they get value fast? Do they come back? Do they bring friends? Do they pay?
See also
- Adoption: Activation and Retention are the adoption stages
- Lean canvas: AARRR is a common fill for its Key Metrics box
References
- D. McClure, Startup Metrics for Pirates (2007). The original presentation that introduced AARRR. https://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version