AARRR (Pirate Metrics)

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AARRR, or Pirate Metrics, is a growth framework from Dave McClure. It splits the customer journey into five stages so you can see where the funnel leaks, instead of staring at “number of users.”

The five stages

1. Acquisition: how do people find you? Channel, cost of acquisition, inbound rate.
2. Activation: when does the first valuable experience happen? The “aha” moment.
3. Retention: do they come back? Daily or weekly cohorts matter more than raw signups.
4. Revenue: when and how do they pay? Paid conversion, ARPU, account expansion.
5. Referral: do they bring someone else? Viral coefficient and invites.

How to use it

Give each stage one primary metric and one supporting metric. Then attack the weakest link. Early teams often optimize only Acquisition, while broken Retention wastes every new signup.

AARRR complements a North Star Metric: the North Star gives you one core number; AARRR opens the funnel behind it.

Further reading: 15 key product metrics and Lean Analytics.