Growth
AARRR (Pirate Metrics)
By Rubén García · 3 min
Dave McClure's framework splitting the funnel into Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue.
Still useful to diagnose where users drop off, though many teams now combine it with growth loops.
Dave McClure introduced it in 2007 in the talk "Startup Metrics for Pirates". The name comes from the initials sounding like a pirate's cry when read aloud.
Each stage answers a question: how do users find you? (acquisition), do they have a good first experience? (activation), do they come back? (retention), do they tell others? (referral), do they pay? (revenue).
Its main use is picking one concrete metric per stage and finding the biggest bottleneck before spending on more traffic.
