UK founders walking into a US Series A pitch often arrive with a model built for a London audience. The numbers are correct, the assumptions are defensible — but the framing is wrong. American institutional investors read SaaS models in a specific dialect, and small translation errors cost real money on the term sheet.
The metrics that actually move the conversation
US growth investors don't open your model at the P&L. They go straight to the cohort tab, then the magic number, then NRR. If those three things aren't immediately legible, you've already lost the room.
- ARR walk by month — new, expansion, contraction, churn — gross and net.
- NRR by cohort, not blended. A 115% blended NRR can hide a 90% NRR in your most recent cohorts.
- CAC payback in months, calculated on fully-loaded S&M including allocated marketing salaries.
- Magic number computed on net new ARR over prior-quarter S&M spend.
- Rule of 40 broken into growth vs. FCF margin, not just the headline.
Where UK models tend to fall short
MRR-led reporting with annualisation as an afterthought, churn measured on logos rather than revenue, and a P&L that mixes hosting costs into 'cost of sales' without breaking out infrastructure. None of these are wrong — they're just not what a US Series A partner will benchmark against their portfolio.
If your magic number isn't on slide three, the partner is already drafting feedback in their head.
Get this right before the first call
Rebuild the model in the format the audience reads, not the format your finance team prefers. We do this in roughly two weeks for most of our portfolio companies, and it consistently shortens the diligence cycle by 30 to 60 days.