Ask HN: Cost structure of SaaS company

[mattjung]

I am about to make a presentation to investors and thus looking for some authoritive numbers to calculate and proove my financial projections.

Does anybody have information/links about the typical cost structure of a SaaS company: how much needs to be calculated per visitor/prospect/customer for support, marketing, acquiry, infrastructure, ... (did I forget something important)?

And is there a way to build in the positive effect of word-of-mouth in those projections?

[getonit]

No smarminess intended, but did you not use authoritative numbers to calculate those financial projections in the first place? What did you use?

[mattjung]

estimations...

[getonit]

What were the estimates based on? Were they specific to your business, or just to your type of business? Can you refine them from the original/related resources at all?

There's a balance to be had between fuzziness in estimates, and specificity to your business, IMHO, and by looking to SaaS averages you're looking to reduce the fuzziness at a cost of specificity. That may well be a good idea, but it should be done knowingly, again IMHO.