AI ARR is easy to announce. Proving it is where most SaaS finance teams are about to get exposed.

In episode #379, Ben Murray tackles the new bar for AI financial transparency and what it means for your next budget season. The public markets have already moved the goalposts. Launching AI was the 2024 story. Reporting AI ARR was the 2025 story. Now investors and boards want to see AI margins, customer outcomes, and proof that AI revenue is actually dropping to the bottom line. That same pressure is heading straight for private SaaS, and your board will bring it to budget season whether you are ready or not.

• Understand why AI ARR by itself no longer satisfies boards or investors, and what they now demand to see in the numbers.
• Separate pure AI revenue, AI-influenced revenue, and AI upsell so your reporting survives scrutiny, using clean SKUs, product IDs, and chart of accounts.
• Know which AI costs belong in COGS, including inference, infrastructure, and observability, so you can show your real AI margins.
• Walk into budget season ready for the board questions on AI revenue, AI cost, and margin by revenue stream.
• Instrument heavy, medium, and light AI users so you can defend margins and LTV to CAC as usage scales.

Listen now and build the AI transparency your board will expect before budget season starts.

• Ben's blog posts on capturing AI costs in COGS: inference, infrastructure, and observability: https://www.thesaascfo.com/what-should-be-included-in-ai-cogs/
• Ben's training on AI metrics: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ai-finance-metrics-saas

Is your SaaS company stuck in the valuation doghouse while a handful of names trade at a massive premium?

In episode #378, Ben Murray breaks down Meritech's June 2026 public software comps report and the widening valuation gap across SaaS. The median revenue multiple has fallen 64% from its pre-ZIRP peak, and most public software now trades below 5X. If you are a SaaS founder or CFO, the multiple attached to your business depends on a short list of traits the market now rewards. This episode shows you which ones, and why the rules quietly changed.

• Why only 9 of roughly 100 public software companies trade above a 10X revenue multiple, while 77 sit below 5X
• How the Rule of 40 shifted under the surface, with revenue growth now 3.3x more correlated with the multiple than free cash flow margin
• Why two companies with the same Rule of 40 score can trade at 7.3x versus 3.7x, depending entirely on how they got there
• What the top 9 share in common: free cash flow margins above 20% and ARR growth above 20% at the same time
• How AI exposure now sorts the market, and why a weak AI ARR story lands horizontal SaaS in the doghouse

Tune in to see exactly what separates the premium names from the rest before you benchmark your own SaaS valuation.

• Meritech June 2026 Public Software Comps (Pulse Report): https://meritech.substack.com/p/meritech-software-pulse-12-june-2026
• Ben's academy: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/

Everyone says seat-based pricing is dead, but do you actually have an outcome you can charge for?

In episode #377, Ben Murray breaks down the 12 steps to building an outcome-based pricing plan, drawn from analyzing real, live outcome-based pricing pages and the fine print buried in their terms and conditions. Outcome pricing is complex to design and even harder for customers to understand: when are they charged, and where is the failure point at which they aren't? For SaaS founders and CFOs weighing a move to outcome- or agentic-AI pricing, getting the unit, success criteria, and spend controls right is the difference between a model customers trust and one that creates budget anxiety and billing disputes.

• How to decide whether you even have a billable outcome, and why a completed customer result is not the same as an activity.
• How to define the outcome unit and write success criteria twice, with real examples from Intercom's Fin, Help Scout's AI Answers, and Zendesk's 72-hour resolution window.
• Why failure forgiveness is a conversion tool, not just billing logic, and how measurement windows protect you from outcomes that unravel later.
• How to choose your commercial structure, anchor price to labor savings, revenue, or risk avoidance, and plan for the training lag before charges begin.
• Why spend controls and auditable billing events are non-negotiable, and how to know when outcome pricing is the wrong model entirely.

Tune in for the full framework, then grab the deep-dive blog post before you design your next AI pricing plan.

• Ben's blog post: 12 Steps to Creating an Outcome-Based Pricing Plan: https://www.thesaascfo.com/how-to-build-outcome-based-pricing/