The Metrics Brothers Hiatus

Live from Schenectady, New York, it's the Metrics Brothers, Growth and CAC.

And I'm Growth, better known as Ray Reich, founder and CEO of Benchmarkit.

And I'm CAC, better known as Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderson Capital, independent consultant, and the author of Kellogg.

And together we are the Metrix Brothers.

And we go together like brotherly love and editorial conflict.

Ooh, that's a pretty big statement there, Dave. What's behind that one?

That is a big statement there, right? Hopefully, hopefully people have appreciated our similes. And that's a good one. We're doing a special short episode today to announce that the Metrix Brothers are going on hiatus.

The Metrics Brothers is proudly sponsored by Benchmarkit, the B2B AI and software industry's largest, broadest, and most contextualized benchmarking index. Dave Kellogg and Ray Groth Wright have put the Metrics Brothers podcast on hiatus for the remainder of 2026. All episodes we have ever recorded are still available on your favorite podcasting app. You can reach Dave @kellogg and Ray on LinkedIn @rayreich. Thank you so much for listening to the Metrics Brothers podcast.

After 122, that's right, 122 episodes on SaaS metrics, didn't even know that was going to be possible, Ray, when we set this out, we set out on this. After 122 episodes, we're going to be taking a break.

Dave, that's like a rock band taking a 2-year-plus tour with no breaks. I'm so excited. We're going to have a break.

Yeah, it is nice. I have to tell you, for any fellow podcasters out there, props to you because the weekly grind is relentless. And that's certainly one of the reasons we're going to take a break. But Ray, do you want to talk about some of the other reasons why we're going to take a break here?

Well, one of the things, you know, when we started this, one of the things that we had so much in common about was our passion and operating knowledge around SaaS metrics. So it's like taking a passion and hobby of ours And making it into a business, a podcast. It was fun and easy. And then AI happened.

Yeah. And to be clear, look, we had some desire to make it into a business, but it wasn't the primary point. We've had sponsors from time to time. We've also continued when there weren't sponsors because simply put, it was fun and educational to make the thing. And it was easy, I think, because we talked about stuff we've been doing for 10 years. So, if you said, hey, Ray, what do you think about measuring CAC ratio or CAC to LTV or LTV to CAC? What do you think about these metrics? We could instantly have an interesting conversation. So, it was relatively easy to produce.

And Dave, we could tell a story from our experience 5 or 10 years ago. And as you know me, sometimes from 30 years ago.

Yeah.

Ray often prefers the pre-1970s stories.

Exactly. But the challenge today with AI is, you know, we haven't had enough maturity in nurturing in the application of AI metrics. So I know I wanted to go out and spend more time in the middle and doing work in the AI industry so I could actually learn and have, I would call it, real experience on how metrics are working in the AI industry.

Yeah, I think I'd say we both found that we didn't want to talk about stuff that we hadn't done dozens of times before. And the further we got into AI, the more that happened. And that meant 2 things. One, we worried about quality, but I think we pulled it off because the second thing, we did a ton of work. And so it made the podcast move towards being kind of what I would just say is real work. It started as a fun hobby and it was becoming real work with the AI pivot. And I think both of us were saying, hey, gosh, wouldn't it be more fun to be out spending more time doing this than talking about it? Wouldn't it be a good time to take a break? And who knows, maybe in a year, come back and talk about all the stuff we learned rather than having to go through kind of episode by episode with tons of prep time.

Yeah.

But I'll tell you, taking that rock band on tour for 2+ years analogy to another level, you know, the charts were really important to rock bands. Hey, we didn't do bad on the charts. In the business management category of Apple Podcasts, we were consistently in the top 25 to 50, Dave. And we built a following that could sell out the Madison Square Garden on a regular basis. I'm pretty excited about that.

Yeah, I'm excited about that too. Well, like I said, while we never made a really hard run at turning this into a business, we did want to build a nice audience and that we succeeded. Why we couldn't monetize it, Ray, who knows? But we had fun doing it. And yeah, like top 25 to top 50, given a pretty narrow subject matter, to me was pretty good. Pretty amazing, right?

Yeah. And we had some, just like rock bands have their top hits, we had some top episodes. You wanna talk a little bit about what those were about? Yeah.

So, depending on the metric you use to calculate top, the top most listened to episode of all time was, believe it or not, ta-da, NRR. Pretty interesting. A single metrics episode, Ray. That was always one of my favorites. Next one was on pipeline generation. I believe that was a Ray-led episode, if memory serves. And to show that AI episodes were breaking in, the Intercom AI Transformation, I think, was the record holder for most listens in the first 7 days of existence. It's a little bit unfair to compare a 2-year-old episode with a 2-week-old episode, right? And so, you have to look at metrics like, how did it do in its first week or 2 of life?

But that really tells you what's going on, especially in the more legacy SaaS companies. They really wanted to learn more about that Intercom AI Transformation. And I was actually blown away. By how many people downloaded and listened to that episode in the first 7 days.

Yeah. And that was a great story. I'm glad we did that episode because that was a really— we had another episode with a company I won't name on the books to study another company's transformation. And our conclusion was that it was a lot less kind of legit and a lot more VC storytelling. Whereas the Intercom stuff was absolutely legit. If you don't believe me, just go watch Ian, the founder, on Lenny's podcast for like an hour and a half talking deep about it. So, so it was a great story. It was a real story. And I'm glad it got the attention it did.

So, Dave, since you're not going to have to spend an hour with me every week and spend hours on getting that script ready, what are you going to be doing next?

Yeah, yeah. 4 to 8 hours a week. My wife always saying, are you working on a podcast again? You're grumpy. So, yeah. So, we'll be freeing up like almost a day a week. And what am I going to be spending my time? For me, Ray, mostly more of the same. I'm pretty busy with the Balderton portfolio. Right? There's an EIR there. I'm a non-staff advisor and I work with dozens of companies in any given month, about, or every given 2-month period, I work with a dozen companies at least. I got my 4 boards of directors that I sit on. I've got my advisory clients. And of course I got Kellogg, which for me was the thing that suffered the most due to the podcast. My post frequency fell in half in 2025 compared to 2024. And it was just too hard to keep all these plates spinning. And Kellogg was getting neglected. I'm definitely gonna put more effort into that, especially since I was able to get it moved to Ghost. So it's now fun to write and post again. WordPress was getting to be like Marley's chains. It was not fun to work in there anymore. So Kellogg is already showing a much higher post frequency.

Yeah. Well, I know it's gonna free me up to really focus on something I started about 6 to 7 months ago, and that's the AI to ROI podcast and newsletter. Because I truly believe that especially in the enterprise segment, CFOs and CEOs are looking for great case studies and use cases about when people invested AI in this particular process or department, how do they measure the ROI? What was the economic benefit? And I'm also doing a lot more benchmarks in the world of AI. Things like AI and marketing, AI and go-to-market with Scale Ventures. So we're going to be doing a lot more benchmarks there. And then getting back to that real goal, I'm taking the SaaS metrics and benchmark assessment services I used to do, and I'm now doing advisory services on AI business impact metrics. So hey, if you're investing $3 million on AI tools and tokens and marketing, how are you measuring the economic benefit? How do you convince the CFO to continue funding that? So I'm going to do more of that, Dave.

Yeah.

You've been making another, I find out after 122 episodes that you've been making another podcast without me, Ray.

I know I was cheating on you a little bit, but it was the Metrics That Measure Up podcast that I basically rebranded as the AI to ROI podcast.

Oh, is that true? I thought you had all 3. Okay, I didn't realize you shifted. I thought you were actually making 3. Okay, so you're now—

It's a rebrand.

Okay, so more effort for you into AI to ROI. I wish you luck with that. And then for me, like I said, just more of the same. Now for the podcast itself, what's next? We're not sure. When we say hiatus, we mean it. We're not sure if this is a 1-month break, a 3-month break, a 12-month break, or a forever break. We don't actually know and we don't want to decide right now. We might reincarnate it. We might not. We might transform it and make something new. Who knows? We'll definitely keep the dad jokes. Yeah.

But I got to tell you, like almost all great rock and roll bands, They almost all have taken a hiatus or break. And now 30 years later, they're still coming back on tour. So I'm pretty confident there's an audience out there maybe.

I saw Rod Stewart tickets advertised this morning on my phone, which melted my brain. And in fact, people know I'm a Grateful Dead fan. They took a hiatus in 1974 for about 18 months and then toured for 30 more years or 20 more years, I should say, after that. So who knows where this will go? We're both kind of excited about it. And we don't have any predispositions right now. I do think we'll have a lot more good stories to tell in 12 months. So, who knows? Meantime, look, we will keep the episodes up so that it'll be there as an archive. You can listen to them. If you have ideas of what you think we should do next, or you have any kind or unkind words to say about the Metrics Brothers podcast, you should mail us jointly via metricsbros@benchmarkit.ai. Or if for some reason you want to mail us individually, you can mail me at, I just use my Balderton email now as my public email since it's out there anyway, dkellogg, 2 L's, 2 G's, at balderton.com.

And Ray?

I'm at ray@benchmarkit.ai. That's benchmarkit with an IT dot AI. And of course, you can always follow me on LinkedIn at Ray Reich. And I think most importantly, Dave, I was really, humbled and grateful to see that we were able to build such a large and engaged audience. And just want to thank everyone who listened to us, who joined us. And I know I go to a lot of industry events and so many people would walk up to me and say, we really enjoy your and Dave's dialogue and we love the chemistry that you guys have. So, thank you to the audience. And most importantly, thank you to you, Dave.

Yeah. Yeah, and thank you to you, Ray. This whole thing started one day because Ray called me up and said, do you want to make a podcast? So, it was very much Ray's idea. I think it was a good one. It's been a gas doing it with you. I'll just say it one more time because it does actually blow me away that we hit top 25 to top 50 in management with a podcast focused on SaaS metrics. It was just kind of like mind-boggling. That's something to be proud of. There's a lot of us out there. So, let's stick together going forward. It's been a pleasure, Ray, doing it with you and getting to know you and working with you for the past 122 episodes.

Great. And I know we've had some nice nights out having dinner and we're going to see each other much more than just at our annual family reunion, Dave.

We will indeed. Well, thank you everyone for listening. Thanks for being a part of the Metrics Brothers.

Bye everyone.

Take care. We'll see you who knows when. Till next time.

On the road.

Till next time. À la prochaine fois, as they say. Thank you, everyone.

The Metrics Brothers AI, SaaS, and More is a production of the Metrics Brothers Growth and CAC and a member of the Benchmarkit Podcast Network. By accessing this podcast, you acknowledge that the Metrics Brothers make no warranty, guarantee, or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information provided or the humor content of the jokes told. Ray? Information, opinions, and recommendations presented are, according to our spouses, probably wrong and provided for information purposes only. This podcast should not be considered professional or for that matter, unprofessional advice. We disclaim any and all liability for any direct, indirect, indirect, misdirect, incidental, special, ordinary, consequential, inconsequential, or other damages arising out of any use of, or God help you, reliance upon the information presented here. Ray Grothreich is based in New York City and available on X @rayreich. Dave Kellogg is based in Silicon Valley and available on X @davekellogg. Kellogg. Schedectity, which is French for unspellable, is not our actual production location. Thanks for listening.