AARRR / Pirate Metrics

A five-stage funnel — acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, referral — used as shared vocabulary for diagnosing where users are lost.

Dave McClure (2007)

What it does

Acquisition → activation → retention → revenue → referral. Gives a team shared language for where it is stuck.

When it breaks

Assumes a linear one-directional flow, which flattens multi-touch B2B and pushes retention to the end where it does the least good. McClure's own funnel percentages carry his explicit “not actuals” disclaimer — never cite them as benchmarks.

Case

Airbnb instrumented its 2014 referral relaunch as an explicit five-stage funnel, logging 20+ events across web, iOS and Android, and reported signups and bookings up over 300% per day against the old system. A structural match rather than an AARRR-branded case — no canonical company case names the framework.

Airbnb Engineering — making referrals work ↗

Diagram — not yet drawn

The five stages drawn with retention pulled out of sequence and placed as the gate everything else passes through — the correction the original ordering needs.

In the wild

Unvetted · not part of the tier assessment

What has been written about this tool in the last twelve months. Machine-retrieved and unchecked — everything above this line was checked.

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