What should I actually put in front of the board every quarter, and in what shape?

A former SaaS CEO showing exactly which metrics belong on which slide, in trailing nine quarter format. This is the closest thing to a standard board package and you can copy it as is.

The First Three Slides of a SaaS Board Deck, with Company Key Metrics

From Kellblog by Dave Kellogg 14 min read

• Slide one is the good, the bad, and the ugly, owned by the relevant exec, before any metrics appear.
• Slide two is key operating metrics on a trailing nine-quarter view, led by the SaaS leaky bucket (starting ARR plus new ARR minus churn equals ending ARR).
• Calculate gross churn against available-to-renew only, not total ARR, or the number flatters you.
• Slide three is P&L and cash: services at 10 to 20 percent of revenue, subscription gross margin 70 to 80 percent, plus Rule of 40 and CAC payback.

Short, and it does the thing most Rule of 40 explainers skip: it checks the rule against actual public SaaS company histories and shows where the threshold does and does not apply.

The Data Behind the Rule of 40%

From tomtunguz.com by Tomasz Tunguz 4 min read

• The rule is simply growth rate plus profit margin adding to 40 percent.
• It only starts to bind around year five or six: early companies routinely score over 100 percent.
• Workday hit 189 percent in 2010, growing revenue 252 percent at negative 57 percent net income.
• Across about 15 years the median public SaaS score drifts from 100 plus down to roughly 30, so before growth stage, watch unit economics instead.

Benchmarks growth, margins, CAC payback and spend allocation at each ARR band, which is what a board is implicitly comparing you against. The most useful single reference for setting next year's targets.

Scaling to $100 Million

From Bessemer Venture Partners by Mary D'Onofrio and Ethan Ding 40 min read

• Growth benchmarks by scale: about 200 percent at 1 to 10M ARR, 115 percent at 10 to 25M, 95 percent at 25 to 50M, 60 percent past 50M.
• Growth endurance means next year lands near 70 percent of this year's rate in private markets, 80 percent in public.
• CAC payback targets: under 12 months for SMB, under 18 for mid-market, under 24 for enterprise.
• The efficiency score is FCF margin plus year-over-year ARR growth, targeting 70 percent at 25 to 50M ARR and 50 percent past 100M.

The written answer covers what goes in the pack. From 18 minutes in, Amar Goel covers the other half, how to actually run the meeting so the board argues about the right things, from a founder who took an Indian built company public.

Positioning in A Crowded Market & Leveraging Board Meetings - Amar Goel Founder & Chairman PubMatic

On Prime Venture Partners by Amar Goel 36 min