Starting Logos
The count of active customer organizations (logos) carried forward from the prior period — your opening logo balance for the period and the leftmost bar of the logo waterfall.
◆ Count
Formula
Built from
What it measures
Starting Logos is the opening count of distinct active customer organizations for the period — the previous period's Closing (Total) Logos carried forward, unchanged. It is the fixed baseline against which you measure new, reactivated, and churned logos during the current period. It is not recomputed from active contracts; it is a direct reference to where last period ended. Each organization counts exactly once regardless of seats, contracts, or products.
Why it matters
You need a clean opening count because logo movement only makes sense in context. Finance reads Starting Logos to anchor the bridge from prior period to current period — it is the leftmost bar of the logo waterfall (starting + new − churned = closing). Sales sets acquisition and retention targets against a known base. Investors look at whether the denominator for logo churn and net-new logo growth is stable or volatile, since a noisy opening count makes every downstream retention number untrustworthy. A growing Starting Logos base is direct evidence that last period's acquisition and retention worked; a shrinking one says the opposite.
How to read it
Starting Logos should be identical to the previous period's Closing Logos — no restatement, no catch-up. If the two numbers disagree, you have a data-integrity issue, not a business event. Compare it period-to-period to see if your base is widening (good) or contracting (last period's net-new logos was negative). On its own, Starting Logos tells you almost nothing — its value is as the anchor for everything that moves on top of it. Always pair it with Closing Logos and the waterfall components to read the motion: started 127, ended 130 means +3 net logos; started 127, ended 127 can still hide 5 new offset by 5 churned. Rising Starting Logos with falling Closing Logos reveals heavy mid-period churn.
What good looks like
Good
Starting Logos grows every period because prior periods' new and reactivated logos consistently outpaced churn — a base that survives and compounds each cycle.
Watch
Starting Logos is flat or cycling period to period — last period's acquisition roughly cancelled out churn, so the base is treading water rather than widening.
Bad
Starting Logos is shrinking period-on-period, meaning prior-period churn overwhelmed new acquisition; if revenue holds while logos fall, you are consolidating spend into fewer, larger accounts — a land-and-expand breakdown.
Watch-outs
- Treating Starting Logos as a recomputed number instead of a carry-forward. It is not recalculated from active contracts — it is the prior period's Closing Logos, locked and rolled forward exactly.
- Restating or adjusting it after the period has begun. Once the prior period closes, Starting Logos is frozen; corrections belong in the prior period's Closing Logos and only then flow forward.
- Letting timing leakage contaminate it. A logo that signs on day one of the new period is a New Logo, not Starting Logos; one that churned before prior-period close is already excluded — misclassifying either inflates or deflates the opening base.
- Changing the logo definition mid-year (e.g., switching from 'active at period-end' to 'active on the 15th'). Inconsistent cutoffs break the waterfall and manufacture phantom churn or acquisition.
- Double-counting reactivations. A logo that churned in a prior period and reactivated before that period closed is already inside Closing Logos and flows into Starting Logos — do not re-count it as a New Logo in the current period.
Worked example
Hypothetical
June closed with 127 active customer organizations, so July opens with 127 Starting Logos — the same count, carried forward. During July you sign 5 new logos and lose 2 to churn, ending July at 130, which becomes August's Starting Logos. The count carries forward exactly; it is never recomputed at the start of the period.