Growth drivers of different tech companies

Not in tech IBD but here's what I thought of on the spot: 1) for software/SaaS: think about trailing twelve month churn (either in terms of customers or revenue), number of users/unique pageviews/unique accounts, average revenue per user (ARPU), user acquisition cost (CPU), growth capex as % of revenue, annual recurring revenue by contract (% of total revenue) for hardware: number of units sold lol? price per unit? I'm clueless here. for hardware it could be SSD/HDD or PCs or audiovisual...think it really depends but I guess it would be a more similar to industrials/retail/consumer than software.

2) for software you probably have a lot of expenses in stock-based comp, typically have lower leverage, lower inventory while AP/AR matters more, think a lot about marketing/sales and SG&A that are fixed costs that can be flattened with scaling later, amortization is probably what drives D&A (look at patents), intangibles are key for trademark/brand, deferred revenue is probably a huge chunk due to contracts being paid for upfront, low leverage in general because tangible/pp&e asset light so you have minimal tangible collateral to pledge

as for hardware you probably care more about capex buildout and the D&A is likely more built into depreciation, and you also care a lot more about COGS per unit / manufacturing costs that can be broken down

Someone in GS TMT or MS Menlo Park please comment if you exist on this forum lol