Unicorns vs Donkeys: Let’s Do the Math

Abhas Gupta writes about the impotance of the ratio of lifetime customer value to cost of customer acquisition – and what it means for startups on Medium:

Like Newton’s laws of gravity or momentum, most tech startups (see exceptions below*) who sell directly to their customers — both enterprises and consumers — must eventually obey the Fundamental Law of Growth: LTV/CAC > 3. There’s a lot of nuance as to why — a discussion that is better suited for a semester-long class than a blog post — but suffice to say that the LTV/CAC ratio speaks to a startup’s revenue trajectory, capital needs, and in turn, how much “irrational exuberance” is demanded of its investors. The lower the LTV/CAC ratio, the less efficient a company is at deploying capital and the more money it needs to fuel growth; conversely, the higher the LTV/CAC ratio, the more efficient the company is and thus the more value it creates for the same amount of capital. Though this can be derived, many before me have empirically observed that 3x is roughly the threshold needed to build big, sustainable businesses.

Read Gupta’s apply this analysis to startups like HelloFresh, Evernote, Oscar, and ZocDoc: Unicorns vs. Donkeys: Your Handy Guide to Distinguishing Who’s Who

Featured image from Flickr user Cathering/rumpleteaser.


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