The three numbers every investor will ask about your unit economics

Unit economics conversations derail more pitches than almost anything else, usually because founders either haven't calculated the numbers rigorously or can't explain where they came from.

Three numbers come up in nearly every serious investor conversation:

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). The fully loaded cost to acquire one customer, not just ad spend, but the real cost including time and tools. A founder who can state this number and explain what's included in it reads as far more credible than one who has a rough guess.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Average revenue per customer, multiplied by gross margin, multiplied by expected customer lifetime (which is roughly 1 divided by monthly churn rate). This is the number most often inflated by optimistic assumptions, investors will ask what assumptions go into it, and a rigorous answer matters more than an impressive one.

LTV to CAC ratio, and payback period. Investors typically want to see 3x or better on the ratio, though the right number varies by business model and stage. Payback period, how many months it takes to earn back the acquisition cost, tells a related but different story: even a healthy LTV:CAC ratio can hide a payback period that's too slow for the business to fund its own growth.

The founders who handle this conversation well aren't the ones with the best numbers. They're the ones who can explain exactly how each number was calculated, and what would have to change for it to move. That's the actual signal investors are listening for.

The Readiness Toolkit's financial model template calculates all three of these automatically from your own assumptions, if you want the structure built in rather than built from scratch.