Every founder we work with has a “best month.” One quarter the ads click, the funnel hums, the dashboards turn green. The temptation is to declare victory and double the budget.
The honest reading is harder. A best month is only as good as the cohort it bought you. If the acquisition cost still hasn’t paid back twelve months in, the spike borrowed from next year instead of compounding into it.
In this issue we walk through the four numbers we look at before we recommend scaling. Payback period, contribution margin after refunds, the cohort’s 90-day retention curve, and whether the channel mix is still concentrated enough to be repeatable.
We also look at FoundPop’s 10.3x blended ROAS. What it does and doesn’t tell you, and why the second number in the case study (5+ years on retainer) matters more than the first.