customer acquisition cost
also referred to as: cac · customer acquisition costs
22 statements across 19 episodes · 7 bullish · 5 bearish · 15 people on the record · first statement May 13, 2017 by Christina Shen · across every show →
Everything said about customer acquisition cost, oldest first
May 13, 2017 neutral
Shen: CAC spend typically splits equally across sales reps, marketing, and support
“And so we bucket all these metrics into three core inputs, which is sales rep productivity, marketing spend, and sales support. And roughly what we've seen from companies is this tends to be a third of your total spent.”
Dec 20, 2017 positive
Schnaars: Sales Comp Should Incentivize Upfront Cash Over Quick MRR
“So if we can get cash up front, I'd rather pay a little bit more on that cash up front than just the fact that you got a, ah, you know, a quick deal for some quick MRR. If it's a longer term agreement, that means the customer's gonna be a lot more invested. Yo…”
Mar 17, 2018 positive
Oct 8, 2020
Shah: Higher CAC is justified by the option value of unreleased products
“There is a non-zero value for those customers beyond the LTV around what other things that we don't exist yet in the product portfolio that we will be able to sell them once we have them as customers. And I think that makes the math more interesting in terms o…”
Jan 14, 2021 negative
Feb 11, 2022 positive
Gorgias gave $1,000 iPhones for referrals against a $3K ACV
“So incentives for us where we offer an iPhone if you refer us to customers. So if you just do the math, an iPhone is like a thousand dollars, ECV is a three K, and then you have a NR that is like around like 90 90%. So it's like super worth it because your iPh…”
Nov 17, 2022 positive
Snow: Divvy reduced CAC by 75% after COVID caused a 30% drop
“And for our business, we immediately, you know, revenue drops 30% overnight, and so we get, we got thrust into that efficiency mindset for just a second during COVID, and then it obviously went crazy again, but during those moments, we had an initiative that r…”
Feb 3, 2023 negative
Lemkin: CAC is a flawed metric because acquisition is bimodal
“This is why CAC is such a flawed metric, because if your customer, let's say your average deal size is five K, a five K a year customer. You're actually not gonna have anything that's, where you can spend 5000 dollars to get a 5000 dollar customer. You're gonn…”
Aug 3, 2023
Zinman: Monday.com bases marketing efficiency purely on cash collection speed
“And the way we've measured it as a company since day one, we didn't care about you know, like gap return on, on CAC. We cared about actual cash in the bank. So How much we spend, when do we actually spend the money, and how fast we get it from customers in ter…”
Aug 3, 2023
Aug 15, 2023
Cassidy: Outbound SDRs cost $1,000 to $2,000 per qualified meeting
“And if somebody told me, I'm not sure how accurate is, but it seems accurate, you know, on average, like with an outbound SDR, it's like basically like a thousand, you know, somewhere between a 1002 thousand dollars cost per sort of qualified meeting.”
Sep 15, 2023
Oct 10, 2023 negative
Zinman: Standard SaaS metrics like LTV, CAC, and ARR ignore actual cash
“All the metrics that you're using you know, LTV to CAC CAC return rate, all of them don't take cash into account, okay? It's not cash. It's not cash. ARR is not cash. CAC is not cash. LTV, well, I don't know what it is, but yeah. It's a bogus metric, but, ah, …”
Dec 13, 2023 negative
Kellogg: VCs bludgeon founders by expecting best-in-class metrics across every single category
“You know, a VC will look across their portfolio and think of the best CAC payback period, the best LTV to CAC, the best rule of 40, and ask you to do, you know, beat them on all four, right? It's inherently unfair. It's a form of bludgeoning, right?”
Dec 13, 2023
Dec 13, 2023 neutral
Kellogg: VCs trust founders' CAC while PE firms recalculate it themselves
“Because the VCs tend to be trusting and say, what's your CAC and tell me how you calculate it. And isn't that interesting? Whereas the PE people just said to say, give me all your data. I'll tell you what your CAC is fundamentally. Especially in the context of…”
Dec 29, 2023 bearish
Feb 7, 2024 positive
Cabane: Top SaaS companies achieve $1.05 CAC versus $1.80 for peers
“The best companies, so the top companies, have a significantly Lower CAC than the rest. Now, that might sound obvious, but when you look at the data here at the bottom of this slide, you're seeing it is, like, one dollar and five cents versus one dollar 80”
Apr 30, 2024 positive
Norton: Owner.com Scaled RevOps via Fractional Contractors Before Hiring Full-Time
“Hiring these two leaders on contract. So they were both from in my network. I could do it with a lot of trust and they started doing contract work with us like 10 hours a week and 15 and 20 until the team was big enough. And our ARR run rate was big enough to …”
Jul 19, 2024 bullish
Cabane: Lower AI CAC makes mid-market channels viable for SMB acquisition
“The fact that we're now capable of doing faster and better quality, example, we can scrape websites, we can scrape random content for extremely cheap and feed that back into AI prompts for outbound or for SEO drives An extremely low CAC on those channels, whic…”
Sep 25, 2024
Founders must explain CAC calculations because no single standard exists
“There is probably not one generally accepted way of how customer acquisition costs are calculated. You can do it in many different ways. So make sure to explain how you do that or add a footnote. Otherwise, that will for sure trigger a follow up question from …”
Sep 5, 2025 neutral
Bessemer's Talia Goldberg: COGS Is the New CAC in AI Business Models
“I have a saying at Bessemer that I started saying a year ago, which is that COGS are the new CAC, which is that you can spend a lot on, on COGS, but it means that you also can't then be spending a lot on CAC in customer acquisition.”