Benchmark startup unit economics before raising

Know your CAC, LTV, and burn cold, then model exactly what a raise does to your ownership before you take the term sheet.

Startup 6 min read

Know your unit economics cold

POST /tools/cac-ltv
{"new_customers":120,"marketing_spend":60000,"arpu_monthly":55,"gross_margin_pct":80,"monthly_churn_pct":4}

cac-ltv returns customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, payback months, and the LTV:CAC ratio investors actually look at.

Roll up the SaaS metrics

saas-metrics computes ending MRR, ARR, net-new MRR, gross churn, net revenue retention, and quick ratio from a starting MRR plus what moved. Check burn separately with runway — months of cash left at the current burn rate — before you assume the growth numbers alone tell the whole story.

Model the raise before you take it

dilution turns a pre-money valuation and a new investment amount into post-money valuation, investor and founder ownership, and new shares issued. The cac-ltv-benchmark template chains cac-ltv → saas-metrics → dilution; startup-runway-burn pairs runway with saas-metrics and a break-even unit count instead.

Tools used in this guide

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