Who This Helps
You’re a founder operator. Revenue is growing, but cash feels flat. You need to decide which experiment to run next—without drowning in spreadsheets or gut feelings. This is for you.
Mini Case
Meet Ben. His SaaS company just hit $120k MRR. But cash is barely moving. He runs a quick unit economics snapshot (from the Founder Finance Basics Mission Pack) and sees his CAC payback is 14 months—way above his 9-month target. One channel, paid ads, is eating 40% of his budget with a 12% conversion rate. Ben pauses the ad experiment and shifts focus to improving onboarding for organic users. In 7 days, he tests a new email sequence. Result: activation jumps 15%, and cash burn drops 20%.
Do This Now (5 Steps)
- Pull your unit economics snapshot. Grab your last 3 months of revenue, cost per customer, and churn. Write them on one page.
- Find your longest payback channel. Which customer source takes the most months to recover acquisition cost? That’s your first target.
- List your next 3 experiments. Write down what you’d test next (pricing, channel, feature). Rank them by potential impact on payback.
- Pick the one that moves cash fastest. If you shorten payback by 2 months, how much cash do you save? Calculate it.
- Run that experiment this week. Set a 5-day timer. No perfection. Just a clear yes/no decision by Friday.
Avoid These Traps
- Falling in love with a channel. Just because ads worked last quarter doesn’t mean they’re safe now. Check payback monthly.
- Ignoring churn. A 5% monthly churn rate kills growth faster than any experiment. Fix retention first.
- Overcomplicating the model. You don’t need a 50-row spreadsheet. One page with 3 numbers (revenue, CAC, churn) is enough.
- Waiting for perfect data. You’ll never have it. Use 80% accurate numbers and decide. Speed beats precision here.
- Running 3 experiments at once. You’ll learn nothing. Pick one, test it, measure it, then move on.
Your Win by Friday
By end of week, you’ll have one clear experiment running—the one that directly improves your cash position. You’ll know exactly why you chose it, and you’ll have a simple metric to track. No more guessing. Just faster, calmer decisions.