Key takeaways
- The six metrics every B2B SaaS board cares about
- How to compute CAC the way your CFO computes it
- How to build a payback chart your investors will actually trust
- How to defend channel-level investments using LTV-to-CAC by source
- A ready-to-clone Cometly dashboard you can ship in an hour
Chapter 01
The six tiles
Pipeline, ARR, Net New ARR, CAC, LTV, and CAC Payback. Six tiles, top of the dashboard, with quarter-over-quarter deltas. That's the entire board-update header.
- Pipeline: total open opportunity value, current quarter
- ARR: trailing-month run-rate, sourced from Stripe
- Net New ARR: new + expansion, sourced from Stripe
- CAC: blended marketing + sales cost per new customer
- LTV: average customer revenue over their predicted lifetime
- CAC Payback: months to recoup CAC at current gross margin
Chapter 02
The one chart
Underneath the tiles, a single chart: cumulative cohort payback by acquisition month. It shows that each cohort eventually pays back, and how long it took. This is the chart that wins board meetings.
Chapter 03
Defend the channel mix
When the board asks why you're spending on a particular channel, answer with one number: LTV-to-CAC ratio for that channel. If the ratio is above 3, you're spending the right amount or not enough. If it's below, the conversation gets shorter.
Cometly · Guide