[paulorlando]

> the bar for signal quality is just really low During the Covid-era when money was flowing more readily I worked with a series A startup founder on improving their unit economics. They were spending a lot on customer acquisition but after my analysis I realized that they were losing money on each customer. It didn't matter how long you ran the timeline, with churn they never broke even on new customers. When I recommended cutting marketing spend, they told me that they needed to show topline growth -- because that's what investors were looking for. And they knew from experience that the investors didn't dig into the numbers enough to realize they were growing themselves broke.

[bloppe]

Funny anecdote, but that's a bit of a different issue. Actual money moving around is a relatively strong signal. Those investors just aren't looking at the full picture.