3 builders who never spoke to each other

Judge a channel by what the next customer costs

Convincing the first five people is the easy part, and the real question is whether you can keep acquiring profitably month after month, so pick a customer who is cheap to reach, quick to convert and light on support. Measure how long the spend takes to pay itself back rather than trusting a lifetime value ratio, and prefer channels where each further visit costs less than the last over ones that charge the same every time.

The method

1. 01

   Choose a customer type that is cheap to reach, quick to convert and light on support, and keep acquisition cost below what that customer pays you over time.

2. 02

   Judge acquisition efficiency by how long the spend takes to pay itself back rather than by a lifetime-value to acquisition-cost ratio.

3. 03

   Hold acquisition cost under a dollar per unique visitor if you want freemium self-serve growth to pay for itself.

4. 04

   Favour acquisition channels where each further ranking or visit costs less than the last, over channels that demand the same spend every time you want traffic.

5. 05

   Treat the first sales as the easy part; the real question is whether you can acquire new customers profitably month after month.

What it returned

• 3

  He notes the widely repeated threshold of a 3:1 ratio traces to a single blog post over a decade old, with others arguing 5 or 1, and says he does not believe in lifetime value at all.

• 2022

  OpenView's 2022 benchmarks put traditional B2B acquisition at $1 to $5 for each visitor, while a typical freemium product earns only $1 to $2 of first-year revenue per visitor.

• Rob Walling's framing: a product people want still fails if marketing it costs more than the customer returns.

• The first links and rankings are the hardest to earn and the investment per keyword and per visit falls steeply once you are good at it; blogging, social, events and conferences and most content marketing compound the same way.

Sources

• Ultimate validationJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · After your first dollar · undated
• SSEBITDA—A steady-state profit metric for SaaS companiesJason Cohen · longform.asmartbear.com · Two flaws in EBITDASM · 2025-04-20
• 7 Unlikely Recommendations for Startups & EntrepreneursRand Fishkin · sparktoro.com · #5: Find Customer Acquisition Channels that Build a Flywheel · 2013-08-04
• Product-led marketing - by Kyle Poyar - Lenny's NewsletterKyle Poyar · lennysnewsletter.com · How to get traffic and users for your product at a near-$0 CAC · 2023-03-28