In the economics of IT products, there are two important metrics.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) - the cost of acquiring one customer.

and LTV (Lifetime Value) - the revenue that customer brings over the entire time of using the product.

Traditionally, it is believed that their ratio should be 3:1 (or simply 3).

As far as I know, this gold standard came from the US venture industry.

The logic is:
- 1 part covers the acquisition costs
- 2 parts cover operations and support
- 3 parts form the real profit of the business


If the ratio is lower (e.g., 2)

the company breaks even or spends investments to stay afloat with almost no chance of growth

The nuance is that the LTV/CAC ratio is often calculated incorrectly.

Let's take an example.

Imagine a simple cloud service for accounting with three plans.

The average LTV to CAC ratio is 3.8

(an excellent result)

BUT!

If you look inside, the picture may be frightening:

Plan "Start" for 2500 rub/month
- 60 customers
- ratio 1.1

Plan "Pro" for 10,000 rub/month
- 30 customers
- ratio 3.9

Plan "Corp" for 50,000 rub/month
- 10 customers
- ratio 20.0


60% of customers barely cover acquisition costs.

Even if the number of customers on the "Start" plan grows by 30% (to 78), but at least 1 customer from "Corp" leaves...

product revenue will drop by 1%, and profit - already by 6%

(while the average LTV/CAC is still above 3)

By scaling the wrong segment, the team scales operational chaos, not money

Therefore, averaging the indicator across the entire base is risky

Besides averaging, calculations are often distorted by 2 more factors:

Understated CAC
When we only count the advertising budget but do not account for sales salaries and onboarding (which can add another 35-60% to CAC)

Ignoring churn:
When we do not account for real churn beyond 1 year (thinking that such a customer is with us forever)


To avoid living in illusions, it is useful to calculate the economics separately for each plan

(so as not to grow low-margin segments).

And check the payback period of customers more often.

If it is below 6 (B2C) or 12 (B2B) months - the model is too slow and unlikely to take off

In short...

Look at the numbers from different angles

This is not a panacea, but a must-have for entering the professional league

#packages_bundling