2 resources from FourWeekMBA we point founders to, and the questions each answers.
✍️ Essay
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Why we picked it
This is the clearest short piece on why "I love fintech" falls short: it argues that fit is about a specific problem you cannot stop thinking about, not a category you find interesting. It leans on Sequoia's Roelof Botha to make the honest point that broad interest wilts under pressure, while a founder tied to one sharp problem keeps going. A good starting point for pressure-testing whether your fit is a real edge or just a comfortable industry you like.
Why we picked it
This lays out Meta's actual advertising revenue per user, and the regional split is the reality check most founders skip: even the most efficient ad business on earth earns roughly 68 dollars per user a year in the US and Canada but only about 4 to 5 dollars in the rest of the world. If your audience is largely in India or other lower ARPU regions, the per-user math on ads is brutal, and this gives you the numbers to run it yourself. Treat it as a sanity check on how many users an ad model would actually need.
From
FourWeekMBAby Gennaro CuofanoAbout a 7 minute read
Meta's worldwide ad revenue per user runs in the low tens of dollars a year, with US and Canada near 68 dollars and Rest of World around 4 to 5 dollars.
Those gaps mean the same product needs far more users to earn the same ad revenue when the audience sits outside high spending regions.
If a user is worth a few dollars a year in ads, you can back into the traffic you would need, and often it is much larger than a subscription would require.
