Video · about 22 minutes

Consumer Startup Metrics | Startup School

Tom Blomfield · Y Combinator Startup School Free Beginner

A YC group partner walks through unit economics the way you actually reason about them early on, per customer revenue minus the variable cost of serving that customer, before you have clean data to plug in. It is short and plain spoken, which is exactly what you want when you are estimating rather than reporting. Treat it as a way to sanity check your assumptions, not a promise about your real numbers.

• Unit economics is revenue per customer minus the variable cost of serving that customer, and scaling while that number is negative is the dangerous move.
• Separate organic growth from paid growth early, because leaning on paid channels hides whether people actually want the product.
• Look for the moment a user gets real value, since that magic moment is what makes the rest of your acquisition math hold up.