Podcast

How to Calculate CAC, LTV, Retention and Churn (Startups Unplugged with Paul Orlando)

Omer Khan (host), Paul Orlando (guest) · The SaaS Podcast (SaaS Club) Free Beginner

A founder-voice conversation, not a metrics lecture, on why a pretty LTV:CAC ratio can still sink you if the cash takes years to come back. Paul Orlando (author of Growth Units) makes the case for modeling LTV as a stream of cash flows so you can see the real payback moment, and for breaking CAC out by channel instead of trusting one blended number. It is a good starting point for hearing how experienced founders reason about payback before they obsess over the ratio.

  • A strong ratio is worthless if payback takes years, because you can go out of business waiting to recoup the spend.
  • Treat the 1:3 CAC to LTV figure as a starting benchmark, not a rule, and break CAC down by channel since channels scale differently.
  • Model LTV as cash flows over time, not a single static number, so you can see when acquisition cost is actually recovered.
Open on saasclub.io ↗

The question it answers

  1. What does a healthy LTV to CAC ratio look like for an early bootstrapped Indian SaaS startup, and when is it too early to even care?

Read with it

  1. This is the piece that answers the second half of your question head on: when is it too early to even care. Skok's site is the... For Entrepreneurs (David Skok) Essay Why Early-Stage Startups Should Wait to Calculate LTV:CAC, and How They Should Use It When They Do Jared Sleeper and David Skok
  2. US benchmarks quietly assume US ACVs and US venture cash, so they mislead an Indian founder. This piece grounds the numbers in... upGrowth Article CAC Benchmarks for Indian B2B SaaS by ARR Band: The Real Numbers for 2026 Amol Ghemud
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →