Unit Economics
The revenue and cost of a single customer or transaction, showing whether the business works at scale.
Unit economics reduce a business to one customer: what they pay, what they cost to acquire, and what they cost to serve. If a single unit loses money, scale multiplies the loss.
The core figures are CAC, LTV, gross margin and payback period. Together they answer whether growth creates or destroys value.
Early-stage unit economics are usually poor and expected to be. What investors look for is a credible path to improvement — evidence that CAC falls or margin rises with scale, rather than an assertion that it will.