Today's frame
A 14-month CAC payback period sits squarely at median for mid-market companies, which tells you everything about why growth efficiency has replaced growth-at-all-costs as the rallying cry in 2024.
The metric captures what burn rate obscures: how quickly revenue from new customers covers the cost of acquiring them, a question that matters whether you're venture-backed or bootstrapped. Today's selections wrestle with the tension between speed and sustainability—fresh benchmarks reveal where you stand, rising voices from the venture world reframe what "good" actually means, and ongoing debates probe whether 14 months is defensible or dangerous depending on your market position. Watch how AI tooling compresses these timelines in the year ahead.
