The Briefing

A 32-month CAC payback in the $10-50M ARR segment reveals what hyper-growth obscured for years: most SaaS companies still burn cash to acquire customers long after the zero-rate era ended. The metric matters because it splits efficient growers from those merely trading venture capital for revenue—a distinction investors now price ruthlessly. Dave Kellogg continues his Q1 dissection of private company economics, while new benchmarks explore whether AI-powered security tools can justify their own acquisition costs or simply add another layer to enterprise bloat. The real test isn't whether agentic defense systems work in demos, but whether they compress payback periods or extend them further into the dangerous territory beyond 24 months.