The Briefing

A CAC payback period of 32 months in the $1M–$5M ARR segment signals either patient capital or patient delusion—the difference matters acutely as 2025 checkbooks tighten. This quarter's private-company benchmarks reveal a cohort still pricing growth over efficiency, a posture Dave Kellogg has spent months dismantling through rigorous unit economics analysis that treats burn multiples and magic numbers as non-negotiable transparency metrics. Meanwhile, the AI security benchmark data suggests enterprises may finally differentiate between chatbot theatre and genuinely agentic defense systems, though the capital requirements to build the latter make that 32-month payback look almost quaint. Watch whether public SaaS multiples compress faster than private firms can adjust their burn assumptions.