Capital Efficiency · 8 min read
Brand Budget Needs a Covenant, Not a Yearly Re-Litigation
CFO support for brand spend dropped from 80% to 69% in a year with zero new evidence it stopped working. The fix is structural, not another deck.
Capital Efficiency · 9 min read
The Case for Capitalizing Marketing Spend, Not Expensing It
Marketing is the first budget cut because GAAP treats it as pure expense. A pending IAS 38 revision opens a real case for capitalizing parts of it.
Capital Efficiency · 9 min read
Gross-Margin-Adjusted CAC Is the Conversation You Haven't Had With Finance
A 4:1 LTV:CAC at 80% margin and at 55% margin are different businesses. Usage pricing and AI COGS are making blended CAC dangerously misleading.
Capital Efficiency · 8 min read
Rebuilding the Marketing Budget From Magic Number, Not % of Revenue
Most B2B budgets are still set as 8-9% of ARR, negotiated up or down. Rebuilding from CAC payback and Magic Number changes what gets funded first.
Capital Efficiency · 11 min read
Expansion Revenue Costs Half as Much. Most Marketing Budgets Don't Reflect That.
Median new-logo CAC is $2 per $1 of new ARR. Expansion CAC is $1. For most $50M+ B2B companies, expansion is more than half the revenue at half the cost — and a rounding error on the marketing budget.
Capital Efficiency · 11 min read
CMO Tenure Is 25 Months. Marketing Payback Is Longer. That's the Problem.
Strategic marketing investments compound on a 36–48 month horizon. The median CMO is replaced before payback. The structural fix isn't about CMOs — it's about the operating horizon.
Capital Efficiency · 10 min read
Rule of 40 Inside the Marketing P&L
Median SaaS Rule of 40 sits at 28. Only 20% clear 40. Marketing is the largest discretionary line item — yet most marketing budgets are defended on growth alone.
Capital Efficiency · 8 min read
Flat CAC at 8x Scale Isn't a Paid Ads Win. It's a Measurement Win.
Scaling 8x while keeping CAC flat isn't a media buying win. It happens when you stop trusting platform reports and start measuring what customers actually do.
Capital Efficiency · 12 min read
Why Your CAC Is Wrong (5 Errors That Inflate or Hide It)
Most reported CAC numbers blend, mis-period, and inherit attribution errors. Here are the 5 calculation mistakes B2B SaaS teams make most — and the corrected approach.