If you’re leading a startup and can’t answer four questions instantly, you’re flying blind.
The four numbers
- Cash runway: months left at current burn.
- Payback period: months to earn back what it cost to acquire a customer.
- Net revenue retention: what share of last year’s customer revenue you still have, including expansion.
- Burn multiple: how much you burn for each new dollar of ARR.
Most other metrics are detail. These four tell you whether the business works.
The fundraising version
Swap runway for one more question, path to profit: when will you be cash flow positive?, and you have the fastest fundraising-readiness test I know. If you can’t answer all four in about thirty seconds, you’re not ready to pitch.
You raise money to solve problems you understand, not to buy time to find out what the problems are. Investors fund clarity.
If you hesitated on any of these, that’s your homework before anything else.
Scorecard