A startling amount of people are simply delighted when they acquire a user at all, or do so for 5% cheaper than they did last month (at least they’re trying)
Disproof
A positive cashflow or a path to it
Consequences
Problem 0: ROAS not being considered at all
You definitely will spend more money than you need, possibly more than you can afford
It is very possible to start acquiring customers for more than their gross revenue
Problem 1: Calculations are woefully incomplete
You probably forgot it costs money to operate customers, approved an acquisition strategy with hair-thin CAC-LTV and now can’t get rid of them whilst they rack up support or server costs
This is often the way that scaling companies are killed
Causes
Very likely because acquisition costs and operation costs are distributed across multiple reporting lines (which already reduces opportunities to consolidate and optimise costs)
Further exacerbated by poor alignment in departmental objectives
Co-morbid with poor organisational information discipline
Approaches
If nobody is doing joined-up thinking, start there
If nobody is directly responsible after the thinking has been done, continue there
You will probably have to tackle the failures in organisational design and incentives for any lasting improvements