What Is CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)?
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total sales and marketing spend divided by the number of new customers acquired in the same period. For sustainable growth, CAC payback should be under 12 months for SMB SaaS and under 18 months for enterprise.
Why it matters: this metric helps founders separate random variation from real business movement. Decisions improve when the metric is tracked in trend form, not one-off snapshots.
How to use it in practice: pair this metric with at least one upstream and one downstream signal. That way, you can explain why it changed and what action should come next.
In AI Co-Founder, this term appears in context with related indicators so you can move from definition to decision without switching tools.