Really good stuff from Mark Suster.  I remember a time when this would have been at the top of the HN front-page, instead of the latest general news story from the NYT or whatever.  Too bad that the Eternal September finally got to HN, despite pg&#x27;s efforts.  Still, the &quot;old&quot; HN had a good run.<p>As for the article itself... the one metric that he didn&#x27;t mention explicitly, but sort of indirectly alluded to, is CoGS - Cost of Goods Sold[1].  CoGS is directly related to your per-time profit margin and can explain how you can have the scenario he described where <i>revenue</i> exceeds <i>customer acquisition cost</i> but you still lose money.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cost_of_goods_sold" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cost_of_goods_sold</a><p>Edit: to be fair, the front-page is actually full of fairly interesting stuff ATM.  But man, is there WAY more &quot;general news&quot; most days, than there used to be.