I haven&#x27;t checked how the magical 3 is arrived at but assuming it&#x27;s reasonable I think a more valuable exercise would have been to hold the 3 constant and plug in the values you&#x27;re most sure about and then speculate about the missing variables.
For ZocDoc with its 1-10k CAC range you could then speculate if they could reach the CAC that would lead to the magical &gt;3.<p>So basically I think it&#x27;s more valuable to use this as a tool to check if you think a startup can realistically optimize towards the &gt;3 or if that is futile (see how they can influence LTV and CAC respectively) instead of trying to &quot;rank&quot; startups by plugging in LTV&#x2F;CAC if you&#x27;re not sure about them.<p>Interesting read either way.