Keywords · Acquisition · Finance

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The fully loaded cost of acquiring one paying customer, including marketing spend, sales cost, and tooling, divided by the number of customers acquired in that period.

Why it matters

CAC tells a founder whether growth is profitable before a single dollar of revenue is collected, and it is the denominator every unit-economics decision depends on.

Example

A founder spends $6,000 on ads and sales tools in a month and closes 30 customers, giving a blended CAC of $200 per customer.