Why your CFO secretly hates your growth metrics
Original: The dark side of growth metrics
Summary
Timo Dechau explores how growth dashboards often ignore cost and margin realities.
Who This Is For
Marketing Analysts
Business Analysts
Growth Marketers
Key Takeaways
- Growth metrics without cost context create a dangerous blind spot that can lead to profitable-looking businesses going bankrupt
- Every growth metric needs a 'shadow branch' that includes unit economics like COGS, gross margins, and true customer acquisition costs
- ROAS alone isn't enough - you need to factor in cost of goods sold and fulfillment costs to understand real profitability
- Popular growth metric trees from companies like Duolingo are missing the cost side that determines actual business viability
- Building analytics dashboards that ignore contribution margins skews decision-making toward vanity metrics over sustainable growth
Tools & Technologies
Miro Board Analytics dashboards Metric trees ROAS tracking tools
Topics Covered
growth-metrics analysis unit-economics startups
Ready to dive deeper?
Read Full Article on timodechau.com
