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Comment by jessedhillon | Hacker News Reader

One that I saw on a startup founders mailing list several years back:

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founder: I have a modest, growing business, but the marketing costs are rather high. What can to do to bring that cost down?

wannabe-founder: whoa, you really failed to validate the core concept and establish your basic value prop. You're going to see an astronomical CAC until you ultimately pivot and achieve LGTM or BBQ. I'd recommend you shut down and find another vertical.

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This really resonates with me. Without ranting, I kind of think a lot of wannabe's have been sold a dream and a formula, and when it doesn't work, they blame the dream (it's always been 1 in 1,000,000 odds!), or the formula (as per above), rather than the fact they don't have any business or technical savvy.

I had to look up the alphabet soup, but couldn't find everything.

CAC : Cost to Aquire a Customer

LGTM : Looks Good To Me?

BBQ : ? Not a clue other than a delicious way to prepare meat. Maybe something Quality?

Heh yeah I was trying to convey the gist rather than the actual conversation. He threw a bunch of acronyms at the guy, quoted him the lean startup recipe and with a straight face, told a guy with a viable, profitable business to fold and start over.

Hah! Thank you. I'm sure the actual barrage of acronyms were just as relevant!

I would like to make up an businessy acronym for BBQ.

BBQ : Business to Business Quotient (or Quantity). A measure of how much of your income comes from B2B transactions as opposed to direct to consumer transactions.

I feel the real WTF is that here this guy was making money and had actual customers, but he's being told to shut it down bc he didn't follow a formula.

Well although I'm not dismissing that the guy was talking out of his ass and giving bad advice, sometimes when you don't properly validate your concept or value proposition and the CAC really is too high, you can't reach a good BBQ and you have to look to exploit another vertical. Just that he uses 'hip' words or whatever doesn't mean he could be telling a harsh truth.

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