LTV/CAC ≥3 holds only to ~70K users; at SOM it falls to 1.76× and a 17-month payback. The constraint is cheap-channel capacity, not budget.
Volta — Anchor Launch CAC at Scale
Situation
The 25–34 anchor is the growth point, but does the launch scale economically when taken to SOM.
Task
I owned the question of whether the anchor segment stays economically viable once the launch is scaled to the serviceable market.
Actions
- Marginal-CAC curves by channel (saturation).
- Cheap-first greedy allocation, blended LTV/CAC and payback vs scale.
- Break-even scale, channel-mix and capacity analysis.
Result
- The LTV/CAC ≥3 gate holds only to ≈ 70K users (31% of SOM).
- At SOM (225K): LTV/CAC 1.76×, 17.0-month payback — both gates fail; the marginal SOM user costs €80.
- The constraint is cheap-channel capacity: referral €18→61 (capacity 40K), paid social €58→368 (200K).
Recommendations
- Don’t plan the anchor to SOM on a paid budget (hold).
- Raise referral and in-app conversion (capacity + CAC), cap paid at scale.
- Replan SOM around what cheap channels can carry.
Documentation
Charts
Source: github.com/NikitaBoyarkin/volta-banking — 22 projects; figures recomputed from the repo's own datasets (data/*.csv) via its analysis scripts. Funnel counts from data/volta_funnel_data.csv (10,000 users); A/B, retention, segmentation, churn, RFM, CLV, attribution, anomalies, spend, support, NPS, JTBD, unit economics, premium, KYC deep-dive, referral, assisted CAC, FX sourcing, premium offers, anchor CAC and dormant win-back follow the published project narrative (README + part pages).
Anchor launch: LTV/CAC vs scale
Blended LTV/CAC as the anchor 25–34 launch scales (cheap-first greedy allocation). The 3.0 gate holds only to ~70K users.
Key takeaways - The LTV/CAC ≥3 gate holds only to ≈70K users; at SOM (225K) it falls to 1.76 with a 17.0-month payback.
- The constraint is cheap-channel capacity, not budget: blended CAC rises €20.5 (10K) → €52.5 (SOM).
Anchor marginal CAC by channel
Marginal CAC range (€) and capacity (users) by acquisition channel for the anchor. Cheap-channel capacity runs out first.
Key takeaways - Referral is cheap (€18→61) but low-capacity (~40K); paid social gives volume (200K) but marginal CAC rises to €368.
- Cheap-channel capacity (referral 40K + in-app 120K) is the constraint, not budget: assisted €119–267 at 20K capacity.