These are guide ranges, not rules. Your category, stage, market and timing will move them, so use them to work out where to look, not to mark yourself pass or fail.
| Metric | Benchmark | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-revenue: pre-sell conversion | 2%+ from cold traffic is often encouraging for lower-AOV offers | Test with a landing page and about $500 of Meta ads at your proposed price. Real pre-orders and paid sales beat surveys and compliments. |
| Pre-revenue: first production run | 60%+ of the first 100-500 units, with low returns and repeat intent | Sell-through of 30-60% with mixed feedback needs a clear improvement path. Under about 30%, with high returns and no repeat intent, is usually a red flag. |
| Pre-revenue: product-market fit signals | 40%+ "very disappointed" on the Sean Ellis test (100+ relevant customers) | Back it with behaviour: for consumables, a 90-day repeat rate north of roughly 30% can be a strong sign, and NPS above about 50 helps. Three or four signals lining up is fit. |
| Pre-revenue: first-order economics | Contribution margin positive at small scale | The margin must cover blended acquisition cost and leave you profitable on, or shortly after, the first order. Not the third. |
| $0-$1M: the five numbers | Revenue, conversion rate, CAC, gross margin and cash balance | Everything else is noise at this stage. Platform analytics, basic tracking and CAPI are enough of a stack. |
| $0-$1M: margin targets | Gross margin 65-75%; contribution margin 47-63% before marketing | EBITDA anywhere from -5% to 8% is fine around $1M, as long as the unit economics are sound. |
| $1M-$10M: what to add | LTV:CAC, repeat rate, AOV trends, channel efficiency and inventory turnover | Move to a cross-channel dashboard with post-purchase surveys and LTV tracking. Healthy MER runs 1.5-2.5x at $1M-$5M and 2.5-3.5x at $5M-$10M. |
| From ~$3M: cohorts and incrementality | From about $3M in revenue | LTV cohort analysis should be running by $3M, and incrementality testing often starts around then too. Branded search's median incremental ROAS is about 0.70x, whatever the platform reports. |
| $10M-$50M: what to add | Cohort analysis, blended CAC trend and EBITDA margin | Add attribution modelling, a dedicated data person and BI tools. Profitability is non-negotiable by now: target 10%+ EBITDA, and 3x+ MER once past about $10M. |
| $50M+: what to add | Market share, brand awareness, LTV by category and ROIC | Run a data warehouse, advanced BI and a data team. Target 15-25%+ EBITDA margins, which largely drive the valuation multiple. |
| Revenue per employee | Commonly $300K-$800K a head; very lean brands run well above | Quad Lock ran at about $2M a head while scaling from a single-digit team into the double digits, which suited its product and model - it isn't a target every brand can or should hit. The useful test is whether each new hire removes a real bottleneck. |
How to use these benchmarks
These ranges are guides, not guarantees or rules. They are drawn from The DTC Playbook and Rob Ward's experience taking Quad Lock from $0 to a $500M exit, cross-checked against widely cited DTC data. The point is not the exact number - it is whether you sit well above or below it, and what to do about the gap. Your category, stage, market and timing all move them, so judge yourself against your own trend as well.
Last reviewed: October 2026. Benchmarks are refreshed as the playbook is updated.
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Term Product-Market Fit
Term Conversion Rate
Term Customer Acquisition Cost
Term Contribution Margin
Term Marketing Efficiency Ratio
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