Unit economics
How every Action posts a Cost, how Costs roll up into margin per Offer, payback per Play, and lifetime value, and which numbers gate paid spend.
Unit economics answers one question: does each sale earn more than it costs? Every Action posts its Cost, so the answer is computed from the ledger, never estimated.
Every Action posts a Cost
An Action that costs anything posts a Cost to the Startup it ran in. Each Cost has a kind.
| Kind | Examples |
|---|---|
model | Model calls, priced per token |
upstream | Calls to outside data and execution services |
human | Minutes a Human spends on a Task, an Approval, or a rescue |
platform | Compute, storage, messages, and the platform's share |
shared | A slice of a cost many Startups share, split by the cost.allocation Policy |
A capability bought from a sibling posts at its transfer price. A Startup that runs on its founder's nights shows that cost. Cost per Action explains how each Cost settles.
From Costs to units
Costs roll up along the records that caused them: an Action belongs to an Order, a Customer, an Offer, or a Play. Five Metrics read the rollup.
| Metric | Reads |
|---|---|
| Contribution margin | What each paid Offer keeps after its delivery and acquisition Cost |
| Fully loaded acquisition cost | Everything a Play spends per outside Customer, agent and shared Cost included |
| Acquisition payback | How many days of contribution repay that acquisition cost |
| Lifetime value | Contribution per outside Customer, capped at 24 months |
| Cost coverage | Whether outside revenue pays for the whole Startup |
Lifetime value divided by fully loaded acquisition cost gives the ratio investors ask for. Both sides use contribution, never revenue.
Free is never zero
A Play with no ad spend still costs money. An answer-engine Play spends model calls drafting Pages, upstream calls tracking citations, and minutes of review.
An Agent as a Service that handles returns for online stores charges $79 a month. Its directory listings acquire Customers for $0 in spend, yet $38 each in agent and review Cost. At $52 of monthly contribution, that Play pays back in 22 days.
The payback gate
Paid Plays open only when payback holds. The Setting payback.paidGate defaults to day one: the first payment repays the acquisition cost. Free Plays answer to payback.freeGate, judged against their agent and shared Cost.
A founder can override the gate by funding a Demand Budget. That records an investment Decision with a target and a stop rule. The Marketing Team spends it as demand budgets describe.
Modeled, then measured
Before Live, the launch check economics.modeled requires an estimate for each paid Offer's margin and the lead Play's payback. Each estimate names its source: a sibling's actuals, the Portfolio's prior, or a stated guess. Offer.publish refuses an Offer whose median Customer falls below the contribution floor.
At Repeatable, the same numbers come from actuals. Every paid Offer contributes, the lead Play pays back within 30 days, and outside revenue covers fully loaded Cost.
The monthly review
After each Monthly close, the Finance Lead reviews unit economics. It flags any Offer below zero contribution and any Play past its payback gate. Then it writes one Decision: reprice, cut the Cost, pause the Play, or hold.
Next
- Policies: the allocation rule and the lifetime-value horizon.
- Finance playbook: where the review sits in the month.
- Cost per Action: how each Cost is reserved, settled and rolled up.