Note: This story is a repost from the BMW i Ventures blog
Imagine you drive to the gas station and pump your car with gas…except, this time, your weekly pit stop won’t affect the environment whatsoever. …
A brief history of an investment in Software Motor Company
Note: Opinions are my own, this is not an official BMW i Ventures post
BMW i Ventures just invested in Software Motor company — here’s my behind-the-scenes take on how that happened, and why we’re so excited about the company.
The Oracle of Electricity
When I first met Ryan Morris, currently Executive Chairman of Software Motor Company (SMC), it was at a dinner three years ago in San Francisco. At the time, Ryan was an activist hedge fund investor, and had been elected Executive Chairman of Sevcon, a 50-year old electric power-train company primarily focused on fork-lifts and other small industrial applications. …
For SaaS companies, tracking the Expected Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV) is one of the most critical key performance indicators (KPIs) that they can track, because it has massive implications on the unit economics, and therefore viability, of their businesses.
For both transactional, and recurring revenues (subscription) businesses the ratio between Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC — how much you pay to get the customer in the door), and the LTV of that customer (how much money they will deliver to you) → the CAC:LTV ratio, is the turning point that defines if they have a good business or not.
In simple terms, if it costs you $1 to get a customer in the door and they pay you $100 of Gross Margin over their life, that is probably a good business; but if it costs you $100 to get a customer in the door, and they only give you $1 of Gross Margin over their life as a customer, you should probably shut that business down. …
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