Agent skill · business finance · anthropics
unit-economics
Analyze unit economics for PE targets — ARR cohorts, LTV/CAC, net retention, payback periods, revenue quality, and margin waterfall. Essential for software/SaaS, recurring revenue, and subscription businesses. Use when evaluating revenue quality, building a cohort analysis, or assessing customer economics. Triggers on "unit economics", "cohort analysis", "ARR analysis", "LTV CAC", "net retention", "revenue quality", or "customer economics".
Why this skill is useful
Provides detailed methodologies and benchmarks for analyzing SaaS unit economics that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
About 3k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-04. 34,059 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Unit Economics Analysis Workflow Step 1: Identify Business Model Determine the revenue model to tailor the analysis: SaaS / Subscription: ARR, net retention, cohorts Recurring services: Contract value, renewal rates, upsell Transaction / usage-based: Revenue per transaction, volume trends, take rate Hybrid: Break down by revenue stream Step 2: Core Metrics ARR / Revenue Quality ARR bridge: Beginning ARR → New → Expansion → Contraction → Churn → Ending ARR ARR by cohort: Vintage analysis — how does each annual cohort retain and grow? Revenue concentration: Top 10/20/50 customers as % of total Revenue by type: Recurring vs. non-recurring vs. professional services Contract structure: ACV distribution, multi-year %, auto-renewal % Customer Economics CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): Total S&M spend / new customers acquired LTV (Lifetime Value): (ARPU × Gross Margin) / Churn Rate LTV:CAC ratio: Target >3x for healthy businesses CAC payback period: Months to recover acquisition cost Blended vs. segmented: Break down by customer segment (enterprise vs. SMB vs. mid-market) Retention & Expansion Gross retention: % of beginning ARR retained (excludes expansion) Net retention (NDR): % of beginning ARR retained including expansion Logo churn: % of customers lost Dollar churn: % of revenue lost (often different from logo churn) Expansion rate: Upsell + cross-sell as % of beginning ARR Cohort Analysis Build a cohort matrix showing: Cohort Year 0 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- 2020 $1.0M $1.1M $1.2M $1.1M 2021 $1.5M $1.7M $1.8M 2022 $2.0M $2.3M 2023 $3.0M Show both absolute $ and indexed (Year 0 = 100%) views. Margin Waterfall Revenue → Gross Profit → Contribution Margin → EBITDA Fully loaded unit economics: what does it cost to acquire, serve, and retain a customer? Gross margin by revenue stream (subscription vs. services vs. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills anthropics/unit-economics