The metrics, "rules of thumb", and "conventional wisdom" that apply to SaaS businesses do not extrapolate well to non-software subscription businesses. The main reason for this is SaaS has enormous gross margins, often upwards of 90%. This makes revenue a reasonable proxy for (gross) profit. The margins on physical goods are tiny by comparison, for food often in the low single digits, and subletting real estate is not much higher (if at alL). When profit is such a small percentage of revenue you have to be a lot more detailed in the math for lifetime value, acquisition cost, and so on, and you can no longer rely on simple formulas based on revenue and run rate.

While I agree with many of your points, I'd add that adding in the additional metrics you mention (lifetime value, acquisition cost, etc.) would make Blue Apron look even worse.

My main point is that basically the only thing Blue Apron had going for it was topline growth, but by pretty much every other metric it looked horrible and unsustainable. SaaS quick ratio alone should have clearly highlighted how unsustainable that topline growth was given their through-the-roof churn rates.

I gotta say, I do hope Blue Apron survives. After all, if it goes under, who will sponsor the entire podcast ecosystem?

Zip Recruiter, until they fail also. I honestly use the ads in my podcasts as a way to know what companies not to invest in. Anyone want a used Quip toothbrush or some Me Undies?

Good thing you didn’t buy an Audible subscription, or use an Epson printer, FreshBooks invoicing, LastPass. Other podcast ads I’ve heard are for AmEx, Deloitte, LinkedIn, various conferences and educational institutions, and more. I agree that certain names always show up, but I’ve also been quite surprised over the years by who’s enlightened enough to advertise in podcasts. I’ll admit, though, I never did buy that Harry’s shaving kit. ;-)

One advertisement I've heard a few times is the "Drive sober or get pulled over" campaign from the NHTSA.

But to JohnJamesRambo's credit, there are a lot of people who don't 'invest' in the US government either.

Recently I've mostly been hearing one from the Irish government telling residents of Ireland using a UK drivers license to convert it to an Irish one immediately (they'll become invalid if there's a no-deal Brexit).

Of course, I'm not sure I'd want to invest in Brexit, so maybe it still holds.

Those are free placements.

I was just about to post the same thing. Clearly a lot of companies do negative-EV blanket podcast advertising to juice their customer numbers before an IPO. Sonos was another famous example (although I like Sonos a lot). There's no way ZipRecruiter is getting payback from their insane ad spend.

It's been a long time ago that I heard the last Blue Apron ad in a podcast.

Seems as if the stick was handed over to a suitcase company whose "smart" suitcases cannot be checked in to flights due to batteries, that already-mentioned annoying prefab website company and underwear manufacturers offering to put decorative metals around my testicles.

Maybe Hello Fresh will expand their sponsorship from Youtube Sloggers...

Square space maybe

Definitely Squarespace and Skillshare. I still can feel the moment where I can exactly predict the Youtuber or Podcaster is about to launch into their canned sales pitch for how life got so much better and easier when they learned how to do xyz on zyx platform.

I'm surprised Youtube made the "tap here to move forward 30 seconds" feature because it always takes me right to the end of the "native ad"

>VCs these days are very focused on the "SaaS Quick Ratio"

VCs are focused on whatever metric reels in the next layer of suckers. GAAP exists for a reason.

Except that VCs themselves are highly focused on SaaS Quick Ratio to decide where to invest their own capital. That's quite different than coming up with some vanity metric to hoist a loser onto the public.