- A founder's dashboard is ten numbers with targets, read in fifteen minutes — anything more becomes scrolling, not deciding.
- Order: money first (MER, contribution margin, cash), then acquisition (nCAC, spend concentration), then the funnel, then retention.
- Every number earns its place by having an action attached. If a metric never changes what you do on Monday, delete it.
The 7:15am phone-triage ritual is real: founders check numbers before coffee. The failure isn't ignorance — it's that most check platform numbers, because those are the ones that arrive by themselves. Here's the ten-number Monday read that keeps the whole machine honest, with the question each answers.
Money (the non-negotiables)
| # | Number | The Monday question | Red flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MER (blended) | Did last week's total spend earn its keep? | Below your break-even (1 ÷ CM%) two weeks running |
| 2 | Contribution margin % | After COGS, shipping, fees, returns — what's left per ₹100? | Drifting down while revenue grows (discount creep) |
| 3 | Cash runway / working capital | Can we fund the inventory the ads are selling? | Reorder date lands inside payment-cycle gap |
Acquisition
| # | Number | The Monday question | Red flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | New-customer CAC (net of RTO) | What did a kept first order really cost? | nCAC rising while platform CPA is flat — attribution drift |
| 5 | Spend concentration | How much of spend sits in the top 2 campaigns? | One campaign >40% of spend without margin proof |
| 6 | Prospecting vs retargeting split | Are we buying growth or re-buying our own audience? | Retargeting CPA cheaper AND share creeping up — saturation |
The funnel (one number, honestly)
7 · Page-view → purchase rate. Impressions and CTR are the media buyer's business. The founder needs one funnel number: of the people who reached the site from ads, how many bought? Below ~1.5% for a sub-₹1,500 AOV product, your ads are pouring water into a leaking bucket, and the fix is the page, not the targeting.
Retention (where D2C margins actually live)
| # | Number | The Monday question | Red flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Repeat rate (60/90-day) | Do first buyers come back inside the window that funds CAC? | Cohort repeat falling while acquisition scales — churn machine |
| 9 | Owned-revenue share | What % of revenue came from email/SMS/direct (free)? | Paid share climbing past ~60% — rented growth |
The one that catches lies
10 · The reconciliation gap: platform-claimed revenue ÷ store-recorded revenue. Healthy accounts run 1.1–1.4× (some double-claiming is structural). When it jumps, something changed — attribution windows, a tracking break, iOS updates, or a platform quietly taking credit for organic. This single ratio is the smoke alarm for every other number on this list.
What deliberately isn't here
- Platform ROAS — it's an input to the media buyer's ranking, not a founder decision.
- CTR, CPM, CPC — diagnostics for creatives, invisible at the P&L altitude.
- Follower counts, sessions, "engagement" — if it can't move a rupee this quarter, it isn't a Monday number.
The hard part was never knowing which numbers matter — it's that computing 4, 8, 9 and 10 requires joining ad accounts, the store, payments and the cost sheet. That join is either a weekly analyst-day… or plumbing that runs itself.