Forget revenue and burn rate. Early-stage founders should track these critical signals

If you ask most investors what they look for in early-stage startups, they’ll probably tell you about the big four: revenue growth, burn, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and month-on-month growth. These are the numbers that travel from founder to VC to IC (individual contributor) and end up in term sheet conversations, if you get that far.

And yet, these numbers are limited predictors of which early-stage companies actually break out.