Business Metrics and Unit Economics Questions

Evaluate a candidates ability to analyze the financial drivers and per customer economics that determine business sustainability and growth. Core concepts include revenue streams and pricing, gross margin, contribution margin, operating margin, customer acquisition cost, lifetime value per customer, lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio, payback period, average revenue per user, churn and retention rates, and metrics for subscription or recurring revenue models such as annual recurring revenue, monthly recurring revenue, expansion revenue, and contraction effects. Candidates should be able to perform back of the envelope calculations and sensitivity analysis, interpret trade offs between growth and profitability, link marketing product and channel activities to financial outcomes, explain how metrics vary by customer segment or acquisition channel, and make strategic recommendations such as pricing adjustments, segmentation strategies, acquisition channel shifts, or investment versus efficiency decisions. Interviewers may request simple calculations, scenario analysis, and prioritized actions grounded in metric changes.

MediumSystem Design

65 practiced

You are asked to design an automated dashboard to monitor unit economics for the executive team. List the 8 widgets/tiles you would include, the primary audience for each tile, the update cadence, and one alert rule for each tile that should trigger a review. Prioritize simplicity and actionability.

MediumTechnical

58 practiced

Given the monthly subscriptions table below, write a SQL query (ANSI SQL) to compute monthly churn rate for each month, defined as: churned-customers / customers-at-start-of-month. Table: subscriptions(customer_id int, start_date date, end_date date NULL if active). Assume end_date indicates the date they canceled. Return month (YYYY-MM) and churn_rate as decimal.

EasyTechnical

58 practiced

Marketing spent 150,000 USD in a quarter and acquired 1,200 new customers during that quarter. Calculate CAC (customer acquisition cost). Then describe two ways you would adjust the CAC calculation if 1) acquisition has a long funnel (takes multiple campaigns) and 2) there are significant offline acquisition channels.

EasyTechnical

62 practiced

You have a SaaS business with monthly revenue of 120000 USD and 3,000 active paying users this month. Calculate the monthly ARPU (average revenue per user). Explain what ARPU tells you about business health, two limitations of ARPU as a single KPI, and one alternative metric you might report alongside ARPU for better context.

MediumTechnical

57 practiced

Your SQL analytics shows a sudden one-time spike in MRR for a month driven by 10 accounts with very large invoices. How would you determine whether to report this as run-rate ARR or treat it as a one-off? List SQL checks and accounting/contractual evidence you would gather.

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