ISJ1 proved the problem. ISJ2 proved the solution. Today we find out if it's a business — one unit at a time.
Individual · due 3:00 PM · no name in the file (anonymous marking)
Guesses are allowed. Untagged guesses are not.
Same industry, same stage, both raising. You can only fund one — and nobody is offering a third option called "more information."
₱2.4M revenue this year
Growing 22% a month
30,000 customers
Won 2 pitch competitions · in the tech press
4.8★ app rating
₱1.1M revenue this year
Growing a steady 9% a month
2,000 customers — 65% repeat buyers
NPS 72 · customers rave about it
Waitlist for the next batch
A loses ₱35 on every sale — subsidized price, growth bought with ads. Growing 22% a month means burning money 22% faster.
B keeps ₱310 per sale. The boring 9% compounds — and its loyal customers make it money. This time.
A-voters: you bought a fire and paid extra for the accelerant. B-voters: you were right — with no way to know it. Not a good decision; a lucky one.
Ten data points on this screen — all vanity for the survival question. The one number that decides who survives was never shown: what a single sale leaves behind.
margin × freq × lifetime
months to earn CAC back
Ask for the guess, then press Reveal ▸ — never the other way around. "What does GrabFood take?"
Each team says its unit + the ONE metric that matters most (remote teammates: chat first). I place your chip where YOU said — and we fix it together if the room disagrees.
Timer is set for 15:00 — press Start. Music on. I'm circulating (marketplace take-rates first, then landed costs).
Marketing is auto: CAC × new customers — it inherits the simulator's CAC. Unit economics flow in live.
believable, given your beta?
the gap capital must bridge → Session 5
Every box adds pesos to LANDED COST → back into your COGS. Bughaw: agri-waste supply → processing → converting → freight & storage → the ~3% that arrives damaged. The brand and retailer downstream are NOT your cost boxes — they're your customer's margin stack, and it caps your price.
Assumption [G]: Bughaw sells finished packaging to brands. Bughaw — correct me live and we'll re-tag it [E].
Your chain is the tech stack + service delivery: hosting → onboarding → support → uptime. It's a per-account cost and a risk.
Draw your six boxes (paper — remote: type six lines in chat). Mark the box most likely to break at 10× volume. Then CHAT-STORM: every team posts its breaking box + why; I read the best three aloud.
| Layer | What | Who it hits |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline | SEC/DTI · BIR · Mayor's & barangay permits | |
| Data | Data Privacy Act (RA 10173) · NPC registration · sensitive-data rules | |
| Health | DOH · FDA · clinical boundaries · minors' data | |
| Green / Agri | DENR · EPR Act (RA 11898) · DA & food safety | |
| Digital commerce | Internet Transactions Act (RA 11967) · e-invoicing |
exposure → cost ₱ → time (weeks). The Aug 8 panel will ask (Constraints Analysis).
I predicted most of you would write CAC — the number you invented and tagged [G]. Exactly right. After the break we turn that guess into math you can defend.
Back at 3:30 — GTM: Funnels & Loops.
B2B and B2C customer acquisition — and the real price of a customer. Team deliverable: GTM Funnel/Loop, due July 21.
The most dangerous guess in most founders' models: CAC. Your exit tickets — collected an hour ago — will tell us if this cohort agrees. Either way: in 90 minutes it's a derived number.
A funnel turns strangers into payers — stage by stage, leak by leak. Today you build yours and price it.
waitlist signups — "strong validation!"
paying customers
Answer: ~10 — typical waitlist→paid runs ≈ 2%. Interest is cheap. Payment is information.
Composite of real ISJ2 patterns — panels flagged exactly this: interest mistaken for willingness to pay.
spend ÷ payers through the WHOLE funnel
| Role | The role, defined | Worked example: Hope-N-Cope → a school |
|---|---|---|
| USER | Touches the product daily. Feels the pain, loves the fix — usually controls NO budget. | |
| CHAMPION | Your salesperson on the inside — sells you in rooms you're not in. Needs AMMO, not brochures. | |
| ECONOMIC BUYER | The signature that moves money. Hears cost, risk, compliance — not features. | |
| BLOCKER | Can't say yes — CAN say no. Kills deals on privacy, IT, or procurement. Answer their objections before they're asked. |
B2B benchmarks: outreach→meeting 10–20% · meeting→pilot 20–40% · pilot→paid 25–50%. PH institutions: 3–9+ month cycles. Pipeline = 5× your target.
"The school" is not an answer. Click when a team has answered.
AnakloudHope-N-CopeVaxLinkGRACEArugaBaiBin-GoBeVerifiedLink-ODBughawApolakiLoop types: viral (this one) · content/SEO · paid (only legal if LTV:CAC ≥ 3!) · marketplace flywheel — pick ONE side, ONE niche, make it dense.
After the reveals, the sliders go live — find the accept rate where this loop starts compounding. Funnels are linear and bought; loops compound and are built.
Your CAC must fit what a customer is worth per year. Drag a chip to a rung — or tap it to move up one rung. I'll challenge two or three placements.
One scribe per team. If you have a remote member, THEY are the scribe: screen-share Team Mode into your breakout and the table dictates. All-in-room teams: paper canvas. Timer: 22:00 — Start.
One SaaS · one marketplace · one institutional — same skeleton, watch it diverge. 90-sec timer per team.
"I don't believe stage __ converts at __% because __." One challenge per team, via chat/card. This is Aug 8 rehearsal.
"That's an [E] — beta data" ends the argument. "That's a [G]" earns respect + a to-do. Making it up loses both.
Format: 5–7 slides or 2-pager + the canvas. Honesty of tags beats optimism of numbers.
EXIT TICKET: post your team's riskiest conversion % in chat. See you July 25.
needed at the top of your funnel
implied CAC — put this in your Startup FS Part 1
end-to-end conversion
All-[G] funnels with big numbers score below modest funnels with [E] tags. Tag honestly.