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Investment Criteria Growth, Retention, and Margin

19 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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Company valuation hinges on three metrics: growth, retention, and margin. Early-stage investors check if the business is profitable and hits KPIs like customer acquisition cost. Later-stage investors focus on these same three drivers to predict exit potential.

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So when you look at investment, there's always growth, margin, and retention. Like if you think about exiting a company or your valuation in general, they're called valuation drivers. Growth means that you can grow. Retention means you can keep the customers you grew from, and margin means you can do that profitably. So when we are looking at, if our investors are inside of our platform looking at deal flow, Later stage deal flow, it's growth margin and retention. Earlier stage, it's are they profitable and do they have the KPIs? Like, are they able to acquire customers? Are they able to hold onto customers? And are they able to do that profitably is growth margin retention. So those are the big numbers.