Fair point, but like it or not, cost per user matters. - When investing in or acquiring companies, people may use this metric in addition to price/sales or in

Fair point, but like it or not, cost per user matters. - When investing in or acquiring companies, people may use this metric in addition to price/sales or in rare cases for tech companies price/EBITDA valuation multiples. It forms the basis for comps analysis which bankers, M&A types and VCs do all the time. - Companies use the ratio in similar ways when fundraising or talking to acquirers. "Based on how many users we have and comparable transactions, we're worth $X million" - While you may buy users looking forward, you also may look at how you can "monetize" existing users, i.e., if we can get $X per existing user, that would be worth Y. It is of course not the only metric that an acquirer evaluates (at least the good ones), but they do look at it as do investors, bankers and startups. So good or bad, it is here to stay.