B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
18
18 -- gross margin adjusted cac payback period for Top-quartile enterprise SaaS companies (2026)
A gross margin-adjusted CAC payback period of under 18 months characterizes top-quartile SaaS operators.
- Represents a threshold benchmark for highly efficient operators rather than a precise point estimate
Attribution:
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
18
Unit
Duration Months
Data Vintage
2026
Entity
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
50
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
ICONIQ Growth
Primary
Tier C
https://www.antoinebuteau.com/lessons-from-christine-edmonds/ ↗
Source Article
Lessons from Christine Edmonds
Original Research
ICONIQ Growth
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Threshold benchmark; cited to ICONIQ Growth Research via secondary profile article.
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrysaas
Cite this stat
Plain Text
Top-quartile enterprise SaaS companies: 18 gross margin adjusted cac payback period. Source: ICONIQ Growth (2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/top-quartile-cac-payback-under-18-months
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/top-quartile-cac-payback-under-18-months" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>18</strong> -- gross margin adjusted cac payback period for Top-quartile enterprise SaaS companies<br><small>Source: ICONIQ Growth (2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/top-quartile-cac-payback-under-18-months" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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