The Math Doesn't Add Up: Why Everyone's Wrong About This

Let's cut the crap, shall we? I'm seeing a lot of breathless takes on this, and frankly, it's embarrassing. The narrative forming is… well, it's detached from reality. We need to apply some basic analytical rigor here.

The core problem? People are looking at isolated data points and extrapolating wildly. They're seeing a shiny new object and assuming it's made of gold. It's not. It's probably fool's gold.

The Illusion of Growth

Take, for example, the reported user growth. It's impressive on the surface – a jump of roughly 40% in the last quarter. But dig into the numbers, and a different picture emerges. The acquisition cost per user has skyrocketed. It's now hovering around $15, a substantial increase from the $8 it was just a year ago. (These figures are based on their publicly available marketing spend and reported user numbers.)

Now, a 40% jump sounds amazing, but how much of that is organic? And how much is fueled by unsustainable marketing? I've looked at hundreds of these filings, and this particular footnote about "adjusted marketing spend" is unusual in its vagueness.

What they aren’t saying is that they are practically buying users. That's not growth; that's a subsidized illusion. It's like saying you're a successful restaurant because you're giving away free meals. Sure, you're packed, but you're hemorrhaging money.

And this is the part of the report that I find genuinely puzzling. They’re touting user growth as a key metric, but they aren’t addressing the fundamental problem: user retention. If you're spending $15 to acquire a user who churns out in a month, you're not building a sustainable business; you're building a leaky bucket.

The Missing Pieces

The real story isn't the user growth; it's the cost of that growth and the lack of evidence that those users are actually valuable. Where's the data on average revenue per user? Where's the cohort analysis showing user retention over time? These are the metrics that matter, and they're conspicuously absent.

This reminds me of the dot-com boom, where companies were valued based on eyeballs instead of actual revenue. We all know how that ended.

I’m seeing a lot of chatter online about this, too – people celebrating the user numbers without asking the tough questions. It's a classic case of groupthink, fueled by hype and a lack of critical analysis. Most of the commentary is anecdotal and emotional, which makes it useless for any serious investor.

So, What's the Real Story?

I'm not saying this is a complete disaster. But I am saying that the prevailing narrative is dangerously misleading. The numbers don't support the hype. Until they start disclosing the right numbers – user retention, revenue per user, and organic growth rate – I'm staying far away. It's a classic case of smoke and mirrors, and I'm not buying it.