CAC Payback

“Your sales cycle is longer than your burn rate can sustain.”

Structural failure pattern in healthcare B2B

33 companies failed due to cac payback in the Stressline corpus.

Deaths

33

Funding Raised by Companies That Failed

$1.9B

Sub-Vertical Breakdown

Revenue Cycle Management7 (21%)
Primary Care & Employer Health6 (18%)
Care Coordination & Transitions4 (12%)
Clinical Workflow & Documentation3 (9%)
Behavioral Health & Mental Health3 (9%)
Credentialing & Provider Enrollment2 (6%)
Pharmacy Technology & Delivery2 (6%)
Other Healthcare B2B2 (6%)
Compliance & Regulatory1 (3%)
Telehealth Infrastructure1 (3%)
Digital Therapeutics & DTx1 (3%)
Health Insurance & Benefits1 (3%)

Founding Year Timeline

2007
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2022

33 companies, 55 failure dimensions coded, 2007–2022.

Related failure patterns

Outspent by bigger competitorsProduct claims exceeded actual capabilitiesCouldn't get paid by insurance

33 companies hit cac payback. Will yours?

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Related methodology

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Data sourced from SBIR/STTR databases, SEC EDGAR filings, ClinicalTrials.gov, CMS data, and founder postmortems. Coded using the Gioia qualitative methodology. Read the methodology.