A steep sales curve does not explain what is driving it—or how long it will last. Ivan Kraynov, an investor and entrepreneur, is more interested in the customers behind the numbers. Are they coming back? Is the company earning anything after serving them? Can it handle more demand without costs and quality slipping?
Why fast growth can be misleading
A brand has a strong quarter. Sales double, its product keeps appearing on social media, and the team begins planning its next market. From the outside, the direction seems obvious: the company is growing, so the business must be working. But the same sales graph can describe several very different companies.
One may have found a product that people use, enjoy, and recommend. Another may have doubled its advertising budget along with its revenue. A third may be benefiting from a discount that attracts thousands of curious buyers who will never pay the full price. The headline number cannot tell them apart.
Growth also has a habit of hiding the strain it creates. A campaign can bring in more orders than the company can fulfill. Customer service starts falling behind. The team pays extra for urgent production and faster shipping. Revenue rises, but so do returns, complaints, and the cost of keeping everything moving.
For Ivan Kraynov, the investor’s task begins with understanding what produced the result. Was the growth bought, earned, or borrowed from the next quarter through promotions? Did it bring the company valuable customers? Was there anything left after the cost of acquiring and serving them? Fast growth is still a good reason to pay attention. It is simply the beginning of the investigation.
What makes growth high-quality?
The quality of growth becomes visible when a company stops treating all sales as equal.
Take two customers who place the same $50 order. One arrived through an expensive advertisement and never returned. The other found the product through a friend, bought it again two months later, and eventually recommended it to someone else. Their first orders look identical in a revenue report. Their value to the business is very different.
This is where cohort data becomes useful. Customers who first ordered around the same time are followed as a group. If January brought 1,000 new buyers, the company can see how many were still ordering in February, April or June—and whether customers acquired later proved more or less loyal.
The answer needs to reflect the product’s natural rhythm. A skincare product or daily supplement may be replenished within weeks. Furniture has a much longer buying cycle. A sensible customer retention measure starts with how people actually use the product.
Real organic demand is often quiet. A few more people search for the brand directly. Existing customers mention it to friends. Repeat buyers return without being chased by another ad. Over time, those orders matter. A sudden wave from a popular post may look more exciting, but it can leave no lasting change.
Customer lifetime value, commonly shortened to LTV, brings order value, purchase frequency, and the length of the relationship into one estimate. The figure becomes more useful when it also reflects margins. Shopify’s explanation of customer lifetime value shows why a revenue-based calculation can give an incomplete picture of what a customer contributes.
Good growth leaves the company with more than a larger sales total. It creates a customer base, a clearer understanding of demand, and enough economic value to support the next stage.
Unit economics matter more than a growth headline
Unit economics can sound like a subject for the finance team. In practice, they answer a fairly ordinary question: does the company make enough from an order or customer to justify what it spent to get them?
Customer acquisition cost, or CAC, is part of the answer. A rough calculation divides sales and marketing spending by the number of new customers. The difficult part is deciding what belongs in that spending.
The advertising invoice tells only part of the story. Before a customer placed an order, someone created the campaign, managed it, paid for the tools and perhaps offered a discount. Those expenses still count, even if they do not appear under the heading “customer acquisition.”
The other side of the equation is equally important. Gross margin shows what remains after the direct cost of the product. Contribution margin goes further by allowing for variable costs such as fulfillment, payment processing, shipping subsidies, and returns.
This is where an impressive revenue figure can become less impressive. A product may sell well and carry a healthy gross margin, yet leave little behind once the complete cost of the transaction is included.
LTV and CAC are often compared, but timing matters too. If a company spends $60 to acquire a customer today and expects to recover that money across four future orders, it needs enough cash to wait for those orders. The payback period may become a constraint long before the lifetime value looks attractive.
Shopify’s guide to customer acquisition warns against treating CAC as a standalone number. It makes more sense beside LTV, repeat purchase rate, contribution margin and payback period. This is also central to how Ivan Kraynov evaluates business growth: the company should be able to show not only that sales increased, but why the increase created value.
Repeat customers are a stronger signal than first-time demand
The first sale proves that a customer was willing to try the product. That is useful. It may reflect an appealing format, a persuasive recommendation, clever packaging, or simply good timing. The second sale tells a more interesting story.
The real test starts after the package arrives. Did the experience match what the customer had been promised? Did they like it enough to pay the regular price next time? In replenishment categories, those answers shape the business. A loyal customer base means the company is not starting over each month, and the timing of later orders offers a clearer view of how the product fits into people’s lives.
The number needs careful reading. A steep discount can encourage another purchase without strengthening loyalty. A subscription may continue for several deliveries before the customer cancels. Some buyers stock up during a promotion and then disappear for months.
A falling repeat-purchase rate does not explain itself. The answer may be hiding in longer reorder times, earlier cancellations, more refunds or fewer purchases without promotions. Comparing customers by acquisition month helps narrow it down. If the March group performs worse than January’s, something may have shifted in the message, the offer or the source of those customers.
For Ivan Kraynov’s business strategy, repeat demand provides something that launch excitement cannot: evidence of what customers decided after living with the product.
A product needs a reason to win
The question is not whether a product is good. Plenty of products are good. Customers should know who the product is for and why it might make their day a little easier. If using it feels no better than using the alternatives, the brand will struggle to earn a second order. Competitors may copy the obvious details, from flavour to packaging.
The more durable advantage comes from getting the whole experience right and doing so consistently. Customers then have less reason to wait for a discount and more reason to tell someone else. That is what makes the product relevant to Ivan Kraynov’s investment approach: a clear customer need, followed by behaviour that shows the need was genuinely met.
Jollie as a consumer brand case
Jollie provides a useful example. The wellness brand, in which Ivan Kraynov is an investor, sells mango-flavored collagen jelly sticks for the US market.
The product takes a familiar supplement and changes the experience of using it. Collagen is commonly sold as a powder, which may involve measuring, mixing, and carrying a container. Jollie offers an individual, ready-to-eat serving instead. Its official product page also includes recurring delivery options.
Jollie
That creates a plausible reason for a first purchase. Someone may like the portability, prefer the jelly texture, or find the product easier to fit into a daily routine.
An investor still needs to see what happens afterward.
Do customers finish the box? Does convenience remain valuable once the format is no longer new? How many people order again, and how long do subscribers stay? Do buyers return at full price, or mainly when the brand offers a promotion?
There is a commercial difference between being unusual and being difficult to replace. A customer might choose the jelly simply because powders are messy and capsules feel dull. That is a perfectly good reason for a first order. It is not much protection from competitors, who can produce their own version. The brand becomes harder to replace only if the product is enjoyable, dependable and easy to keep buying.
Then there is the cost of delivering the proposition. Manufacturing, packaging, shipping, payment fees, promotions, and customer acquisition all affect the contribution from each order. Public information does not reveal those figures, so it cannot support claims about the investment’s financial performance.
What the example does show is the distance between an interesting product and an investable consumer brand. The visible proposition explains why customers might try Jollie. Repeat behaviour and unit economics would reveal whether the business can build on that interest.
Kraynov’s confirmed role is investor. Operational decisions and results belong to the brand’s team and should be attributed accordingly.
The team behind growth matters
Growth changes the problems a company has to solve.
At first, the team may be trying to persuade people to notice the product. A few months later, the challenge may be keeping it in stock. Then a retailer requests new packaging, a supplier changes its terms, or customer messages reveal a problem nobody anticipated during development.
The quality of the team becomes visible in these moments. Can its members identify what has changed? Do they understand which issue needs an immediate response and which can wait? Can they make a decision without losing sight of the customer or the economics?
Kraynov has emphasized teams in his published discussions of entrepreneurship and investment. The focus is practical. A promising market does little for a business if the people involved cannot respond to it.
An investor can learn more from the company’s working habits than from polished biographies. Who owns product quality? How are complaints reviewed? Does the team understand why one customer group returns and another does not? What happens when real behaviour contradicts the forecast?
Capable people cannot rescue a product with no demand forever. They can recognize weak demand early, examine the cause, and decide what to change. That ability gives the business a better chance of turning an initial rise in sales into something durable.
Can the business scale without breaking its economics?
Scale has a way of turning small inefficiencies into expensive problems. A supplier delay can empty the warehouse. Too much stock can trap cash for months.
Shipping and customer support face the same pressure. A mistake that once affected ten people may now affect a thousand. Finding customers also gets harder. The first buyers may already know the category and be looking for something new; everyone else needs more explanation and more expensive advertising. The next thousand customers may cost far more than the first.
Winning those buyers can be much more expensive. Then comes the question of where to sell. The company’s own website offers control and a direct view of customer behaviour. Retail brings foot traffic and easier access, but at the cost of lower margins, listing demands and far less knowledge about the individual buyer.
From entrepreneurial experience to investment decisions
Running a company teaches you how much work can sit behind an ordinary-looking product. The customer sees the item that arrives at the door. The team sees suppliers, contracts, software, inventory, shipping and dozens of decisions that have to line up every day.
The revealing part is not that the team made an incorrect assumption; most teams will. The revealing part is how soon they notice and what they do next. Kraynov’s operating background helps him assess that response. His role as an investor remains separate from the daily work of the companies in which he invests.
Five questions before calling a consumer brand investable
The full assessment can be reduced to five questions:
- Do customers return? Review repeat orders at natural replenishment points and after promotions have ended.
- Does the company make enough from each customer? Include the full acquisition cost, variable expenses, margins, and payback time.
- Why do people choose this product? Look for a concrete advantage that remains meaningful after the first use.
- What changes at a larger scale? Examine production, service, distribution, acquisition costs, and cash requirements.
- Can the team learn from the market? Pay attention to how it interprets customer behavior and responds when an assumption proves wrong.
A young company may only have early evidence. That does not make the exercise premature. It simply means the conclusions should match the maturity of the data.
What the growth figure leaves out
A rising sales line can point to a valuable opportunity. It can also reflect an expensive campaign, a passing trend, or an audience that was willing to try the product once. The percentage alone cannot say which.
Ivan Kraynov’s investment approach goes beyond that first signal. It considers whether customers return, whether margins can support acquisition costs, and whether the product gives customers a reason to keep choosing it. It also considers the people responsible for carrying those strengths into new channels and markets.
When these elements begin to reinforce one another, growth becomes more persuasive. The brand is attracting demand it can afford to serve. Customers are giving it another chance to earn their money. The team understands what is working and what still needs to change.
That is the foundation behind investable consumer brands. Growth opens the conversation. The business underneath it determines whether the conversation continues.
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