How Businesses Compete and Profit
Move beyond basic balance sheets to understand the real engine of commercial success. Discover how unit economics, durable competitive moats, and disciplined capital allocation determine whether a company thrives or collapses. Designed for professionals who want to evaluate business models and make strategic decisions with confidence.
Like Duolingo, but for How Businesses Compete and Profit. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
21 levels across 3 sections, about 42 minutes end to end, roughly 8 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Unit Economics and Cash Realities; Competitive Advantage and Business Models; and Scaling, Leverage, and Capital Allocation. It assumes you already know the basics.
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Key ideas in How Businesses Compete and Profit
- LTV projections model multi-year gross profits that materialize slowly over time.
- CAC must be funded immediately with cash at the moment of customer acquisition.
- Relying on distant payback years creates deadly working capital deficits despite high LTV.
- CAC payback period measures months required for a customer to repay their acquisition cost.
- Shorter payback periods recycle acquisition cash faster to fund growth without new financing.
- Extended 5-year LTV does nothing to protect cash reserves during early burn months.
- Blended CAC averages cheap organic signups with increasingly expensive paid ad conversions.
- Marginal CAC measures the exact marketing dollars required to buy the next new customer.
- Diminishing returns cause paid channels to spike in cost long before blended metrics show it.
- Contribution margin isolates revenue minus variable costs incurred per single sale.
- Packaging, payment fees, and per-unit fulfillment directly reduce unit contribution margin.
- Fixed overhead like rent and software subscriptions stay flat regardless of unit sales volume.
- A retention curve that flattens parallel to the x-axis indicates product-market fit.
- A flattened curve proves customer lifetime value becomes a predictable, recurring annuity.
- A curve sloping continuously to zero means all acquired users eventually churn out entirely.
- Cost-plus pricing anchors the price on internal expenses rather than customer value.
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Businesses Compete and Profit the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
When does a business actually pay its customer acquisition cost (CAC)?
Get it right to open this lesson and 20 more in the app.
Where How Businesses Compete and Profit takes you
- 1
Unit Economics and Cash Realities
- Diagnosing Customer Unit Economics
- Pricing Power and Margin Architecture
- 2
Competitive Advantage and Business Models
- Diagnosing Structural Moats
- Evaluating Business Model Mechanics
- 3
Scaling, Leverage, and Capital Allocation
- Managing Operating Leverage and Cost Curves
- Deploying Capital for Long-Term Value
- Aligning Incentives and Execution
3 sections · 7 units · 21 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
How Businesses Compete and Profit is taught in the Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Businesses Compete and Profit today.
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