Watch Roman’s podcast
In case you missed it, legendary entrepreneur and early Northbeam investor Roman Khan went on the Open Residency podcast last week.
Go watch it. It’s like a modern MBA in one uninterrupted, glorious session. But I want to focus on a few specific things Roman mentioned, especially about Northbeam.
People are constantly asking me how the pros use Northbeam. Roman lays out a pretty excellent high level view, with clear success stories.
Iff you copy these four steps, you’ll be following the path blazed by some of our smartest Northbeam users.
Don’t look at in-platform numbers
When we say “in-platform data,” we are talking about the ad performance that some ad platform is giving you. So for example, the ROAS you’re seeing inside Meta Business Manager.
Roman isn’t even looking at those numbers. He does not look inside the ad platforms for performance. He is only looking at Northbeam. As he puts it: “Northbeam is the north star.”
Why is this? It’s important to understand something. Ad platforms are “walled gardens.” They cannot give you the full picture of your ad performance, by design.
Conversely, Northbeam is fully independent ad performance data, separate from in-platform results. You must understand this, if you understand anything about Northbeam.
If you’re looking at Northbeam numbers, you’re looking at a completely different set of information that’s clearer and more actionable than what’s in-platform.
Use both Cash and Accrual accounting
Roman says the “beauty” of Northbeam is that you have two accounting modes.
This is another awesome feature people don’t talk about enough. Roman uses both accounting modes in different scenarios: they are basically two different ways of analyzing performance.
You can’t really do this properly with any other attribution tool, including in-platform data. This is a great explainer on our accounting modes.
On regular business days, Roman will analyze performance using accrual accounting, because this attaches ad performance to the day that touchpoints happened, rather than the day a transaction happened.
This is more useful for answering questions like “what ad is performing best over the last seven days,” for example.
But then on high-volume or high-intensity days like Black Friday Cyber Monday, Roman will switch to cash accounting, because it attributes credit for conversions to the specific day a transaction happened.
This is a more conservative, vicious approach to measuring performance that puts tons of pressure on your ads to compete in the moment. On BFCM this is huge, because some crazy geniuses out there are managing their ad accounts 24/7 for a week straight.
Join the wave, dear reader. Cash and accrual accounting is crazy powerful and all the smart kids are using it, Roman included.
Look at one-day click ROAS
This is the most savage yet conservative way of measuring your ad performance. But even if it’s negative, or less than one dollar, this is what Roman looks at as the ultimate backstop of ad performance.
Because he’s running so many channels at once, he needs a backstop, a stable and trustworthy metric that explains how his ads are performing.
But, while this might be his backstop, he understands what this number needs to be in order for his ads to be profitable.
What Roman’s doing is part of Northbeam’s philosophy of growing media. He’s following a pattern of measuring, analyzing and scaling ads based on baseline performance metrics.
And that one-day ROAS doesn’t need to be positive. It’s often 0.5 or less. But it’s about understanding that performance may turn into a 2.0 or 3.0 ROAS over time.
Two things to look at:
Conversion lag. This is why Roman is comfortable running ads at less than a 1.0 ROAS - because he knows sales are coming. He just looks at 1-day because it sets the baseline of performance across all his ads.
Our guideline on profitable new customer acquisition using ads. We wrote a guide explaining how this system works, and how you can apply it on your own ad accounts.
Get on Northbeam Apex
Roman was on stage at the first-ever Northbeam Conference yesterday telling us how his brands are leveraging Northbeam Apex.
“Over the next few years, Apex is what’s going to drive incrementality for us,” he said.
Learn all about Apex here. Or read about why first-party custom attribution is the future of marketing here. Or read our technical explainer of Apex here.
Or, check out this graphic I’ve shared a few times in this newsletter. We tested Apex with a ton of different ad accounts, A/B testing Apex versus non-Apex campaigns.
Apex absolutely demolished the defaults. This is the new best weapon for high-growth Meta ad accounts.
Long story short: Apex could unlock double-digit improvements in Meta ROAS with the flip of a switch. Roman is all in - you should be too.
Time to win
All this to say: Roman is a legend. I consider him part of that “new wave” of entrepreneurs, who are scaling their businesses profitably and cash flowing really early.
It’s pretty cool to see these digitally-savvy, cash-flow-focused, and high-scale style of businesses appear over these years.
We have a front row seat to it all because Northbeam is the cornerstone of their tech stack. Man, I’m gonna enjoy this ride.
🍝 Join us for dinner in NYC. We’re hanging out with QRY and you’re invited.
📦 We went hard on this BFCM Operators Guide, by 1800DTC. This isn’t entry-level stuff - serious strategic value inside.
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💀 Is Meta going to die in 2026? I went on the What’s Working podcast to dish about everything I’ve learned in four years of writing 200+ issues of this newsletter.
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