The mirage of the revenue

Is it just me, or does the revenue sharing look like a big marketing scam? (yes, I'm being exaggerative on purpose)

Because your revenue doesn't tell me anything. You can say you earn $100k MRR, but what about other metrics? What are your costs? How much do you spend on marketing? If you spend $200k/month on paid ads then your $100k/month is meaningless and you don't have a healthy business. (yes, if you bring enough people in, a % of them will buy your product, but that's not called validation)

What about your churn and retention?
If your churn is 70% then you don't have $10k MRR, because next month you will be down to $3k "MRR".

When you say that you have $XXX MRR of revenue, are you telling us the whole truth? Are you including refunds and chargebacks?

I wanted to start a discussion because we see all those numbers and brags all over the internet, but very few seem to question it. So the question is, do you question it?

It's important because we're being inspired by other founders and their numbers but by not seeing the whole truth we're being misled which has huge consequences. Some of us quit our jobs & spend our life savings just to pursue the same dream.