Ask HN: Startup folks,how did your company define a “North Star” metric, if any?

[paulgrimes1]

I work for a seed-funded startup (online marketplace, 2 years in, 8-10 staff). We're having robust conversations internally about what our "North Star" metric is, and should be, for the coming months/year.

We're finding that trying to pin the North star on a simplistic metric has inherent issues - for example in our case, a concentration on monthly actives (who actually transact, not visitors / tyre-kickers) might cause the team to wantonly attract "the wrong type" of new user, cause short term transaction spikes, and bring on major churn. A concentration on #transactions might possibly cause the team to overtly facilitate low-value transactions. A focus on $transactions/$ATV might bring on a rush to push the higher-value users, possibly annoying them and causing disengagement/churn.

Without giving up any sensitive details, how did the startup you work(ed) at tackle pinning down a North Star metric for the whole team to push towards?

Interested in any & all constructive feedback. Thanks.

[twunde]

It sounds like your company is ready for a framework like OKRs. I'd suggest reading Measure What Matters if you're interested. The problem with having just one Northstar metric is that it doesn't capture all the complexity you need. That's why it makes sense to track a few important metrics and maybe change them as the company outgrows each metric

[paulgrimes1]

This is valuable. Thanks @twunde.