North Star Metric
The single metric that best reflects the core value a company delivers to customers.
A North Star Metric is the single number that best captures the value your product delivers to customers — chosen so that growing it strongly correlates with long-term business growth. Famous examples: Airbnb's nights booked, Spotify's time listening, Slack's daily active users with 2,000+ messages.
The right North Star Metric prevents teams from optimizing for misleading proxies. Optimizing for signups can lead to junk accounts; optimizing for activated users who get value cannot.
A meditation app's North Star Metric is 'minutes meditated per active user per week' — growth in this metric strongly predicts retention, subscription revenue, and word-of-mouth growth.
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