Growth
North Star Metric
The single metric that best captures the core value a product delivers to its users — used as the company-wide compass for product, growth, and operations.
In plain English
If you could only watch one number to know whether the business is healthy, which one? That's the North Star. Airbnb: nights booked. Spotify: time spent listening. Stripe: payment volume processed.
Example
A founder-oriented platform's North Star might be 'weekly active users completing the core action' — not signups (vanity), not MRR (lagging). Whatever you choose, every product and growth decision is tested against 'does this move the North Star?'
Why it matters
Without a North Star, every team optimises for their own metric (engineering for ship velocity, marketing for signups, sales for closed-won). With one, every team converges on the metric most predictive of long-term value. The clarity is worth more than the choice of metric.
Common mistakes
- Picking a vanity metric (signups, pageviews) — moves up-and-to-the-right without actual value
- Picking too many — defeats the purpose; the whole point is forcing prioritisation
- Changing it constantly — North Star earns trust through stability
- Picking a lagging metric (revenue) that the team can't directly affect day-to-day