4 Patterns for North Star Metrics That Can Help You Choose Yours

North Star Metrics 101

Over the past several years, @johncutlefish went through 100s of North Star Workshops with real companies at @Amplitude_HQ

Want to know a secret?

John distilled 4 patterns for North Star Metrics & 8–12 patterns for Input Metrics (see details below) 🧵👇

North Star Metric Pattern #1

COUNT OF ACCOUNTS

w/ behaviours x, y, z + time component

Paid customers (Airtable uses “Weekly Paid Seats”), or Paid teams (Slack uses “Number of Paid Teams,” Dropbox uses “Teams using Dropbox Business”).

North Star Metric Pattern #2

COUNT OF HUMANS

w/ behaviours x, y, z + time component

Duolingo and Strava, for example, both focus on engagement (e.g. DAU and MAU, respectively) because they have a large free-user base that eventually migrates to paid

North Star Metric Pattern #3

COUNT OF A KEY VALUE PRODUCING/GENERATING ACTION

w/ time component

Miro uses “number of collaborative boards”. The core of its growth strategy is inter-organization virality.

North Star Metric Pattern #4

COUNT OF INTERACTIONS BETWEEN HUMANS

Works for community-based products, and even marketplaces like Airbnb, though the interaction there = transaction.

The North Star Metric formalises the strategy & can change if the strategy does

Shopify focuses on active merchants vs. number of transactions.

This is because rather than solely collecting a take-rate, the company also charges a subscription fee.

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That’s a wrap!