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The Only Metric That Matters: How many are really using your product? (2017)
- nathan_long 8y agoIf I could only pick one metric for a business, I'd go with net revenue. Otherwise it's an expensive hobby.
- jiveturkey 8y agoDid you read TFA? This is for pre-revenue companies. The expectation is that se will turn into revenue in many tech business models. Certainly for the type where you have to capture a dominant fraction of users to get the hockey stick curve.
- CamTin 8y agoLike most business talk on HN, this is about YC-style startups that are expected to lose a lot of money up front in exchange for a ticket in a lottery where the winner is the next Facebook.
- nathan_long 8y agoGood point. And the fact that it's posted by a VC might have something to do with the content of the advice.
- nkkollaw 8y agoI guess YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are expensive hobbies? They not only didn't make money, but literally lost millions for years.
- jjeaff 8y agoOf those 3, YouTube might actually be a very expensive hobby. It is purported to still be unprofitable.
- nishantvyas 8y agoit depends. Are you raising the chicken for egg or meat? Egg is about sustainability... meat is about growth (very fast)...
- tzm 8y agoRevenue is a reflection of market value, not an intrinsic measurement. Measuring the unit economics should capture more of the intrinsic metrics that generate revenue. This would then be the essence of a company's North star metric.
- dirtyaura 8y agoNot necessarily. In my opinion, core metric should be a proxy for the value the product provides. For example, for us at https://ouraring.com https://ouraring.com, people buy the ring before using the product. Tracking revenue only would not reveal problems in the long-term benefit of the product - it would be more like a proxy for marketing actions, not for the core product benefit.
- longerthoughts 8y agoBut the parent was picking one metric to measure the health of a business, not a product. If you choose to measure the health of your business by the quality of your product, aren't you just creating a potentially misleading proxy? Good products hardly guarantee the success of a business.
- maneesh 8y agoFrom another wearable founder [1] to you, congrats on making a great product! I'm wearing the new steel Oura right now. Although the firmware update this week broke it for me on android :( Still my favorite heart-rate enabled wearable out there! [1] https://pavlok.com https://pavlok.com
- dirtyaura 8y agoThanks! (I’m CTO, SW at Oura, but not an Oura founder). New firmware and Android release coming soon that likely will help with your issue
- atupis 8y agoHow you track that value?
- ma2rten 8y agoThen you must love Uber, since you only care about revenue and not costs.
- maneesh 8y agoNet revenue often refers to net profit, meaning revenue minus expenses.
- mikemotherwell 8y agoNet revenue CHANGE might be the one metric that makes sense. The reason to track any metric is to know if you should continue, stop, or go all-in. If you are flatlining - or going down - that's a HUGE sign to quit. If you have steady growth, easy as she goes. Explosive growth, you might want to double down.
- CPLX 8y agoI guess 4chan is one of the most valuable tech startups of the last decade or two. Or maybe there are other metrics that matter.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoThe post didn't say anything about "value" in terms of money good enough to raise money, or good enough to keep working on a feature or product, or good enough to believe the product will grow into something much bigger someday. In the last sense, 4chan is probably in the top 10 of websites that have impacted the web/world the greatest over the last 15 years.
- rjbwork 8y agoI would absolutely say the top. They started meme culture, which has absolutely taken over most of the social media sites. /pol/ started the extreme Trump support, and made supporting him fun and memey, ultimately leading to /r/The_Donald, and his eventual election to POTUS. That has had quite a large effect on the world. They've done gobs and gobs of things related to VG, hoaxes, cultural obstruction, etc. They are quite influential, just not in the way we typically think about influence.
- azeirah 8y ago4chan's influence on internet culture is huge. /r9k/ played a big role in the whole incel thing, Elliot Rogers was treated as a sort of deity there before he went on a rampage. Are there any serious, in-depth studies, stories or books or whatever about 4chan? I feel like politically and culturally, 4chan is one of the most important sites on the internet. I'd like to read more on its influence
- marviel 8y agoI'd be interested in this as well. http://tanasinn.info/wiki/Complete_History_of_4chan http://tanasinn.info/wiki/Complete_History_of_4chan appears to be a (small) stab in that direction
- sunstone 8y agoHmm is it one in ten searches that target Wikipedia?
- edoceo 8y agoThis whole time I thought it was Profit. Stupid me.
- riquito 8y ago> This whole time I thought it was Profit. Stupid me. You could be profitable with 1 user that pays way more than the rest (e.g. the only "business plan" user, or an user that use the application more than the others on a usage-based plan). If losing that customer means going out of business than the company is not healthy.
- edoceo 8y agoOf course that is a possibility. I don't think you should do it that way though. It's better to have 100 customers, each responsible for 1% of your income. Source: self
- nikanj 8y agoStill much healthier than the company next door, that doesn't have the user who keeps the accounts in the black.
- bryanrasmussen 8y agoIn this way you could be profitable after only 1 month or 10 years, if 1 month that's interesting.