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Show HN: the6pct : a tool to help you track weekly growth based on PG's essay

18 points by c1sc0 14y ago

Built this as a quickie to help me apply the method outlined in PG's Startup = Growth essay.

blacktar 14y ago
I can haz readymade Apple ITC API import? Me so lazy. ;)
silverlight 14y ago
Should the JSON returned be the set of weekly numbers or daily numbers? It doesn't say and since you mention that it's going to be crawled daily it seems like it would be daily numbers...
- c1sc0 14y ago
  Daily numbers indeed but I'm open for suggestions.
StavrosK 14y ago
This is exactly what I'm aiming for in developing Instahero (http://www.instahero.com http://www.instahero.com). Your traditional analytics software has all this data, why can't you get a metric you need right away? Instahero lets you just write one or two lines of Lua and visualize/report on any metric you want. Sorry about the plug, this tool is just similar to what I'm working on to solve a more general problem.
- c1sc0 14y ago
  Instahero looks cool. I was using geckoboard & I though pg's suggestion of focussing on a single metric made a lot of sense, given the amount of time I see startups spend on custom metrics of all colors & stripes.
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    There's definitely a tendency for people to focus on vanity metrics, so pg's way makes a lot of sense. My post here is a bit orthogonal, I guess, since pg's essay and your tool are about what to measure, whereas my post is about how. That said, I do like the tool, it's very easy and straightforward, good job!
    - c1sc0 14y ago
      Maybe you can take the idea & turn it into something for instahero? Think "landing pages" for certain types of metrics pre-configured. instahero/weekly-visits | instahero/weekly-subscribers | instahero/weekly-visits | instahero/weekly-revenue etc ... I like the idea of having a single page per metric
      - StavrosK 14y ago
        Yep, something like this: http://www.instahero.com/project/wWhe4J/report/jRa9Qz/ http://www.instahero.com/project/wWhe4J/report/jRa9Qz/ This is very easy to create using whichever metric you like (I will probably include it as one of the pre-made report templates, too), and you can extend it to report on whatever you like. Thank you very much for the idea!
- pc86 14y ago
  Why Lua?
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    It's very easy to embed and sandbox, easy to learn and write, and sufficiently fast. Why do you ask?
    - pc86 14y ago
      Just curious :)
philip_roberts 14y ago
Great simple idea, but I don't really understand what the json is supposed to look like. You say: "GET http://yoursite.com/secret http://yoursite.com/secret returns {"data": [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]}" But is that an array of data for the last seven days, or the current week, or is it 7 separate analytics that I want to get tracked?
- philip_roberts 14y ago
  Also "Right place and right time to suit the right situation. this is some more fille" :) looks like you have some filler text to rip out.
  - c1sc0 14y ago
    fille ... that is for ze ladies in french of course ;-) ... fixing it as we speak
- zalew 14y ago
  there's an instruction when you sign up "JSON Format Expected JSON is a dict with key 'data' and value an array of 7 integers for last 7 days, last day last."
calinet6 14y ago
"Are you measuring your weekly growth?" No, and for very good reason. For pete's sake, you should not be measuring your growth numerically and targeting it weekly. This is not what Paul meant, and I don't think it's what he would recommend. Growth happens on a larger and more complex scale than a weekly sum. Furthermore, if you're expecting your actions for any given week to correlate directly with growth that happens that week, you're doing it wrong. Do you need to work hard? Of course. Should you procrastinate? Of course not. Is the key to this tracking your weekly growth. No! You risk misdirecting your efforts, becoming far too short-sighted, and falling into the dangerous trap of running your company only on those quantifiable and measurable numbers. You risk missing the complexity which results in growth, and instead narrowing your focus to the point where it actually stagnates growth or produces the wrong kind of growth. See W. Edwards Deming's management treatise that helped bring Japan out of a recession—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principle... - one of his recommendations was to "Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers and numerical goals. Instead substitute with leadership." And a pitfall he pointed out—"Running a company on visible figures alone." More can be found in his books, which mostly are targeted toward manufacturing but I find apply incredibly well to software business. Please, don't limit yourself to this sort of narrow-minded analysis of your business, or at least be very aware of the consequences and consider it only as an interesting result, never use it as a target or benchmark, and especially don't use it to try to motivate or pressure your employees. Your results will slowly shift toward optimizing your measured goal alone, and your company will become as narrow and pointless as the number. Can this metric be used? Of course. You can look back on your efforts over the long (or short) term, and if you see a decent 6% growth rate, great. If you don't, then you may need to change something. But you have to understand it intimately; that it's not a goal, not a target, but a simple metric to be used post-facto to make useful and realistic changes to your strategy. I'm not warning you against using all numeric analysis, but I am warning against using it as a true goal or target. Just keep it in perspective, and I fear a web site that makes the metric as clear and visible as this site does brings it far too close to the front of your daily attention than it should be. Growth comes from many complex sources, toward many time frames and overarching goals; and the target is not a weekly number, but instead, a growing and sustainable company. Work toward that.

18 points by c1sc0 14y ago

Built this as a quickie to help me apply the method outlined in PG's Startup = Growth essay.

blacktar 14y ago

I can haz readymade Apple ITC API import? Me so lazy. ;)

silverlight 14y ago

Should the JSON returned be the set of weekly numbers or daily numbers? It doesn't say and since you mention that it's going to be crawled daily it seems like it would be daily numbers...

c1sc0 14y ago
Daily numbers indeed but I'm open for suggestions.

StavrosK 14y ago

This is exactly what I'm aiming for in developing Instahero (http://www.instahero.com http://www.instahero.com). Your traditional analytics software has all this data, why can't you get a metric you need right away? Instahero lets you just write one or two lines of Lua and visualize/report on any metric you want. Sorry about the plug, this tool is just similar to what I'm working on to solve a more general problem.

c1sc0 14y ago
Instahero looks cool. I was using geckoboard & I though pg's suggestion of focussing on a single metric made a lot of sense, given the amount of time I see startups spend on custom metrics of all colors & stripes.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  There's definitely a tendency for people to focus on vanity metrics, so pg's way makes a lot of sense. My post here is a bit orthogonal, I guess, since pg's essay and your tool are about what to measure, whereas my post is about how. That said, I do like the tool, it's very easy and straightforward, good job!
  - c1sc0 14y ago
    Maybe you can take the idea & turn it into something for instahero? Think "landing pages" for certain types of metrics pre-configured. instahero/weekly-visits | instahero/weekly-subscribers | instahero/weekly-visits | instahero/weekly-revenue etc ... I like the idea of having a single page per metric
    - StavrosK 14y ago
      Yep, something like this: http://www.instahero.com/project/wWhe4J/report/jRa9Qz/ http://www.instahero.com/project/wWhe4J/report/jRa9Qz/ This is very easy to create using whichever metric you like (I will probably include it as one of the pre-made report templates, too), and you can extend it to report on whatever you like. Thank you very much for the idea!
pc86 14y ago
Why Lua?
- StavrosK 14y ago
  It's very easy to embed and sandbox, easy to learn and write, and sufficiently fast. Why do you ask?
  - pc86 14y ago
    Just curious :)

philip_roberts 14y ago

Great simple idea, but I don't really understand what the json is supposed to look like. You say: "GET http://yoursite.com/secret http://yoursite.com/secret returns {"data": [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]}" But is that an array of data for the last seven days, or the current week, or is it 7 separate analytics that I want to get tracked?

philip_roberts 14y ago
Also "Right place and right time to suit the right situation. this is some more fille" :) looks like you have some filler text to rip out.
- c1sc0 14y ago
  fille ... that is for ze ladies in french of course ;-) ... fixing it as we speak
zalew 14y ago
there's an instruction when you sign up "JSON Format Expected JSON is a dict with key 'data' and value an array of 7 integers for last 7 days, last day last."

calinet6 14y ago

"Are you measuring your weekly growth?" No, and for very good reason. For pete's sake, you should not be measuring your growth numerically and targeting it weekly. This is not what Paul meant, and I don't think it's what he would recommend. Growth happens on a larger and more complex scale than a weekly sum. Furthermore, if you're expecting your actions for any given week to correlate directly with growth that happens that week, you're doing it wrong. Do you need to work hard? Of course. Should you procrastinate? Of course not. Is the key to this tracking your weekly growth. No! You risk misdirecting your efforts, becoming far too short-sighted, and falling into the dangerous trap of running your company only on those quantifiable and measurable numbers. You risk missing the complexity which results in growth, and instead narrowing your focus to the point where it actually stagnates growth or produces the wrong kind of growth. See W. Edwards Deming's management treatise that helped bring Japan out of a recession—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principle... - one of his recommendations was to "Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers and numerical goals. Instead substitute with leadership." And a pitfall he pointed out—"Running a company on visible figures alone." More can be found in his books, which mostly are targeted toward manufacturing but I find apply incredibly well to software business. Please, don't limit yourself to this sort of narrow-minded analysis of your business, or at least be very aware of the consequences and consider it only as an interesting result, never use it as a target or benchmark, and especially don't use it to try to motivate or pressure your employees. Your results will slowly shift toward optimizing your measured goal alone, and your company will become as narrow and pointless as the number. Can this metric be used? Of course. You can look back on your efforts over the long (or short) term, and if you see a decent 6% growth rate, great. If you don't, then you may need to change something. But you have to understand it intimately; that it's not a goal, not a target, but a simple metric to be used post-facto to make useful and realistic changes to your strategy. I'm not warning you against using all numeric analysis, but I am warning against using it as a true goal or target. Just keep it in perspective, and I fear a web site that makes the metric as clear and visible as this site does brings it far too close to the front of your daily attention than it should be. Growth comes from many complex sources, toward many time frames and overarching goals; and the target is not a weekly number, but instead, a growing and sustainable company. Work toward that.