Sean Ellis

What you try to do with the North Star metric is reflect how much aggregate value you’re delivering to customers. This is more sustainable than focusing just on revenue. Example: for Uber, multiple small rides is better than a long ride even though revenue might be the same. Because it involves more customers, therefore more habit-forming opportunities.

Without Product-Market Fit, you can’t drive sustainable growth. If people don’t keep using your product, eventually you’ll be losing people at a faster pace than you’re bringing them in.

When you’re experimenting with new channels, you also have to make sure the business model is right for this channel. Examples: relying on virality, a high price might slow down growth; relying on Google Ads and competitive keywords, you probably need a high price.

The only way to know if an app is a must have is to put it in the hands of customers. Then, ask them how they’d feel if they could no longer use the product: not disappointed, somewhat disappointed or very disappointed. Next, learn all you can about users saying they are very disappointed.

You can debate your North Star Metrics for 6 months, but then you don’t benefit from its power during that time. Commit to something now and if you need to change it later, you can.

Complexity can scare new users. You first need to onboard people on a specific use case, then you can convert them to the next features.

There’s this belief that if you put more features in a product it will be more valuable for people. It’s hard to iterate on something that’s already complex.

You run much better experiments when you talk to customers. Having at least one customer conversation every single day is super powerful.