Your Key Metrics

5 min read

Doing a startup is like pushing a boulder up a hill. It's a ton of work. Getting that first movement is fricking hard and it might not move much. And likely it moves forward a bit and slips back a bit, but hopefully step by step you get it higher and higher and if you're lucky it can start to roll down the other side and you have a whole new problem of keeping up with it before it rolls off a cliff or into a village.

If you don't measure what you're doing you can't know if your boulder is moving. You don't know if the method you just tried to move it worked, how well or how it could be improved.

If You Haven't Launched Yet

Pre-launch? This article might not be for you yet. Your focus should be on validating your idea with customers and building your MVP.

Once you launch, come back here. Your first metric is simple: get 10 users who love it.

How do you know they love it? Not by asking. By watching:

They come back without you reminding them
They use it multiple times per week
They tell others about it unprompted
They complain when it breaks

Track who signed up, when they last used it, and how often they come back. A spreadsheet is fine. Don't build fancy dashboards yet.

Pick Your One Number

Post-launch? Pick one primary metric. Not five. One. The single number that tells you if you're winning.

For most startups, this is revenue. Revenue is proof people want what you built enough to pay for it.

If you're B2B SaaS, it's Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). If you're a marketplace or e-commerce, it's monthly revenue. If you're consumer, it might be MRR or active users, depending on your model.

What If You're Not Charging Yet?

Some products need scale before monetization. Social apps, open source projects, free tools building an audience.

In those cases, pick the metric that measures real usage. Not signups. Not downloads. Not page views. Usage.

If your product is used daily, track Daily Active Users (DAU)
If it's used weekly, track Weekly Active Users (WAU)
If you're developer tools, track active integrations or API calls

Your primary metric should answer one question: "Are people using this thing enough that they'd pay for it (or we can monetize them later)?"

Track a Few Supporting Metrics

Your primary metric is what you judge yourself by. But pick 2-3 supporting metrics that help you understand what's driving it.

If your primary metric is MRR, track:

New customers ... are you growing the top of the funnel?
Churn ... are customers leaving?
Active usage ... are customers actually using it? (This predicts churn.)

Don't track ten things. Track the 2-3 that directly impact your primary metric. Everything else is noise.

Build a Simple Dashboard

You need to see your numbers every day. Not buried in analytics tools. Visible. In your face.

Start simple:

Google Sheets if you're pulling data manually
Stripe Dashboard if you're already using Stripe
A simple SQL query pinned to your browser if you have a database

Make your primary metric big. Make it the first thing you see. Supporting metrics go below it.

Do not spend money on analytics tools until you have hundreds of users. You're too early. Keep it simple.

Check It Every Day

Your dashboard should be your homepage. Or a pinned tab. Or a bookmark you hit first thing every morning.

You should feel it when the number doesn't move. That discomfort is useful. It forces you to ask: "Why isn't this growing? What do I need to change?"

The Airbnb founders wrote their weekly revenue goal on their bathroom mirror. They saw it every day. That pressure kept them moving.

Make your metric unavoidable. If you have to remember to check it, you won't.

Set Weekly Goals Around It

Your metric isn't just for tracking. It's the foundation of your weekly goals.

If you're at $2K MRR today and want to hit $10K in 10 weeks, work backward. That's $800/week in growth. Now you know what you need to hit each week.

Write it down. Track it. If you're falling behind in week 3, you know immediately. Adjust now, not in week 9 when it's too late.

Examples of Good Weekly Goals

"Increase MRR from $2K to $2.8K"
"Get 5 new paying customers"
"Hit 1,000 WAU (up from 750)"
"Close 3 pilots, move pipeline from 10 to 13 total"

Weekly goals prevent surprises. If you don't set checkpoints, you won't realize you're off track until it's too late to fix it.

Your Plan Will Change

You'll revise your metric as you learn more about your business. That's fine. The point is to have one, track it, and use it to drive decisions.

Without a metric, you're guessing. With a metric, you know if you're winning or losing. And you can adjust.

The Bottom Line

Pick one metric. Track it daily. Set weekly goals around it. Let the number tell you if you're making progress or wasting time.

Pre helps you set and track measurable goals. Define your primary metric, set weekly goals around it, and hold yourself accountable with real progress tracking... so you always know if you're moving forward or standing still.

Track My Metrics (Free)