North Star Metric
The single metric that best captures the core value a product delivers, used to align a whole team's decisions around one number.
A North Star metric is the one number a company agrees best reflects the value it delivers to customers — nights booked, messages sent, weekly active teams. It is chosen so that moving it means the business and its users win together, and it becomes the shared reference for prioritization.
The discipline is in the choice. A good North Star is a leading indicator of value and revenue, not a vanity number; it resists gaming and connects to real user behavior. Around it, teams define input metrics — activation, retention — that they can actually influence week to week.
Related terms
ActivationThe point at which a new user first experiences the core value of a product — the 'aha moment' that predicts whether they'll stick around.RetentionThe measure of how many users keep coming back to a product over time — the clearest signal of whether it delivers lasting value.Growth DesignDesign practiced as a growth lever — every flow, screen, and experiment aimed explicitly at activation, conversion, and retention metrics.Product-Market FitThe stage at which a product satisfies a strong market demand so well that usage, retention, and word-of-mouth grow on their own.