Question

Find an article or online presentation about a successful startup and find all the vanity metrics mentioned about the company. What vanity metrics were mentioned? Why don’t those items indicate the overall health of the company? What metrics would you like to see about the company to understand whether it was actually going to be successful? Why are those metrics important?

Please try to meet 300 words, thank you so much!

Answer 1

  Most of the Startup Entrepreneurs like to hype with big growth numbers. They tell you they have a large number of followers on Twitter, Facebook fans, application downloads and page views. Such metrics are just to make the people feel good about the company. But rather they are very hollow and less helpful in making any decision. These metrics just scratch the surface of the company as they do not tell you how many active users’s you have on your platform

The real thing we should be looking for is actionable metrics. They help you decided where you spending your resources and tells you which metrics matter the most. So that these metrics can be tracked over time to follow progress(real progress).The real data is not about how many page views are reached buts its about how many customers you were available to retain and the money you spent to get a new customer. Actionable metrics help you to make your product better and attracts more customers. Tracking up things which really don’t matter, you will only end up wasting your time and energy.It doesn’t matter if you have some fewer followers on social media.

As an entrepreneur, if you are looking for an investment, the investors won't be impressed at your vanity metrics because they mean no value to them. You can’t market these vanity metrics in the investor’s room.If you want to be taken seriously as a startup then you need to ditch the vanity metrics.

     Suppose you have e-commerce product that has certain different lifecycle phases.

1.Registering for the product

2.30 day trial period

3.Customers using the Product

4.The number of customers paid for full access after the trial.

A simple report can be prepared to present these metrics.The best thing about such funnel metrics is that it boils down from large amount information to only significant data required.So always “Measure what Matters”.