Key Performance Indicator

Also called KPI

Key performance indicator: a specific metric a team tracks to gauge how well it is doing against its goals, revenue growth, churn, activation. The numbers you steer by.

Why it matters

Choosing the right KPIs focuses a team on what actually matters and makes success measurable; the wrong ones drive the wrong behavior. Picking a few meaningful KPIs, not a dashboard of everything, is the skill.

For example

The growth team's KPI is weekly active users, the one number it steers by, rather than a dashboard of two dozen metrics.

Related terms

Objectives and Key Results North Star Metric Actionable Metric

Go deeper

See how founders actually handle this on Co-founders, team and legal, part of the Starting Up hub.

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