Article · 8 min read

Startups Must Move Away From Vanity Metrics

Sanjeev Bikhchandani · Forbes India Free Beginner India

The Naukri.com founder, using Zomato as the case study, makes the same case as our answer from an Indian boardroom: valuation headlines and signup counts are not health, profitability and retention are. Worth reading for how bluntly an experienced Indian founder says it.

  • Headline valuations and signup numbers are not the same as a healthy business
  • Profitability, cash flow, and customer retention are the metrics that actually predict survival
  • Discipline in a downturn beats scaling for a quick exit

The question it answers

  1. How do I actually measure whether a launch worked, beyond the vanity upvotes and traffic spike?

Read with it

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  2. The reference primer on the metrics and market-sizing logic investors use, including bottom-up market sizing that keeps... a16z Article · ~15 min read 16 Startup Metrics Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
  3. The origin text for the modern MVP and validated-learning vocabulary every founder now uses. Read it for the mental model that... theleanstartup.com Book · ~330 pages The Lean Startup Eric Ries
  4. The definitive talk that reframes launching from a one-shot event into a repeatable tactic, exactly this category's thesis. YC... YC Startup Library Video · ~25 min How to Launch (Again and Again) Kat Manalac (Y Combinator)
  5. When there is no category report to point at, you have to build the number yourself, and this is the essay that teaches you... Andreessen Horowitz Essay · ~20 min read 16 More Startup Metrics Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen, Jeff Jordan
  6. PostHog gives you product analytics and session replay in one place, so you can see both what people did (events, funnels) and... posthog.com Tool PostHog PostHog
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