Article · ~20 min read

The North Star Playbook & Choosing Your Growth Metrics

Lenny Rachitsky · Lenny's Newsletter Freemium Intermediate

Lenny distills how the best product teams pick a single North Star that captures real customer value and drives the whole growth model, with concrete company examples.

  • A good North Star metric measures delivered customer value, not vanity signups.
  • Break the North Star into a small set of input metrics you can actually move.
  • Fewer, well-chosen metrics reviewed weekly beat sprawling dashboards nobody reads.
Open on lennysnewsletter.com ↗

It answers 5 questions

  1. What growth metrics should I actually track as an early-stage startup?
  2. How do I know if I have product-market fit before I try to grow?
  3. How do I know if my paid ads are actually profitable?
  4. How should I set up a simple growth model or dashboard?
  5. How do I measure and analyze retention properly?

Read with it

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  3. The original, still-used test for whether you have product-market fit, from the person who coined 'growth hacking' and grew... Startup Marketing / GrowthHackers Article · ~10 min read The Sean Ellis Product-Market Fit Survey (40% Test) Sean Ellis
  4. Based on studying 100+ consumer companies, Lenny shows that lasting growth comes from becoming world-class at one growth... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~20 min read The Growth Engine: Kickstarting & Scaling a Consumer Business (Step 6) Lenny Rachitsky
  5. A blunt, practical guide from Demand Curve's founder on which paid and organic channels fit which business, and why most... julian.com Article · Long-form guide Startup Handbook: Customer Acquisition Channels Julian Shapiro
  6. Concrete retention benchmarks and cohort-analysis methods gathered from dozens of top companies, so you can tell a healthy... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~20 min read How the Best Companies Measure and Improve Retention Lenny Rachitsky
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