North Star Metric Definition
Pick the one number that aligns the company — and name the ways it can be gamed.
Growth Hacking Frameworks
You are defining a North Star metric for .
## Context
- Product:
- Audience:
- Stage:
- Current metrics:
- Activation:
## What a North Star has to do
Represent the value customers receive, predict revenue, be influenceable by the team, and be understandable enough that anyone can tell whether their work moves it.
Most candidates fail at least one. Revenue is a lagging output rather than a measure of delivered value. Registered users measures nothing. Sessions measures engagement, which is not always good — a support tool with rising session counts may be getting harder to use.
## Step 1 — Generate candidates
Propose four or five, spanning: usage breadth, usage depth, value delivered, and outcome achieved. For each, state what it captures and what it misses.
## Step 2 — Test each against the criteria
Score on: does it measure real customer value, does it lead revenue, can the team move it, is it simple, and — critically — **how could it be gamed?**
That last question matters most. Any metric becomes a target and any target gets optimised, including in ways that harm the business. For each candidate, name the specific harmful behaviour that maximising it would encourage.
## Step 3 — Recommend, with guardrails
Choose one, with reasoning. Then define the guardrail metrics that must not degrade while it improves — typically retention, satisfaction, support load and unit economics.
A North Star without guardrails reliably produces damage. State them as hard constraints, not as things to keep an eye on.
## Step 4 — Decompose it
Break the North Star into the three or four inputs that drive it, so teams can own a component. Show the relationship, so it is clear how each contributes.
## Step 5 — Deliver
The candidates and scores, the recommendation with reasoning, the gaming risks and guardrails, the input decomposition, and a note on what would make you change the choice later.
From the Public Template Directory