Don?t Be Fooled By Vanity Metrics

Startups love to point to big growth numbers, and the press loves to publish them. We are as guilty as anyone else in this regard: one million downloads, 10 million registered users, 200 million tweets per day. These growth metrics can often be signs of traction (which is why we report them), but just as often they are not. It is important to distinguish between real metrics and what Lean Startup guru Eric Ries calls vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are things like registered users, downloads, and raw pageviews. They are easily manipulated, and do not necessarily correlate to the numbers that really matter: active users, engagement, the cost of getting new customers, and ultimately revenues and profits. The latter are more actionable metrics. As First Round Capital's Josh Kopelman recently advised on Founder Office Hours, "The real data is retention and repeat usage." Startups that focu

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/tI0-sU9vLs8/

amelia earhart billy joel evo evo bachelorette maserati kodak