Suhail Doshi, co-founder of Mixpanel, argues against tracking monthly active users during a Y Combinator Startup School lecture on product measurement.
“I now think that monthly active users has become, like, the new BS metric that's, like, very similar to, like, just, like, number of registered users.”
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More from Suhail Doshi
AssertionNot publicly verifiable
Zenter (later Google Slides) launched without a save button to test demand
“I remember Robbie Walker during one of our one of one of our Tuesday dinners said that they had, they didn't even implement the save button for, like, their online PowerPoint because they knew that none of their users would ever ask, like, hey, can I save this…”
Suhail DoshiSep 12, 2018▶ 16:28Suhail Doshi - How to Measure Your Product · Y Combinator
Disclosure
Mixpanel operated without a forgot password feature for 18 months
“For like, I don't know, maybe like, 18 months of Mixpanel, like, we didn't even have forgot about password, because we were just so ruthlessly trying to prioritize, like, things that really, would really matter to customers. And it turned out we didn't get ver…”
Suhail DoshiSep 12, 2018▶ 16:58Suhail Doshi - How to Measure Your Product · Y Combinator
“Even thousand-person companies get the basics wrong. In fact, you'll find that if you don't get the, even these thousand-person companies that get it wrong, they tend to overcomplicate the number of things that they should actually measure and track.”
Suhail DoshiSep 12, 2018▶ 5:58Suhail Doshi - How to Measure Your Product · Y Combinator
Insight
Doshi: Tracking three to five North Star metrics beats complex dashboards
“And so, what I find is that just picking Like three to five things on North Star and really simplifying it will do more good for you.”
Suhail DoshiSep 12, 2018▶ 7:02Suhail Doshi - How to Measure Your Product · Y Combinator
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Doshi: Pricing page links are the second or third most clicked in B2B
“One thing that I discovered was that people, a lot of your users will click on a pricing page link at the top. It's like second or third, like most clicked on link if you're a B to B company, I think, generally speaking.”
Suhail DoshiSep 12, 2018▶ 14:40Suhail Doshi - How to Measure Your Product · Y Combinator
Insight
Doshi: B2B startups struggle to run A/B tests compared to consumer apps
“If you're in consumer the benefit of being in consumer is that you generally have you usually will have like hundreds or thousands of users such that you could actually go do an A-B test, whereas in B to B it's a lot harder to achieve that.”
Suhail DoshiSep 12, 2018▶ 15:08Suhail Doshi - How to Measure Your Product · Y Combinator
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