Mixpanel co-founder Suhail Doshi is advising founders during a Y Combinator Startup School lecture on establishing effective product measurement frameworks.
Assertion Not 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…”
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…”
Opinion
Doshi: Monthly active users has become a deceptive vanity metric
“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.”
Insight
Doshi: Thousand-person companies regularly overcomplicate metric tracking
“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.”
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.”
Assertion Not 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.”