A panel reveals that intuitive metrics like commenting don't predict long-term retention, while integrations in the first 90 days do. One speaker warns that headline growth figures hide churn problems at fast-growing companies. The takeaway: align early signals with revenue outcomes, not surface-level growth.
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These metrics are not at all correlated with retention and expansion 12 months later. But we've done a massive regression analysis. We see the user base. And we actually know now what are the top metrics. If they happen in the first 90 days, are highly, highly correlated with metrics 12 months later. So we had to check ourselves. We were kind of surprised. As Erica mentioned, number of integrations was an important one. I thought that commenting and interacting through the product was important. They're like, not at all important. Doesn't predict any future growth. Throw it out. So we really had to be challenged to throw it out. We since redid that onboarding scorecard. It's now made up of 6 different measures that are proven to be related to retention and expansion. But it really questioned our initial thinking. Even as CSMs, we thought we had a good sense of that and we were seeing maybe false positives. And so having that go through like a data science team that can actually measure that against revenue outcomes Ultimately, predictability is what we're hoping for, is kind of what really allowed us to redo the metrics.
Yeah. So I'll give a very specific example here. So I, a couple of companies ago, I was at Segment. And when you looked at from the outside, the growth story was incredible, right? Like huge numbers and growth numbers are the least trustworthy numbers you can look at as a business leader because it masks like insane leaky bucket things that were going on in the business. You were like, Holy crap, what is going on in this business? In fact, you want to hear firsthand war stories? I see Katrina right here. Katrina, raise your hand real quick.
Raise high.
We got Sarah Burns. Where's Matt Smittebusch? Somewhere in the audience. Back there talking. Back there talking. We got Rob Schmelzer. Where's Rob? He's probably around here as well. Find any of them. Ask them like the war stories of what it's like to be in the system where you're like, everyone on the outside is, this is great. $3 billion acquisition. Amazing. You're like, leaky bucket from hell, right? Like, That is basically a reality of how, how, how much numbers can sort of mask the reality of what's going on in the business.
I'll say, Matt, you had a quote. I don't know if you remember saying this to me, but when we're talking about like, oh, you know, we're hiring really quickly, but we didn't have the process. High growth hides all sins.
