Suhail Doshi, Mixpanel founder, says most companies overcomplicate analytics. Pick one North Star metric for six months, support it with three to five others, and only dig into complex analysis once you know which direction it's moving.
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I think that one of the biggest mistakes that people make with analytics is being really overcomplicated thinking that they need to be super sophisticated thinking that they need to track all kinds of crazy cohorts, and they need to have, like, a dashboard with, like, 30 panes on it that all, like, loads. You have, like, mission control. I don't think that is necessary. I had that. It didn't work. It was really hard to run the company that way. And what also happens is that when you build your team, it will be confusing for your team of those 30 pains, like, which one do I need to care about? Humans just need to simplify things. So I'd pick one. North Star metric. What is a number that you're willing to bet the company on? Like, if that number goes south, you deserve to die. If that number goes up, you will have, like, made a huge dent in the universe. And I'm not saying you need to choose that metric forever, but choose it for six months. Commit some time to it. If you find out that it's actually, like, the wrong metric, which it will be probably the first time you choose this, usually your metrics are wrong, and then you can change it, but commit again for another six months, but choose that one number. And then if what you have to do at the beginning is basically just print it out and put it all around the office, do it. Because people will start to be maniacally focused on it. They'll show up to meetings and go, yeah, but that number is down. What are we going to do? And where you can get really complex is discovering why that number is down or why it's going up. That's when you can get really sophisticated. That's when you can slice and dice it and figure out what the retention is and things like that, and measure it over a funnel, but keep things really simple. And then the second thing is pick three to five other things. I think less is more, and just stay there. Most large companies don't do this, and it usually is very discombobulating for the workforce. It's totally fine to have numbers that you wish to monitor, but don't focus on them.
