Adora Cheung

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KPIs - Quantitiative metrics that explain the health of your business

Feedback mechanism to know if your actions are working
Helps you prioritize your time

The three important concepts in startups
Unit Economics
Growth
Retention

Primary Metrics

One metric you are willing to bet your whole company. Determines how well your company is doing.

Constantly review your growth goals, kpis. Be motivated to hit them and be frustrated when you don't hit them.

High Leverage Activites for Primary Metric
Talking to users
Building product

Remember the goal is to deliver high value to your user.

Have weekly updates

Track by hour what are you doing in great detail, what you think the impact will be on your primary KPI and what it was in reality.

Keep spreadsheet of tasks that will move your primary KPI. Write them down, don't do them immediately. Grade them by high, medium, low that they will help you move KPI. Then grade them by complexity

Characteristics of a good primary metric
represents delivery of real value
captures recurring value
lagging indicator of success
usable feedback mechanism

Great Primary Metrics
Revenue
Daily Active Users (must be defined carefully and correctly)
In marketplace scenarios, use metrics that combine value for both types of user (Uber = trips [drivers, riders])

Secondary metrics 3-5 metrics to pair with primary metrics

Goals

Use weekly growth goals
Good growth rate is 5%, phenomenal is 10%

Think for yourself

How To Prioritize Your Time

High Leverage Activites for Primary Metric
Talking to users
Building product

Remember the goal is to deliver high value to your user.

It's very easy for low value work to creep into your work. Track by hour what are you doing in great detail, what you think the impact will be on your primary KPI and what it was in reality.

Keep spreadsheet of tasks that will move your primary KPI. Write them down, don't do them immediately. Grade them by high, medium, low that they will help you move KPI. Then grade them by complexity

Easy - many in a day
medium - 1-2 days
high - you might not even finish them within the week

Perform weekly reviews
Primary KPI (Actual v Goal)
Biggest obstacle to growth
Tasks accomplished + impact
Big learnings 
Questions
Are you learning fast
Predicting impact well
Is low value work creeping in
What are consistent blockers to growth
Are you completing tasks in a timely manner

The art of moving fast = decisiveness. It's ok to choose wrong task and quickly learning it's low impact

When moving fast, do the thing that will get you to the next immediate step, not getting too ahead of yourself. (Focus on getting to 5 customers before worrying about 1000)

Combining Julian Shapiro's idea of leverage

What activities with low resources inputted will result in a large (2x, 5x, 10x) output of resource?

What activities will create systems that take low input and return high input.

I make important decisions by weighing ROI versus leverage.

High ROI: Putting $1 into a machine that returns $10.

High leverage: Upgrading the machine so that $1 returns $20.

High leverage behaviors (1) increase future ROI or (2) enable new high ROI opportunities.

Unstarred

Dunk (exclude from study)

Adora Cheung

Review Questions

Todos

Sensemaker