North Star Metric

The North Star Metric is the single metric that best captures the core value a product delivers to customers, serving as the guiding light for product strategy and team alignment. This metric reflects customer value reception not just company value capture, focusing teams on delivering outcomes that matter. Effective North Star Metrics exhibit several characteristics: they express product core value, represent customer value not just business metrics, measure value delivery frequency or depth, predict business success and retention, are understandable and memorable, can be influenced by team actions, and compound over time. Examples include Airbnb measuring nights booked, Spotify tracking time listening, Slack measuring messages sent by teams, and Amplitude counting weekly learning users. Each captures core value delivery. Choosing a North Star requires understanding what value means to customers, identifying the metric reflecting that value delivery, ensuring the metric predicts business success, and validating that improving it improves the business. Benefits of North Star focus include aligning teams around common goal, focusing efforts on what matters most, enabling autonomy through clear direction, simplifying prioritization decisions, and measuring progress meaningfully. The metric shouldn't be the only one tracked but serves as primary focus with supporting metrics providing context. Input metrics show drivers of the North Star while output metrics show business results. Common mistakes include choosing vanity metrics over value, selecting metrics teams can't influence, using business metrics not reflecting customer value, or changing North Star too frequently. Product managers should define and communicate the North Star clearly, connect initiatives to North Star impact, use it for prioritization frameworks, and regularly review whether it still reflects core value. Strong North Star Metrics transform how teams think, shifting focus from outputs to outcomes and from building features to delivering value.