OverviewHistoryStatsSecurity
npx skills add ...
Documentation
SKILL.md
npx skills add refoundai/lenny-skills --skill writing-north-star-metrics
Help users define their North Star metric. Use when someone is choosing their primary success metric, trying to align the team around a key measure, struggling with metric proliferation, or setting up their measurement strategy.
npx skills add refoundai/lenny-skills --skill writing-north-star-metrics
Help the user define their North Star metric using frameworks and insights from 27 product leaders.
When the user asks for help with North Star metrics:
Itamar Gilad: "The North Star metric measures how much value we create for the market. WhatsApp measured messages sent because every message is incremental value. Airbnb used nights booked." Select a metric that tracks core utility provided to the customer, not business extraction.
Jess Lachs: "Retention is a terrible thing to goal on. It's almost impossible to drive in a meaningful way in a short term. Find a short-term metric you can measure that drives a long-term output." Identify proxy metrics that are sensitive to experimentation and correlate with long-term goals.
Jess Lachs: "If people understand it, if they have an intuition around it, if it's something people can talk about across the company, it's going to be a much better metric than your made up composite score that nobody understands." Avoid composite metrics with complex coefficients.
Jeff Weinstein: "What was the value we're trying to produce for the customer, and can we measure it from their perspective? We suggested 'companies with zero support tickets.'" Define metrics based on the absence of friction or the presence of success moments.
Hari Srinivasan: "Everything at LinkedIn is a very connected ecosystem, but decisions aren't difficult because we're all here to help people connect to economic opportunity." A clear company-wide mission serves as the ultimate tie-breaker for product decisions.
Jeff Weinstein: "Picking metric titles that make you feel something. 'Companies with zero support' - the brevity and customer mindset built into the chart name can become currency inside the company." Use simple, evocative names instead of technical database field names.
Manik Gupta: "Everyone will talk about the same metric but have different nuances. What is a daily active user? Pick a definition, instrument it, codify it. No confusion." Metrics only drive alignment when backed by precise definitions and accurate instrumentation.
Lauryn Isford: "An activation rate that falls in a lower percentage range, maybe 5-15%, is better than a high percentage because it means there's likely much higher correlation with long-term retention." High-bar activation metrics that few users reach are often more valuable.
Lauryn Isford: "A North Star metric should be a measure of what you plan to do. Revisit North Star metrics every 6-12 months to ensure they still align with business goals." Be willing to shift metrics if the strategy requires it.
Sean Ellis: "I think monthly purchases is great because it maps to value people are getting. Units of value from the customer perspective is more important than overall revenue." Revenue should be a product of doing things right, not the day-to-day guiding metric.
For all 35 insights from 27 guests, see references/guest-insights.md