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growthperclickHacker Playbooks.

After

Pick a North Star and ignore vanity

Choose one metric that means a user got the value (a file shared, a job applied, a photo downloaded). Report that. Follower counts are not a company.

Teams and solos both drown in dashboards. A North Star forces every experiment to answer: did more people get the job done?

How to run it

  1. 01Name the action that correlates with retention, not with curiosity.
  2. 02Instrument it. If you cannot count it this week, you cannot grow it.
  3. 03Kill experiments that move signups but not the Star.
  4. 04Put the number in public if you can stand it — it keeps you honest.

In the wild

Dropbox cared about files in folders. Marketplaces care about completed matches. Photo tools care about paid downloads, not landing-page hits.

Used by · 2

Andrew Chen

@andrewchen

Growth loops · networks

Network effects, cold starts, and loops versus funnels

Sean Ellis

@SeanEllis

Experimentation · PMF gate

Product-market fit as a gate, North Stars, and experiment cadence