Choosing your metrics, KPIs, etc...

In my six years at Google, I got to observe this force up close, relentlessly killing features users loved and eroding the last vestiges of creativity and agency from our products. I know this force well, and I hate it, but I do not yet know how to fight it. I call this force the Tyranny of the Marginal User .

Simply put, companies building apps... See more

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those val-ues; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets,... See more

When Steve Jobs set goals, he kept them shockingly simple and didn't include any metrics or benchmarks. Are specific, measurable goals a waste of time?

We believe that being data-informed comes down to internalizing a set of values. These are simple, few, yet exceedingly powerful:

1. Conviction around a purpose  rather than searching for meaning in numbers


2. Setting verifiable goals  rather than vague aspirations


3. Company-wide familiarity with metrics  rather than outsourcing to “data people”


4. Active

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