lean-analytics

Name your business model archetype (e-commerce, SaaS, mobile app, media, UGC, or marketplace) and your current stage, then read the candidate metric from the stage-by-model matrix. Verify it passes four tests: comparative, understandable, a ratio or rate, and behavior-changing.

The OMTM is the single number measuring your riskiest unproven assumption right now. Pick it by identifying your business model and stage, pair it with a counter-metric to prevent gaming, and set a line in the sand with a target, date, and pre-committed miss response.

Vanity metrics are totals and cumulative curves that only rise with time, like total signups or page views. Actionable metrics are comparative ratios tied to decisions, such as week-4 retention by cohort or visitor-to-paid conversion rate.

Around 5% monthly customer churn is the upper bound of viable for early SaaS, while healthy companies push toward 2% or lower. Treat benchmarks as starting heuristics and re-derive them against your own cohorts before adopting them as targets.

Only after passing the Stickiness gate, meaning cohort retention curves flatten at a viable floor. Buying users for a product with collapsing retention multiplies the leak, so fix onboarding and time-to-value before scaling acquisition spend.

Blended averages mix cohorts and segments, so improving new cohorts can be masked by decaying old ones. Cohort tables comparing groups at the same age, plus segmentation by channel and plan, reveal whether the product is actually improving.