What Is Your Product’s North Star?

The North Star is the Star Polaris, the brightest in the Constellation Ursa minor. Because it is almost motionless in our night sky, navigators can use it to find their way without a map or compass.

To work out your north star metric, think about the one thing that a user can do with your product to help fix their problem. For Spotify and Netflix, a north star metric might be clicking on ‘play’. For Amazon’s Kindle store, it might be downloading a book. Instagram’s north star metric might be image uploads.