North Star Metric Framework

What it is

This skill helps you identify your company's North Star Metric — the one customer-focused number that best captures the value you deliver and predicts business success. It walks you through classifying your business type (Attention, Transaction, or Productivity), validates your metric against proven criteria, and suggests 3-5 supporting metrics that drive your North Star. Perfect for founders and PMs setting up a metrics framework or deciding what really matters to measure.

What it does

• Classifies your business into one of three types: Attention, Transaction, or Productivity
• Identifies a single North Star Metric that reflects customer value and predicts revenue
• Validates your metric against 7 criteria for effectiveness (understandable, customer-centric, actionable, etc.)
• Suggests 3-5 input metrics that directly influence your North Star and show where to focus efforts
• Explains why your North Star isn't just revenue or an OKR, but a leading indicator of success

Use it when

• You're setting up a metrics framework and need to know what to measure
• You're launching a product and want to pick the one metric that matters most
• You're evaluating whether your current key metric is actually driving growth
• You need to align your team around a single, customer-focused success indicator