A Metric Like North Star

A Metric Like North Star

North Star Metric (NSM) is the single metric that best captures the core value that your product delivers to customers.

Amazon's NSM is the number of purchases each month. More purchases mean more value for users and more profit for Amazon.

Airbnb's NSM is nights booked. This number reflects the value for both guests staying and hosts earning.

Likewise, there's a metric similar to NSM that contributes the most across different startups.

Remove this variable and the business falls apart. Every single startup uses one loophole that changes its trajectory if you look at history. And this applies to startups as well as personal brands.

1. Miss Excel

Miss Excel, or Kat Norton, has earned over $10 million teaching Excel. But her courses weren't the secret to her success.

Her success came from:

1. TikTok's massive reach: TikTok made her reach the perfect audience.

2. Humor, trending music, and a boring topic: She made Excel fun with humor and songs trending on TikTok.

Without any of these, her success would have crumbled. Only a handful of people have made multi-million dollars teaching Excel courses.

2. Kaps

Kaps, a transcription service, reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just one year. It is a 1-feature SaaS currently worth 8-figures.

Their secret wasn't building a simple usable product that honestly any developer can build.

Their secret variable was being able to find the right influencers to promote their product. When they couldn't find contact info of these influencers online, they checked phone directories to call them.

Most startups would give up before ever making those calls.

3. JotBot

JotBot got to $50k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in 6 months using 1 simple hack.

Their trick was using super long and funny domain names to go viral.

Most would stop after buying a few domains, but JotBot didn't.

The takeaway? Every startup has a unique advantage or 'loophole'. You might find it by chance or by trying many things. But don't give up before you find it.

Remember, your product must solve a real problem for people, i.e, be a painkiller rather than be a vitamin.

Keep looking for that one thing that takes your business to the next level. Once you find it, you never have to work a day in your life again.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

It is insane how simple this is now. You can start a dev agency right now & bring 50-100 clients while satisfying all of them with 10 people powered by AI.

There are developers who charge $4k for a SaaS that can be built fully in <10 hours. It wasn't possible before at that speed. Trust me, I'm a developer.

2/

Turns out, more people try to appear successful than be actually successful..

Context: Arc Browser is dead.

3/

There is a massive secret world of launch leaderboards & cash prizes for affiliates.

You can use such bonuses as a way to run mini competition among affiliates.

Rabbit Holes

1. The Attraction Effect Explained by Marketing Explained

2. AI comes for YouTube’s thumbnail industry by Rest of World

3. Open secrets about Hacker News by Beng Tan

Until next time!

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. IndiePage's Pricing Hack (LINK)

2. Avni Barman's LinkedIn Content Strategy (LINK)

3. Kian Luke's Outlier Video Format (LINK)