How do you decide which metric your whole company wakes up to?

For a long time ours was ARR, mostly because it's the number investors ask about. But it's a lagging indicator. By the time ARR moves, the decisions that caused it are months old.

So we shifted focus to activation, and it honestly changed how we build. Every feature debate started with "does this get someone to value faster?" and it worked, activation went from 5% to over 50% (we wrote a blog post about it here).

But a single metric warps things too. Activation can climb while retention quietly slips, and I've caught myself ignoring real signals just because they weren't the number.

So I keep flip-flopping between:

• One north star everyone recites

• 2 or 3 metrics with clear owners

• A wall of charts and trusting people to be adults

Right now I lean north star plus a rotating cast of supporting metrics, but I'm maybe 60% confident in that.

If you had to pick one number your whole team sees every morning, what would it be, and how did you pick it?

No matter what you pick, we just launched Basedash Subscriptions to make it easier for everyone on your team to keep on top of your core metrics. Check it out: https://www.producthunt.com/products/basedash/launches/basedash-subscriptions