If the number in your update cannot go down, it is probably the wrong number.

I read a lot of build-in-public updates tonight and noticed something in almost all of them. The headline number was always one that can only go up. Registered users. Total downloads. Signups since launch. Cumulative anything. None of those can decrease, which means none of them can ever deliver bad news, which is exactly why they get picked. They are the numbers that make every week look like a week of progress, including the weeks that were not. The numbers that actually tell you something are the ones that can fall. Weekly actives. People who came back without being prompted. Paid, this month, net of churn. Those hurt to publish, and that is the whole reason they are worth publishing. Here is the part that does the damage though. You do not just report the monotonic number, you start steering by it, because it is the one on the slide and the one people congratulate you for. So you optimise for more signups rather than for anyone returning, and both of those feel like growth right up until the day they very obviously are not the same thing. One post tonight said nine apps, two hundred downloads, one paid subscription. That single paid subscription was the only real information in the entire update, and it was the smallest number on the page. Genuine question rather than a rhetorical one: what is the number you publish, and what is the number you would actually bet the next three months on? If they are the same number, I would like to know how you got there.