Employees naturally want to do a good job. So they focus on their own function: product managers build products, engineers write solid code, and compliance makes sure rules are followed. Unless told otherwise, people aim to succeed in their own silo.

This causes misalignment. Teams pull in different directions, compete for resources, and spend time debating instead of building. Progress slows.

A clear North Star aligns everyone on one shared goal.

Our main KPI is ARR Growth Rate, which we track monthly in ChartMogul. But we see ARR as the result, not the goal. The real driver is value.

So our North Star Metric focuses on delivering value. If we do that well, the revenue will follow.

Aside from the North Star metric, we’ve defined some key levers, which are those input metrics that we can improve and our likelihood of delivering value, aka, improving our North Star Metric. We’ve adopted an approach similar to the image below, where we look at the 4 dimensions of our north star.

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Our North Star Metric

Time the rfp or questionnaire is blocking the deal.

Formula: (time that the questionnaire is moved to completed - time questionnaire was created)

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Key Drivers

Width (are more unique users using our platform?): # new unique users uploading a questionnaire

  • Traffic 7-day unique visitors
  • Website to trial start conversion rate

Depth (are customers investing in the platform, so it gives them good answers?): average completion rate at questionnaire upload (number of questions marked as awaiting approval generated by our AI / total number of questions)

  • number of vector store entries
  • number of colleagues on the platform

Frequency (how often are they using our platform?): # of questions asked per month (# questions created per month)

  • number of user sessions per month
  • number of questionnaires uploaded per month

Performance (how much time is the platform saving you?): average time per question (timestamp questions moved to approved - timestamp question created)

  • number of approved unedited questions (questions that have been moved to approved - number of edited answers)