listicle 10 min read May 03, 2026

North Star Metric Examples From 23 SaaS Companies

Q: What is Slack's north star metric?

Slack's north star metric is messages sent within a workspace, with a key activation threshold of 2,000 messages. According to Stewart Butterfield in First Round Review, 93% of teams that hit 2,000 messages are still active customers.

Q: What is a good north star metric for an early-stage SaaS?

A good early-stage SaaS NSM measures value delivered, not value captured. Pick a usage event that customers must repeat to get the product's promise (meetings booked, designs published, transactions processed) rather thanrevenue. Revenue lags activation by months.

Q: What north star metrics do top SaaS companies use?

Top SaaS companies cluster their NSMs into engagement (Spotify's time spent listening, Facebook's DAU), consumption (Slack's messages sent, Airbnb's nights booked), and value (Shopify's GMV per merchant, Stripe's successful payment volume). Per Lenny Rachitsky's survey of 40+ companies, 50% choose revenue-style metrics, 30% pick consumption, 30% pick engagement.

Q: What is the difference between a north star metric and an OKR?

A north star metric is a persistent strategic anchor while OKRs are time-boxed quarterly goals that drive movement on the anchor. The NSM rarely changes; OKRs reset every 90 days. Airbnb's NSM is nights booked (stable for years), and an OKR might be increase host listings by 20% this quarter.

Q: Did Facebook's north star metric come from Chamath's 7 friends in 10 days?

No. The 7 friends in 10 days rule was an aha-moment threshold, not the north star itself. Facebook's NSM was Daily Active Users; the 7-friends signal was a leading indicator that predicted whether a new sign-up would become a DAU.

Q: How many companies use revenue as their north star metric?

About 50% of growth-stage companies use a revenue-style NSM (ARR, GMV, MRR), per Lenny Rachitsky's survey of 40+ companies. However, revenue-as-NSM is contested. Stage 2 Capital argues revenue is a lagging indicator and a poor optimization target for product teams.

Q: What was Pinterest's original north star metric and why did they retire it?

Pinterest's original NSM was WARC (Weekly Active Repinner or Clicker), a composite of two engagement actions. They retired it because, as Casey Winters explained, one number oversimplified a complex three-sided ecosystem. Pinterest now tracks Weekly Active Pinners alongside several supporting metrics.

Q: Is MRR a good north star metric for SaaS?

MRR works as an NSM for late-stage retention-driven SaaS but fails for early-stage products. Teachable switched from WAU to MRR in 2019 and grew to ~$3M ARR. But MRR is a lagging indicator: it tells you what already happened. Early-stage SaaS should pick a leading consumption or activation metric.

Q: Where can I find a SaaS company's north star metric publicly?

Four primary sources: S-1 IPO filings (Coinbase, DoorDash, Atlassian disclose key metrics), shareholder letters (Twitter, Netflix, Shopify), podcast interviews with founders/CPOs (Lenny's Newsletter, Intercom's Inside Intercom), and engineering blogs (Medium's Data Lab, Amplitude, Duolingo).

By Peter Foy

23 real north star metric examples from Slack, Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase and more, with primary sources for each NSM and 6 that got retired.

TL;DR

The 23 SaaS north star metrics below come from S-1 filings, shareholder letters, founder podcasts, and engineering blogs. Slack tracks messages sent, Airbnb tracks nights booked, Coinbase tracks monthly transacting users, Stripe tracks successful payment volume. Six of these NSMs (Pinterest's WARC, LinkedIn's endorsements, Teachable's WAU, Twitter's MAU, Figma's revenue, Netflix's hours-watched-only) were retired or replaced for documented reasons.

50% of growth-stage SaaS companies use revenue NSMs, 30% use consumption, 30% use engagement (Lenny Rachitsky, 2020).
Slack's 2,000-message activation threshold predicts 93% retention (Stewart Butterfield, First Round Review).
Six NSMs got retired publicly: Pinterest's WARC, LinkedIn's endorsements, Teachable's WAU, Twitter's MAU, Figma's revenue, Netflix's hours-only.
S-1 filings (Coinbase, DoorDash, Atlassian) are the most reliable primary source for a SaaS NSM.
NSMs differ from OKRs: NSMs are persistent anchors, OKRs are quarterly tactics that move them.

North star metrics get repeated in growth blogs without primary sources. This page fixes that. Below are 23 real SaaS north star metrics, each with a citable source -- S-1 filings, founder interviews, engineering blogs, conference talks -- plus six NSMs that got publicly retired and the reasons given. If you are picking your own NSM or pitching one internally, this is the reference table to anchor on. Updated May 2026. For context on why this matters, see what is growth engineering.

What is a north star metric?

A north star metric (NSM) is the single number that best captures the core value a product delivers to its users. It sits above OKRs, KPIs, and team-level dashboards as the persistent anchor every team optimizes toward.

The term was popularized by Sean Ellis around 2015 and codified by Amplitude in The North Star Playbook. A good NSM does three things:

Leads to revenue (it predicts future ARR or GMV)
Reflects customer value (it goes up when users get what they came for)
Measures progress (every team can move it with their work)

An NSM is not a vanity metric. 'Page views' fails all three tests. 'Active subscribers who completed onboarding' often passes all three. The bar is high, which is why most companies iterate on theirs.

What north star metrics do top SaaS companies use?

Top SaaS companies cluster their NSMs into three buckets: consumption (Slack, Airbnb, Uber), engagement (Spotify, Facebook, Duolingo), and value/revenue (Shopify, Stripe, Coinbase).

According to a survey of 40+ growth-stage companies by Lenny Rachitsky published on Future (a16z) in 2020:

~50% use revenue-style NSMs (ARR, GMV)
~35% use customer growth (paid users, market share)
~30% use consumption (messages sent, nights booked)
~30% use engagement (DAU, MAU, WAU)
~10% use growth efficiency (LTV/CAC)
~10% use user experience (NPS)

Percentages exceed 100% because some companies track a primary plus a secondary NSM. The table below documents 23 specific examples with their primary public source.

How 40+ Growth-Stage Companies Pick Their North Star Metric (Lenny Rachitsky Survey)

Revenue (ARR, GMV)

50%

Customer growth (paid users)

35%

Consumption (messages, nights)

30%

Engagement (DAU, MAU)

30%

Growth efficiency (LTV/CAC)

10%

User experience (NPS)

10%

Source: Lenny Rachitsky survey of 40+ growth-stage companies, Future (a16z), 2020

Which 23 SaaS companies have public north star metrics?

Below is the full table. Each row links to the primary source where the NSM was disclosed -- S-1 filing, podcast interview, engineering blog, or conference talk. Year reflects when the metric was first publicly stated, not when it was first adopted internally.

#	Company	North Star Metric	Category	Year	Source
1	Slack	Messages sent within a workspace	Consumption	2015	First Round Review
2	Airbnb	Nights booked	Consumption	2014	Lenny Rachitsky on X
3	Spotify	Time spent listening	Engagement	2017	Mind the Product
4	Facebook	Daily Active Users	Engagement	2012	Mode Analytics
5	Amplitude	Weekly Learning Users	Engagement	2018	Amplitude Playbook
6	HubSpot	Weekly Active Teams	Engagement	2019	Intercom Podcast
7	Pinterest	Weekly Active Pinners	Engagement	2016	Casey Accidental
8	Asana	Weekly Active Paid Users	Engagement	2020	Growth Academy
9	Shopify	GMV per merchant	Value	2019	Teknicks / Helen Mou
10	Medium	Total Time Reading	Engagement	2016	Pete Davies, Medium Data Lab
11	Duolingo	Daily Active Users; CURR	Engagement	2018	Lenny's Newsletter / Jorge Mazal
12	Netflix	Hours watched per member	Engagement	2017	STRTGY
13	Uber	Weekly rides	Consumption	2015	Andrew Chen
14	Coinbase	Monthly Transacting Users	Customer growth	2021	Coinbase S-1
15	DoorDash	Total Orders	Consumption	2020	DoorDash S-1
16	Twitter / X	Monetizable DAU (mDAU)	Engagement	2019	Twitter Q1 2019 letter
17	Miro	Collaborative boards created	Consumption	2021	Future / a16z
18	Figma	Weekly Active Editors	Engagement	2022	Figma blog
19	Loom	Videos created that are viewed	Consumption	2021	Future / a16z
20	Calendly	Meetings scheduled	Consumption	2020	Aakash Gupta
21	Twitch	Hours watched	Engagement	2018	MemberSpace summary
22	Stripe	Successful payment volume	Value	2020	Stripe Sessions / Patrick Collison
23	LinkedIn (post-2016)	Monthly Active Users	Engagement	2017	LinkedIn engineering blog

What is Slack's north star metric and why does the 2,000 messages threshold matter?

Slack's NSM is messages sent within a workspace, with a documented activation threshold of 2,000 team messages. Past that point, retention rates jump dramatically.

In a First Round Review interview, Stewart Butterfield disclosed that 93% of teams that hit 2,000 messages were still paying customers. That single number became the activation goal Slack's growth team optimized against from 2014 to 2018.

Why 2,000? It is roughly the message volume at which a team has integrated Slack into core workflows: standups, decisions, file sharing, project chatter. Below 2,000, Slack is a chat experiment. Above 2,000, it is infrastructure. For benchmarks on what activation thresholds look like in 2026, see our SaaS activation benchmarks 2026.

Which north star metrics have been retired or replaced?

Six NSMs in the table above were publicly retired or replaced. The reasons matter more than the swaps.

1. Pinterest: WARC -> Weekly Active Pinners. Pinterest combined repins and clicks into one composite metric called WARC. Casey Winters, Pinterest's former growth lead, explained the retirement: the metric oversimplified a three-sided ecosystem and led teams to optimize against the average pinner instead of the marginal one.

2. LinkedIn: Endorsements given -> Quality endorsements -> MAU. Per a LinkedIn engineering paper, count metrics 'became misleading over time' and 'blinded us to a user experience that drifted away from the main purpose.' Post-Microsoft acquisition (2016), LinkedIn standardized on MAU.

3. Teachable: WAU -> MRR. Teachable's growth team switched from weekly active users to monthly recurring revenue around 2019, after WAU growth masked retention decay. Co-founder Conrad Wadowski objected; the data won. Result: ~$3M ARR within the year.

4. Twitter: MAU -> mDAU. Twitter retired MAU in Q1 2019 and shifted to monetizable DAU, defined as users who saw ads on a given day. The change tied the NSM directly to revenue capture and was disclosed in their shareholder letter.

5. Figma: Revenue -> Weekly Active Editors. Figma reportedly moved off revenue as the primary NSM during the 2022-2023 push to grow market share against Sketch and Adobe XD. Revenue became a guardrail; weekly editors became the rallying number.

6. Netflix: Hours watched (with caveats). Reed Hastings publicly noted hours watched is 'less and less accurate for capturing the state of the business' as Netflix added ads, paid-sharing, and bundled subscriptions. The NSM still exists; it now sits alongside ARPU and engagement-quality measures.

How do you choose a north star metric for an early-stage SaaS?

For early-stage SaaS, pick a leading consumption or activation metric, not revenue. Revenue lags activation by 60-90 days. Optimizing it directly leads to bad decisions like discounting and locked-in annual contracts that mask product weakness.

Use this 4-step filter:

Identify the core action that delivers your product's promise (meeting scheduled, design published, payment processed, message sent).
Add a frequency window appropriate to usage (daily for consumer, weekly for B2B SaaS, monthly for low-frequency tools).
Add a quality gate that filters non-value events (Slack's 'within a workspace,' Loom's 'videos that are viewed').
Validate against retention -- does the metric correlate with 30/60/90-day retention? If not, it is not your NSM.

A template that works: 'Number of [users/teams] who [core action] in a [time window] with [quality gate].'

See our step-by-step guide to picking your north star metric in 30 minutes for the full workshop.

What is the difference between a north star metric and an OKR?

A north star metric is a persistent strategic anchor. OKRs are time-boxed quarterly goals that drive movement on the anchor. The NSM rarely changes; OKRs reset every 90 days.

Dimension	North Star Metric	OKR
Time horizon	Multi-year	Quarterly
Scope	Company-wide	Team or function
Changes	Rarely (only at strategy shifts)	Every quarter
Purpose	Direction	Velocity
Example (Airbnb)	Nights booked	'Increase host listings by 20% in Q2'

They work together. Each input to the NSM (acquisition rate, activation rate, retention rate) becomes a Key Result owned by a different team. The sum of OKR progress moves the NSM. For more on aligning daily metrics, see our growth metrics FAQ cheatsheet.

How do you find another company's north star metric?

Four primary source types contain disclosed NSMs:

S-1 IPO filings -- Coinbase, DoorDash, Atlassian, Asana all named their key engagement metric in the prospectus 'How We Measure Our Business' section.
Quarterly shareholder letters -- Twitter, Netflix, Shopify, Spotify update their primary engagement metric every quarter. Look for the metric they reported the most consistently across 8+ quarters.
Founder/CPO podcast interviews -- Lenny's Newsletter, Intercom's Inside Intercom podcast, Reforge interviews, and SaaStr Annual talks. Founders disclose NSMs more freely than they disclose ARR.
Engineering blogs -- Medium's Data Lab, Duolingo's blog, Amplitude's North Star Playbook, LinkedIn Engineering. Engineering posts often include the actual SQL definition of the metric.

If the company is private and pre-Series-B, the NSM probably has not been publicly disclosed. Best you can do is reverse-engineer it from job descriptions and the metrics highlighted in their pricing page.

#	Company	North Star Metric	Category	Year stated	Primary source
1	Slack	Messages sent within a workspace (2,000+ threshold)	Consumption	2015	[First Round Review interview with Stewart Butterfield](https://review.firstround.com/From-0-to-1B-Slacks-Founder-Shares-Their-Epic-Launch-Strategy/)
2	Airbnb	Nights booked	Consumption	2014	[Lenny Rachitsky on X (former Airbnb PM)](https://x.com/lennysan/status/1257360086613331968)
3	Spotify	Time spent listening (by subscribers)	Engagement	2017	[Mind the Product](https://www.mindtheproduct.com/measuring-the-right-north-star-metric/)
4	Facebook (Meta)	Daily Active Users (DAU)	Engagement	2012	[Chamath Palihapitiya talk, summarized by Mode](https://mode.com/blog/facebook-aha-moment-simpler-than-you-think/)
5	Amplitude	Weekly Learning Users (WLU)	Engagement	2018	[Amplitude North Star Playbook](https://amplitude.com/books/north-star/amplitudes-north-star-metric-and-inputs)
6	HubSpot	Weekly Active Teams	Engagement (breadth)	2019	[Kieran Flanagan on Intercom podcast](https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/sean-ellis-growth/)
7	Pinterest	Weekly Active Pinners	Engagement	2016	[Casey Winters, former Pinterest growth lead](https://caseyaccidental.com/one-key-metric-victim)
8	Asana	Weekly Active Paid Users	Engagement + Revenue	2020	[Growth Academy](https://www.growth-academy.com/north-star-metric-examples)
9	Shopify	Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) per merchant	Value	2019	[Helen Mou, Shopify Product Lead, via Teknicks](https://www.teknicks.com/blog/shopify-north-star-metric/)
10	Medium	Total Time Reading (TTR)	Engagement	2016	[Pete Davies (Medium Data Lab)](https://medium.com/data-lab/mediums-metric-that-matters-total-time-reading-86c4970837d5)
11	Duolingo	Daily Active Users (DAU); team-level: CURR	Engagement	2018	[Jorge Mazal on Lenny's Newsletter](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-duolingo-reignited-user-growth)
12	Netflix	Hours watched per member	Engagement	2017	[Sarandos via STRTGY analysis](https://strtgy.design/en/strtgy-notes-en/netflix-has-changed-its-north-star-metric-nsm/)
13	Uber	Weekly rides	Consumption	2015	[Andrew Chen, former Uber growth lead](https://andrewchen.com/)
14	Coinbase	Monthly Transacting Users (MTU)	Customer growth	2021	[Coinbase S-1 filing](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1679788/000162828021003168/coinbaseglobalincs-1.htm)
15	DoorDash	Total Orders	Consumption	2020	[DoorDash S-1 filing](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1792789/000119312520292381/d752207ds1.htm)
16	Twitter / X	Monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAU)	Engagement (revenue-linked)	2019	[Twitter Q1 2019 shareholder letter](https://investor.twitterinc.com/financials/quarterly-results/default.aspx)
17	Miro	Collaborative boards created	Consumption	2021	[Miro engineering blog via Future (a16z)](https://future.com/north-star-metrics/)
18	Figma	Weekly Active Editors	Engagement	2022	[Sho Kuwamoto, Figma VP Product](https://www.figma.com/blog/)
19	Loom	Videos created that are viewed	Consumption	2021	[Loom blog](https://www.loom.com/blog)
20	Calendly	Meetings scheduled	Consumption	2020	[Aakash Gupta growth analysis](https://www.aakashg.com/north-star-metric/)
21	Twitch	Hours watched	Engagement	2018	[Twitch official metric](https://www.twitch.tv/p/legal/about-ads/)
22	Stripe	Successful payment volume	Value	2020	[Patrick Collison, Stripe Sessions](https://stripe.com/sessions)
23	LinkedIn (post-2016)	Monthly Active Users (MAU)	Engagement	2017	[Microsoft / LinkedIn Q1 FY18 earnings](https://news.microsoft.com/2017/10/26/microsoft-cloud-strength-drives-first-quarter-results/)

Frequently asked questions

What is Slack's north star metric?

Slack's north star metric is messages sent within a workspace, with a key activation threshold of 2,000 messages. According to Stewart Butterfield in First Round Review, 93% of teams that hit 2,000 messages are still active customers. The metric captures real workspace utility, not vanity sign-ups.

What is a good north star metric for an early-stage SaaS?

A good early-stage SaaS NSM measures value delivered, not value captured. Pick a usage event that customers must repeat to get the product's promise (meetings booked, designs published, transactions processed) rather than revenue. Revenue lags activation by months. Lennys Newsletter found ~30% of growth-stage companies use a consumption metric like this.

What north star metrics do top SaaS companies use?

Top SaaS companies cluster their NSMs into three categories: engagement (Spotify's time spent listening, Facebook's DAU), consumption (Slack's messages sent, Airbnb's nights booked, Uber's rides per week), and value (Shopify's GMV per merchant, Stripe's successful payment volume). Per Lenny Rachitsky's survey of 40+ companies, 50% choose revenue-style metrics, 30% pick consumption, 30% pick engagement.

When should you change your north star metric?

Change your NSM when it stops predicting retention or revenue. LinkedIn retired 'endorsements given' because count metrics drifted from the user's actual goal. Teachable swapped WAU for MRR after WAU growth masked retention problems. Pinterest dropped its WARC composite metric because it oversimplified a multi-sided ecosystem. The trigger: your inputs are growing but your business is not.

What is the difference between a north star metric and an OKR?

A north star metric is a persistent strategic anchor, while OKRs are time-boxed quarterly goals that drive movement on that anchor. The NSM rarely changes; OKRs reset every 90 days. Example: Airbnb's NSM is nights booked (stable for years). An OKR might be 'increase host listings by 20% this quarter,' which is one quarterly lever toward the NSM.

Did Facebook's north star metric come from Chamath's '7 friends in 10 days'?

No. The '7 friends in 10 days' rule was an aha-moment threshold, not the north star itself. Facebook's NSM was Daily Active Users; the 7-friends signal was a leading indicator that predicted whether a new sign-up would become a DAU. Chamath confirmed this distinction in his 2013 talk on Facebook's growth, summarized by Mode.

How many companies use revenue as their north star metric?

About 50% of growth-stage companies use a revenue-style NSM (ARR, GMV, MRR), per Lenny Rachitsky's survey of 40+ companies. However, revenue-as-NSM is contested. Stage 2 Capital argues revenue is a lagging indicator and a poor optimization target for product teams, since revenue can grow while underlying engagement decays.

What was Pinterest's original north star metric and why did they retire it?

Pinterest's original NSM was WARC (Weekly Active Repinner or Clicker), a composite of two engagement actions. They retired it because, as Casey Winters explained in Casey Accidental, one number oversimplified a complex three-sided ecosystem (pinners, creators, advertisers). Pinterest now tracks Weekly Active Pinners alongside several supporting metrics.

Is MRR a good north star metric for SaaS?

MRR works as an NSM for late-stage, retention-driven SaaS but fails for early-stage products. Teachable switched from WAU to MRR in 2019 and grew to ~$3M ARR. But MRR is a lagging indicator: it tells you what already happened. Early-stage SaaS should pick a leading consumption or activation metric that predicts MRR 60-90 days out.

Where can I find a SaaS company's north star metric publicly?

Four primary sources: (1) S-1 IPO filings (Coinbase, DoorDash, Atlassian disclose key metrics), (2) shareholder letters (Twitter, Netflix, Shopify), (3) podcast interviews with founders/CPOs (Lenny's Newsletter, Intercom's Inside Intercom), and (4) engineering blogs (Medium's Data Lab, Amplitude, Duolingo). Conference talks at SaaStr, Mind the Product, and Reforge often surface NSMs for private companies.

After the FAQ, before the schema markup.

Pick your north star metric in 30 minutes