Diligence at Social Capital Part 1: Accounting for User Growth
by Jonathan Hsu · Social Capital (via The Startup on Medium)
First part of a five-part series on the quantitative analysis a venture firm ran on startups' usage data. Breaks active-user growth into new, retained, resurrected and churned users, then moves on to cohort LTV, engagement depth and the 'quick ratio'. The most rigorous free treatment of growth accounting and cohort-based engagement and LTV. It suits learners ready to go beyond dashboards.
More resources on Product Analytics
Plan Your Taxonomy (Data Planning Playbook)
Guide to designing an event-tracking plan before writing any instrumentation. It goes from business objectives to key metrics to user journeys, then to the events and properties to collect. Covers naming conventions, property limits and consolidating redundant events. The method (objectives to metrics to journeys to events) and the naming rules apply to any tool, though some examples mention Amplitude features.
The North Star Playbook
Free online book on the North Star Framework: choosing one metric that captures customer value and breaking it into input metrics that teams can influence. Includes a checklist, workshop exercises, common traps, and guidance on when to change the metric.
Measuring Product Health
Essay by Sequoia Capital's data science team on diagnosing a product with data. Covers cohort retention curves and their three shapes, growth accounting (new, resurrected and churned users), L-ness stickiness metrics such as L5+/7, and engagement depth.