Vanity Dies Hard Back  to  Basics  

@ElliotSusel  

Vanity Metrics Actionable Metrics Innovation Accounting Systems

Vanity Metric Low  correla/on  to  what  makes  your  

business  successful  

These are important…

But  let’s  not  overstate  their  significance  

Success Theater Look  at  our  [insert  vanity  metric]!  

Our  business  is  amazing!  

What then DO we measure?

Actionable Metric High  correla/on  to  what  makes  your  

business  successful  

Actionable Metric

But there’s a problem The  ac/onable  metric  is  a  lie  

What impacts ride volume?

•  Outreach  •  Promo/ons  •  Support  •  Technology  

Stuff we control

•  Weather  •  Seasonality  •  Holidays  •  Events  (Sports,  Religious,  Concerts,  Others…)  •  System  Outages  (Fleet,  Dispatch,  Internal)  

 

Stuff we don’t control

THIS IS SCARY We  think  we  have  meaningful  data  We  do  not  have  meaningful  data  

Meaningful Conclusions?

Innovation Accounting Understand  the  factors  impac/ng  

your  metrics  

Understanding Ride Volume

•  New  vs  Return  Customers  •  Distribu/on  by  plaMorm  •  Distribu/on  by  fleet/geographic  region  •  Distribu/on  by  day  of  week  and  /me  of  day  

Why? Validated  learning  is  a  startup’s  

most  valuable  commodity  

Nice concepts How  do  we  execute?  

A SYSTEM, YOU SAY?

Losers  have  goals  Winners  create  systems  

Components of Our System  

•  Every  development  request  has  a  goal  •  Every  goal  has  quan/fica/on  •  Architecture  review  includes  analy/cs  •  Code  review  includes  analy/cs  •  Every  PROD  deployment  requires  hooks  to  monitoring/analy/cs  tools  

Stuff we’ve learned Or  at  least,  closing  thoughts  

Culture Matters If  leadership  doesn’t  value  analy/cs,  

no  one  will  value  analy/cs  

Over-reporting Don’t  do  it  

Accidental Learning Informa/on  radiators  are  your  friend  

Create a System A  project  accounts  for  metrics  from  

incep/on  to  delivery  

Then tune it Because  you’re  never  done  learning  

Questions? @ElliotSusel