Business Analytics & KPIs
One number that predicts the future beats a hundred that describe the past.
The business case
Seven Friends in Ten Days — Facebook's growth team · United States · from around 2007. Facebook's growth team faced a familiar problem: enormous quantities of data, and no agreement on what actually mattered.
Why it matters
One number that predicts the future beats a hundred that describe the past. Most dashboards report what already happened — revenue, visitors, downloads. These are lagging indicators and they tell you nothing you can act on today. What Facebook found was a leading indicator: an early, controllable behaviour that predicted a later outcome. Your task in this chapter is to find yours. It will not be seven friends, and it will be specific to your business.
What you will be able to do afterwards
- Which metrics matter at which stage
- Leading and lagging indicators
- Building a founder dashboard you will actually read
32 screens, audio-narrated, with a quiz at the end.