Vanity metrics vs. true traction: how to measure startup success
Showing traction is a game-changer for your pitch deck. It proves that your idea is hitting the mark with customers and has the potential to become a thriving business. The gold standard for traction is revenue—when people are ready to hand over their hard-earned cash, you know you're onto something. But if you're a pre-revenue startup, don't sweat it. You can still showcase traction through other impressive metrics that highlight your progress and potential.
Pre-revenue traction
Pre-revenue traction consists of measures taken to reduce the uncertainties and risks associated with your business before generating revenue. Here are some examples:
Building and releasing an MVP and gathering feedback from it.
Securing patents applicable to your startup.
Tackling regulatory compliance associated with your business sphere.
Investors who back pre-seed and seed startups are accustomed to looking at non-revenue traction, but it also means that they can sniff out vanity metrics faster than a cat can scuttle up a tree. Vanity metrics are numbers used by startups that feel as if they confirm movement in the right direction but in reality, say nothing at all about what the founders have done to de-risk the business. You can think of vanity metrics as fool’s gold or cubic zirconia: pretty and sparkly but not worth that much when you examine them closely.
Examples of vanity metrics
We have 10,000 subscribers to our newsletter!
Fantastic! But how many of those subscribers will actually convert to paying customers once your product is available? I have a dedicated email address just for mailing lists and newsletters I've signed up for over the years.
Maybe I got a 15% discount for joining as a new customer, or I forgot to uncheck the 'Send me emails' box during a purchase. Or perhaps I'm a foodie subscribed to numerous supermarket and food business newsletters. But how many do I actually open? Maybe one every few days. While the newsletter metric is easy to measure, it doesn’t give you any meaningful insights.
100,000 people have downloaded our app!
Great—but how many of those people ever opened it again? Is the app even still on their home screen, or has it become digital dust?
To really impress, you need to showcase genuine engagement with your product. Focus on metrics like monthly active users to highlight your app's true impact and stickiness.
1,000 people say they would recommend our product to a friend!
Super—but testimonials alone don’t count as traction. Sure, they give you the warm-fuzzies and can reassure you that you’re on the right track.
And yes, expert endorsements explaining how your development will be game-changing are worth including in your appendix. However, you can't rely on testimonials alone to prove traction.
10 tech publications have covered our startup!
Amazing—and as a tech journalist, I love covering exciting startups and innovative new businesses.
Public exposure through impartial journalism and press scrutiny is crucial for any business. However, there’s no reliable way to measure how press coverage converts to paying customers. As a metric for traction, it’s practically meaningless.
100 agencies have agreed to partner with us!
Yay—but what does that really mean? At the pre-revenue stage, your traction needs to show a clear path for converting interest into paying customers. Agency or media partners don’t map out a route to monetization. Without context, this metric falls flat.
We have 1 million social media followers!
Fine—but how many of those followers are bots? How many did you buy? And how many will actually engage with your content regularly? What’s your plan for converting these followers into paying customers? As a stand-alone number, your social media followers don’t mean much. They only become valuable when you can show how you’ll leverage them to grow your business and at what rate.
Your vanity metric checklist
To ensure that you don’t fall into the trap of applying vanity metrics to your startup, ask yourself if the metrics you’re using:
Measure something of substance?
Need to be measured carefully and accurately?
Require nuance and context for proper interpretation?
Demonstrate growth and improvement in your business.
Anything that is too simplistic, too easy to measure, and does not communicate anything substantial is likely a vanity metric, and you’re best off ditching it.
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