Pick a North Star metric

MEMORANDUM

TO: Executive Team FROM: Staff Product Manager, Crewmate DATE: October 24, 2023 SUBJECT: North Star Metric Recommendation & Offsite Alignment

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Executive Summary

Next week, we must select a single North Star metric for the board. Currently, our teams are locally optimized: Demand chases posted shifts, Supply chases registrations, and Ops chases fill rate. Meanwhile, the CEO tracks GMV, which is a lagging scoreboard, not a driver.

To fix this, our North Star must capture sustainable marketplace liquidity. I recommend we set our North Star as Completed Shift Value (CSV), paired with a health guardrail of Gross Margin.

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The Recommendation: Completed Shift Value (CSV)

#### Why not the alternatives? * GMV (CEO preference): GMV is vanity. In Q3, our GMV grew from $8.5M to $9.8M, but enterprise chains drove that growth solely by raising hourly rates 11%. Independent volume actually degraded. GMV masks marketplace health and rewards inflation. * Shifts Posted (Demand): Drives low-quality supply ingestion. Independents are already posting shifts that fail to fill, leading to churn (venues with <70% fill rates drop out at a 59% rate). * Active Workers (Supply): Driven by vanity sign-ups ($25 bonus cost us $197k in Q3 for registrants who never worked). * Fill Rate (COO): Can be artificially inflated by restricting demand or via expensive artificial interventions (e.g., Ops’ $15 rescue bonus, which is masking a bleeding independent segment).

#### Why Completed Shift Value (CSV)? CSV represents the actual dollar value of shifts that are successfully worked and confirmed. It directly ties our 18% take rate to real economic activity, stripping out pricing inflation, unfulfilled demand, and ghost shifts. It forces Demand, Supply, and Ops to pull in the same direction: matching real workers to real shifts that actually happen.

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The Business Measure Pair

A North Star cannot stand alone without a quality/sustainability check. * North Star: Completed Shift Value (CSV) * Paired Business Measure: Gross Margin ($)

Why? CSV can be gamed by heavy discounting or expensive operational workarounds (like our $15 rescue bonus, which cost $93k last month alone). Pairing CSV with Gross Margin ensures we are growing profitably, not subsidizing our way to top-line numbers.

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Metric Tree & Owners

To move CSV, every team owns a specific input in the compounding loop.

``` [NORTH STAR: Completed Shift Value (CSV)] | +---------------------------+---------------------------+ | | [Total Completed Shifts] [Average Shift Value] | | +---------------------------+ | | | (Owned by Enterprise [Independent CSV] [Enterprise CSV] & Independent PMs) | | (Head of Demand / (Head of Enterprise Sales) Independent PM) ```

#### Metric Tree Inputs & Owners

1. Independent Completed Shifts (Owner: Head of Demand / Independent PM) * Sub-input: Independent Shifts Posted (Guardrail: maintain >80% fill rate). * Sub-input: Independent Fill Rate. 2. Enterprise Completed Shifts (Owner: Head of Enterprise Sales) * Sub-input: Enterprise Shifts Posted (Q3: 34k/mo). * Sub-input: Enterprise Fill Rate (Q3: 93% — must maintain SLAs). 3. Worker Activation & Retention (Owner: Head of Supply) * Sub-input: 30-Day D1-to-D30 Retention (% of workers completing $\ge 3$ shifts in month one; currently the key predictor of 3-month retention at 66% vs 12%). 4. Marketplace Integrity & Completion (Owner: COO) * Sub-input: Shift Confirmation Rate (closing the gap from our current 64% manual confirmation baseline). * Sub-input: No-show / Dispute Rate (keeping it <5%).

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Gaming Risks & Guardrails

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Team Metric Transformations

To align execution with the new North Star, existing team KPIs must evolve:

• CEO / Board:
• Old: GMV ($9.8M Q3 average).
• New: Completed Shift Value (CSV) and Gross Margin ($).
• Head of Demand:
• Old: Raw shifts posted (incentivized spamming unfillable indie shifts).
• New: Independent Completed Shift Value (ICSV), subject to a $\ge 80\%$ fill rate minimum.
• Head of Supply:
• Old: Raw worker registrations (incentivized wasteful $25 sign-up bonuses that yielded low-intent users).
• New: Worker Activation Rate (% of new registrants who complete $\ge 3$ shifts in their first 30 days).
• COO / Operations:
• Old: Overall raw fill rate.
• New: Net Reliable Fill Rate (Total completed shifts minus no-shows/disputes, excluding unviable rescue-subsidized interventions).
• Enterprise Sales:
• Old: Enterprise shift volume.
• New: Enterprise Contract CSV Yield & Renewal Rate (ensuring our 4 annual contract chains scale predictably without margin erosion).

Conclusion

By adopting CSV and Gross Margin, we give the board a honest reflection of our marketplace health, eliminate perverse incentives across Demand and Supply, and force Ops to solve systemic matching issues rather than masking them with cash. Let’s lock this in at the offsite.

Memo: One North Star for Crewmate

To: Exec team | From: Staff PM | For: Offsite decision, ahead of the board report

Recommendation

North Star: Shifts worked as booked, per month. This counts shifts that were filled, worked, and not disputed. It is always reported split by chains and independents.

Paired business measure: Net revenue. This is our 18% take on worked shifts, minus worker incentives (sign-up and rescue bonuses).

A shift that gets filled and actually worked is the one event that keeps both sides of the marketplace. Venues at 90%+ fill keep posting (84% are still posting at six months, against 41% for venues under 70%). Workers who get three or more shifts in their first month stay (66% against 12%). Every team's work feeds this one number.

Why not the four metrics on the table

Q3 looks good on each team's number. The data underneath says otherwise.

• GMV (CEO): up 15%, from $8.5M to $9.8M a month. All of that growth is chains. Chain GMV rose from $2.9M to $4.5M, helped by an 11% holiday rate rise that will unwind. Independent GMV fell from $5.6M to $5.3M, down 6%. Four customers now produce 46% of GMV. GMV hid our biggest problem, and next quarter it will flatter or punish us on chain pricing we don't control.
• Shifts posted (Demand): up 19%. About 13,000 of the 15,000 extra shifts were chains. The metric also counts a shift that never fills as a win.
• Active workers (Supply): registrations up 30% after the $25 bonus. Only 2,370 of the 7,900 Q3 registrants (30%) have worked a shift.
• Fill rate (COO): this is the closest to right, but it fell from 83% to 77%. Chains held at 93%, while independents dropped from 79% to 68%. It has three flaws:
• It assumes the 36% of unconfirmed shifts were worked.
• It is propped up by rescue fills, which have a 13% no-show rate.
• It improves if venues simply stop posting hard shifts.

The real story: the average independent venue is now below the 70% fill line where retention collapses. Independent churn nearly doubled, from 5% to 9% a quarter. Chains, at 93%, lost no venues.

Estimated baseline. This applies the 6% no-show/dispute rate seen on confirmed shifts to all filled shifts.

This is the honest version of Q3: real growth from chains, with the independent base eroding.

Metric tree

Shifts worked as booked = Shifts posted × Fill rate × Worked-as-booked rate

1. Shifts posted by active venues. Owner: Head of Demand - 1a. Independent venues still posting (quarterly churn, now 9%) - 1b. Share of independent posts made 24+ hours ahead (now 69%). Same-day shifts fill only 58% of the time and are 31% of independent posts, against 8% for chains. - 1c. Chain shift volume (account management) 2. Fill rate, by segment - 2a. Fill rate on shifts posted 24+ hours ahead. Owner: Head of Supply. The driver is new workers reaching three shifts within 30 days, because that is the pool that becomes reliable supply. - 2b. Same-day fill rate (58%). Owner: COO 3. Worked-as-booked rate. Owner: COO - 3a. No-show rate (4% standard, 13% on rescue fills) - 3b. Venue confirmation rate (64%). Product builds the confirmation flow; the COO owns the rate.

Fill rate by segment, and the share of independents at 90%+ fill, remain diagnostics the COO reports weekly.

The business pairing

Our gross take is about $1.76M a month. Net revenue subtracts what we pay to manufacture activity, which has become material.

Rescue bonuses. An independent shift averages about $134 GMV, so we earn about $24 on it. A rescue bonus costs $15. After the 13% no-show rate, that is about $17 per rescue shift actually worked, or roughly 70% of our take. Last month that was $93,000.

Sign-up bonuses. At $25 per sign-up, 7,900 registrations cost up to about $200,000, if the bonus was paid on sign-up. Fewer than a third of those registrants have worked.

Net revenue makes these trade-offs visible. GMV hides them.

We should still show the board GMV as context, with the chain price effect disclosed. It should not be what we steer by.

How this could be gamed, and the guardrails

What each team's metric becomes

Nobody loses their number. Each team's number becomes an input, and no team's metric can go up while the North Star goes down.

Decisions for the offsite

1. Adopt the North Star and its definition, including the 7-day dispute window.
2. Adopt net revenue as the paired measure, with GMV as board context.
3. Confirm the owners for each input above.
4. Approve the incentive changes: both bonuses paid on completion.
5. Agree the board narrative: real chain growth, an independent problem we have identified, and a plan to fix it.

Before the board meeting

Data will backfill the North Star by segment for Q2 and Q3, using actual confirmed and disputed records instead of my estimate. We do not yet know the dispute rate on unconfirmed shifts. That is the main uncertainty in the baseline.

Data will also separate how much of the Q3 fill rate came from rescue fills, so we report the underlying independent rate. I expect it to be below 68%.

To: Executive team Subject: Choose successful completed shifts as Crewmate’s North Star

Recommendation

Adopt monthly successful completed shifts as Crewmate’s North Star: the number of unique posted shifts that are filled, actually worked, and have no unresolved dispute. Count a shift once, after its scheduled end; exclude cancellations, no-shows, and disputed shifts until resolved.

This measures the outcome venues hire us for and workers show up to deliver—not activity on either side of the marketplace. It also directs attention to the reliability that supports repeat use. Venues with fill rates of at least 90% are much more likely to still be posting six months later than venues below 70% (84% vs. 41%).

The latest figures show why the distinction matters. Monthly posts rose from 77,000 in Q2 to 92,000 in Q3, while fills rose from 63,700 to 71,000. But overall fill rate fell from 82.7% to 77.2%; independent-venue fill rate fell from 78.9% to 67.9%, and independent venues stopping posts rose from 5% to 9%. Meanwhile, GMV grew 15%, but chains’ share of GMV rose from 34% to 46% and they raised rates 11% for the holiday season. GMV is important, but this mix and price change make it a poor standalone signal of marketplace health.

Nor should we equate registrations with supply: only 2,370 of 7,900 Q3 registrants worked a shift, after the sign-up bonus began. Workers who complete three or more shifts in their first month are far more likely to remain active. We should reward dependable activity, not sign-ups.

Metric tree and accountability

The core identity is:

Successful completed shifts = valid posted shifts × fill rate × successful-completion rate

The first three inputs calculate the North Star; worker coverage and repeat venue demand are leading drivers and diagnostic cuts, not extra terms to multiply into it. Review all results by enterprise vs. independent, and scheduled vs. same-day.

Paired business measure

Pair the North Star with monthly contribution margin dollars: Crewmate’s 18% take-rate revenue on completed-shift GMV, less variable fulfillment costs, including rescue bonuses and other worker incentives. This checks that completed shifts create sustainable value rather than being purchased at any cost. Continue reporting GMV to the board as a scale measure, but not as our North Star.

Measurement, gaming, and guardrails

Completion data is not yet strong enough for an unqualified claim: venues confirm only 64% of filled shifts, and the rest are assumed worked unless disputed. Among confirmed shifts, 6% were no-shows or disputed; rescue-filled shifts have a 13% no-show rate versus 4% for other fills. For the first board readout, label the metric provisional, disclose the confirmation rate, and show the calculation and coverage. Then instrument worker and venue check-in/out, reconcile mismatches, and audit a sample. Do not treat missing confirmation as proof of success indefinitely.

Key gaming risks and controls:

• Post inflated, duplicate, or low-quality shifts: count only valid shifts; monitor cancellations, disputes, and fill rate.
• Favor easy or high-priced chain shifts over independent or same-day demand: report North Star and fill/completion rates by segment; track independent-venue retention and same-day performance as guardrails.
• Buy apparent success with rescue bonuses: monitor rescue share, no-show rate, and contribution margin alongside completed shifts. Rescue fills are not successes unless the shift is actually worked.
• Misreport completion or suppress disputes: require auditable status capture and monitor confirmation coverage and dispute rates.

What current metrics become

• CEO — GMV: remains a board/business measure, paired with contribution margin; it is not the North Star.
• Demand — shifts posted: becomes a leading input, with valid posts and repeat independent-venue demand emphasized over raw volume.
• Supply — active workers: shifts to qualified, repeat workers and first-month activation (especially the three-shift threshold); registrations are a funnel diagnostic.
• COO — fill rate: remains a critical driver and guardrail, but success is completed shifts—not fills that fail to show up.

At the offsite, agree on the definition, owners, and guardrails. Before the board update, establish the provisional baseline and be explicit about its measurement limits.