Pick a North Star metric

To: CEO & Growth Lead From: Head of Product, Simmer Date: October 24, 2023 Subject: Recommendation: Our North Star Metric, Inputs, and Guardrails

Team, a great debate highlights our current tension: the CEO wants revenue (MRR), while the Growth lead wants reach (MAU).

If we choose MRR, we risk ignoring top-of-funnel health. If we choose MAU, we risk celebrating vanity metrics—as proved by last year’s notification test, where a 6% bump in MAU doubled uninstalls because those users didn't actually find value.

My recommendation is to pick a hybrid North Star: Weekly Active Subscribers (WAS), or more specifically, Paid Users Who Cook Weekly.

However, since a single metric rarely satisfies executive reporting, MRR should remain our ultimate business North Star, but Product Value Realization (Weekly Actives who Cook) must be the operational North Star that guides day-to-day product and growth decisions. MRR is the lagging reward; cooking engagement is the leading engine. Here is why, along with our inputs and guardrails.

Why This North Star Works

Our data reveals a stark truth: 68% of our 2.1M MAUs are "browse-only" users with a catastrophic 4-49% retention rate. MAU rewards us for acquiring transient browsers. Meanwhile, users who experience core value—using Cook Mode—exhibit a stellar 61% six-month retention rate, and 82% of our subscribers cook at least three recipes in their first two weeks before paying.

If we optimize for Weekly Active Cookers, we bridge both worlds: we drive the habit loops that naturally convert free users to Simmer Plus, which directly compounds our $840k MRR, while ignoring empty traffic that drains server costs and drives uninstalls.

Three Input Metrics Teams Can Own

To move our North Star, different pods will own specific, actionable input metrics:

1. Activation Velocity (Growth & Onboarding Pod): The percentage of new signups who complete at least one recipe in Cook Mode within their first 7 days. (Tied to the 82% subscriber conversion rule).
2. Core Habit Frequency (Engagement Pod): The average number of Cook Mode completions per active user per week. (Tied to the 61% retention milestone).
3. Feature Expansion (Core Product Pod): The percentage of weekly actives utilizing meal-planning features. (Currently a low 7%, representing massive upside for long-term retention).

Guardrails to Prevent Gaming

Metrics are easily corrupted if incentives misalign. To ensure we don’t repeat the ghost of last year’s push-notification debacle, we will institute three hard guardrails:

• The Uninstall Rate Cap: If marketing or growth initiatives drive MAU/signups up, but the monthly uninstall rate exceeds 2% of our active base, campaigns are automatically paused.
• The "No Empty Calories" Rule for Growth: Growth experiments cannot be measured solely by acquisition or click-through rates. An experiment is deemed a failure if it increases top-of-funnel signups without a corresponding lift in Day-7 Cook Mode completions.
• Subscription Quality (LTV/Churn Check): To prevent the sales team or pricing experiments from pushing low-intent, high-churn subscriptions just to spike short-term MRR, we will track 90-day subscriber retention. If a cohort churns above baseline, the acquisition channel or incentive driving it is depreciated.

By anchoring on users who actually cook, we align the CEO’s revenue goals with the Growth lead's engagement goals, turning casual browsers into loyal, paying home cooks.

Simmer's North Star: Weekly Active Cooks

To: [CEO], [Growth Lead] From: Head of Product

Recommendation

Our North Star should be Weekly Active Cooks: users who complete two or more recipes in Cook Mode in a given week.

Neither MRR nor MAU is wrong as something to watch. But neither works well as the one number every team steers by. Weekly Active Cooks sits between them. It is the behaviour that best predicts both retention and revenue, and teams can move it week to week.

Why not MRR

MRR is the outcome we're ultimately accountable for, and it stays on the board. As a North Star, it has two problems.

• It lags. Revenue moves after behaviour has already changed, so teams learn too late whether their work helped.
• Most teams can't touch it directly. The levers that move MRR fastest are pricing, paywalls and discounting. Those can lift revenue in the short term while hurting the habit that sustains it.

The behaviour that comes before revenue is cooking. 82% of new subscribers cooked at least three recipes in Cook Mode in their first two weeks.

Why not MAU

MAU measures reach, and reach matters. But our own data shows it rewards the wrong things.

• Most of it doesn't stick. 68% of monthly actives only browse: they arrive from search, read one recipe and leave. Only 4% of them are still active at month 6.
• It's easy to inflate. Last year's daily push notification raised MAU by 6%. Uninstalls doubled, and Cook Mode completions didn't change. MAU went up while the business got slightly worse.

Why Weekly Active Cooks

• It predicts retention. 61% of users who cook twice a week are still active at month 6. That is the strongest retention signal we have, ahead of weekly planners (54%), savers who never cook (9%) and browse-only users (4%).
• It predicts revenue. Cooking comes before subscribing for most new subscribers.
• It reflects real value. Someone who cooked dinner with Simmer got what we promise.
• It's weekly. Teams get feedback fast enough to iterate.

A caveat: this evidence is correlational. People who cook may simply be more committed to begin with. Before we fully commit, I propose a holdout test of one cook-encouraging change to confirm that causing cooking improves retention. We also need to establish the current baseline, which we don't track today.

Input metrics teams can own

1. Browse-to-cook conversion (owner: Growth/SEO). The share of search visitors who start Cook Mode in that visit or return within seven days. Our biggest pool of users is the 68% who browse, and this turns reach into habit. It also gives the growth team a version of the audience goal that counts.
2. New-user activation (owner: Onboarding). The share of new users who cook three recipes in their first 14 days. This mirrors the path most subscribers took.
3. Save-to-cook rate (owner: Recipe/Discovery). The share of saved recipes cooked within 14 days. Savers save four recipes a week, but saving alone retains only 9% of them. Reminders, shopping lists and "cook what you saved" features should close this gap.
4. Weekly planning adoption (owner: Meal Planning). The share of actives who plan a week of meals. Only 7% have ever done it, yet planners retain at 54%. Planning is also a Plus feature, so it has a direct line to revenue.

Guardrails

• MRR and free-to-paid conversion, reviewed monthly. If Weekly Active Cooks rises but conversion falls, we may be giving away too much free.
• Uninstall rate and notification opt-outs. Any engagement push that worsens these gets reviewed, given what happened with the daily notification.
• Cook Mode completion quality. We currently log a cook when someone reaches the last step, which is easy to tap through. We should only count completions with plausible time spent on the steps. A share of completions should also show supporting signals, such as timers used or the recipe rated or repeated.
• Six-month retention by cohort. This is the ultimate check that more cooks means more lasting users.
• MAU, tracked but not targeted. If reach collapses, the funnel feeding Weekly Active Cooks dries up.

Next steps

If you both agree, we will:

• instrument the metric and the quality filter,
• publish a baseline within three weeks,
• run the causal test, and
• set first-half targets for each input metric with their owning teams.

To: CEO and Growth Lead From: Head of Product Subject: Simmer's North Star: Weekly Cooks

Recommendation

Make Weekly Cooks the North Star: the number of unique users who reach the last step of a Cook Mode recipe in a given week. It is the best single measure of the value Simmer delivers, and it predicts both of your goals.

Why Weekly Cooks

• It predicts retention. Users who cook two or more recipes a week retain at 61% at month 6. Save-only users retain at 9%, and browse-only users at 4%.
• It predicts revenue. 82% of new subscribers cooked at least three recipes in Cook Mode in their first two weeks. Cooking is what makes people pay for Simmer Plus, which unlocks the timers they use while cooking.
• It can't be inflated by passive traffic. Browse-only users make up 68% of monthly actives, so MAU mostly measures search arrivals who leave after one recipe.

Why not MRR (for the CEO)

MRR is the outcome we want, but it is a lagging indicator. A subscriber who churns in month 6 still counts in month 1. It also moves for reasons unrelated to product quality, such as pricing changes, promotions and billing. Teams can't reliably act on it week to week. Weekly Cooks is the leading indicator behind it, and it is visible within a week.

Why not MAU (for the Growth Lead)

MAU rewards reach, not value. Last year's "recipe of the day" notification lifted MAU by 6%, but uninstalls doubled and Cook Mode completions did not change. We added people who opened the app and left. That result is the clearest evidence that MAU can rise while the product gets no better. MAU stays on the dashboard, but it should not be the target.

Input metrics teams can own

1. New-user cooking activation: % of new users who complete three Cook Mode recipes in their first two weeks. Owner: Onboarding. This is the subscriber signal from the data above.
2. Save-to-cook conversion: % of recipes saved that are cooked within 14 days. Today, savers who never cook retain at 9%. Owner: Recipe discovery.
3. Weekly planning rate: % of monthly actives who plan a week of meals, currently 7% ever. Planners retain at 54%. Owner: Meal planning.
4. Search-to-first-cook rate: % of search arrivals who cook a recipe within their first visit or the following week. This turns browse-only traffic into cooks. Owner: Acquisition and SEO.

Each input maps to a step in the chain from arrival to cooking to subscription, so each team can see how its work feeds Weekly Cooks.

Guardrails against gaming

• Define a valid completion. Count only unique completions per user per recipe per day, and exclude completions that take implausibly little time, so no one can tap through to the last step to inflate the count.
• Protect the base. Uninstalls and push opt-out rates have their own thresholds. Any change that lifts Weekly Cooks while pushing these up is rejected. The notification test is the case study.
• Keep MAU and MRR as visible health checks. MAU should not fall below its current baseline, and MRR should not grow through discounts that mask churn.
• Check retention, not just activity. Track 6-month retention by cohort. If Weekly Cooks rises but retention doesn't, the metric is measuring the wrong thing.
• Don't gate cooking to hit revenue. Moving Cook Mode behind the paywall would lift MRR in the short term, but it would also cut the cooking that drives both retention and conversion.
• Test causality. The retention and subscription links are observational. We should confirm them with holdout tests, such as nudging a random group of savers toward a first cook, before we commit roadmap bets to them.

Next steps

1. Baseline Weekly Cooks and the four inputs over the last 12 weeks.
2. Agree the valid-completion definition with Analytics this sprint.
3. Run one holdout test on save-to-cook nudges within 30 days.
4. Review the metric and guardrails at the end of the quarter.