North Star Metric Jam Session with John Cutler
The Kitchen Stories team joined John Cutler to find their product's North Star Metric, all in front of a live audience.
The People
John is a Senior Director of Product Enablement at Toast. 🍞 He is also a beloved thought leader in the product space, with an enormous contribution to the community via his newsletter, The Beautiful Mess. Get ready to binge on 200 thought-provoking articles on product strategy and culture. 🔖
Based in Berlin, Fanny leads the product team at Kitchen Stories and is on the quest to find the company's North Star Metric. Watch the session recording to learn how Fanny thinks about bringing value to customers while balancing business outcomes. ⚖️
Sebastian heads up the creative team at Kitchen Stories. His focus is understanding how to deliver value via content and user experiences to help more people cook with confidence. See more here (and take a peek at Sebastian's recipes on the Kitchen Stories platform 🤤).
Key Highlights
If we had to choose the top four insights:
- (11:46) Hill climbing to find the perfect business model - what do you do when growth is hard to achieve and you're reaching a local maximum?
- (19:33) What do you actually observe about the 5-10% of customers that are getting the maximum value out of your product?
- (34:00) The North Star Metric is a leading indicator as an input into sustainable differentiated growth.
- (48:18) How do you shift revenue from less sustainable sources of revenue to a more sustainable source?
- (00:00) Get a brief overview on how the session works.
- (02:22) Fanny chats about her background and the Kitchen Stories platform.
- (03:35) Sebastian dives into his background and the creative team.
- (04:08) John introduces himself and why he's running this session.
- (04:54) Let's dive in! What is the North Star Framework?
- (06:03) First thing to consider, how a company makes money
- (08:52) What role does conviction in a strategy (or a pivot) play?
- (11:46) Hill climbing - where do you go when you stop printing money?
- (14:00) Who are the KS team's real competitive threats?
- (18:54) What is the role of bets in hill climbing (and balancing a portfolio)?
- (19:36) Why do you need to learn from your super consumers (the 5-10%)?
- (22:10) What are you trying to be the best at?
- (24:07) Getting down to metrics. How do you extract inputs within a strategy?
- (28:50) Have you changed your engagement game? How do you differentiate?
- (30:00) What is the appetite in the business to change a North Star Metric?
- (34:00) The North Star Metric is a leading indicator of sustainable differentiated growth.
- (36:30) What to do when it's too expensive to play your current engagement game?
- (37:45) How do you start building an input model?
- (42:50) Unpopular opinion. It's ok to play two engagement games at once.
- (48:18) Wrapping up: How do you shift to a sustainable source of revenue in a new environment?