Why I don’t believe in Monthly Active Users

When we think of a successful product we think of a high number of active users (MAUs, WAUs, DAUs). Those numbers are well highlighted by news outlets every time a startup receives a new round of investment.

I’ve never been a fan of this obsession since I don’t believe the number of active users represents a good picture of the value the product is providing. They are bad and illusionary representations of Product-Market-Fit.

MAUs, WAUs and DAUs can be easily inflated by pouring money into your acquisition and conversion efforts, but this doesn’t mean people are finding you’re product valuable — there are just more people coming in, and this may be just due to marketing investment.

Instead, I’m a strong believer your main metric should be customer-focused. The main metric should be about measuring if the customers are achieving what the product was purposed to do — the Job To Be Done.

For example, being Netflix a video platform whose goal is to entertain you, then the main metric could be the number of minutes watched per user per week.

Or in the case of OLX, being a marketplace to help users sell and buy products, then their main metric should revolve around the number of successful sells and purchases, in total or per user.

Of course, metrics like MAUs are very important for products such as the ones with an advertisement business model. And other sorts of metrics, MAUs included, are surely very important for certain stakeholders, teams, and stages of the product to keep track of.

But, being a Product Manager myself, and believing that products can only be successful if they’re providing value to its users, that’s not what we should focus and publicize.

Instead, we need to measure if a product is helping its users achieve what they’ve hired the product for in the first place. That’s how we know a product is having success.

I’m Daniel, Product Manager at Whitesmith. Paper Planes is a place where I reflect on my experiences and learnings on the craft of Product Management.

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