Fake It 'Til
You Make It
You Make It
Don't Lie to Your Spreadsheet
Pivot or
Die
Die
One at a
Time, People!
Time, People!
Tell Your
Friends
Friends
Hold on Tight
& Open Your Wallet
& Open Your Wallet
400
Using a simple MVP, what grocery meal-planning startup began when the founder personally walked a single customer through store circulars for a $9.95 weekly check.
Food on the Table
400
These feel-good figures, like total website hits or registered users, always trend up and to the right but hide whether a startup is actually working.
Vanity metrics
400
This five-letter term describes a structured course correction designed to test a new hypothesis while keeping the core vision intact.
Pivot
400
Illustrated by stuffing envelopes one by one rather than in giant stacks, it's the lean manufacturing method where work proceeds a single unit at a time.
Single-piece flow
400
The core rule of sustainable growth states that new customers must come from the actions of these people.
Past (or current) customers
400
In the sticky engine of growth, this two-word term measures the percentage of customers who fail to remain engaged during a given time period.
Churn rate
800
Founders of what company tested this question-and-answer assistant by having eight human employees manually answer queries behind the scenes for nine months before writing automated code.
Aardvark
800
This testing technique offers two different versions of a feature to separate customer groups simultaneously to measure behavior.
Split-testing or A/B testing
800
The stubborn counterpart to pivoting, this nine-letter word describes staying the course and continuing with your plan.
Persevere
800
Seen here, any worker on a Toyota assembly line can pull this physical cord to immediately halt production if a defect appears.
Andon cord
800
In 1996, this email pioneer exploded to 12 million subscribers in 18 months after adding a clickable promo line to the bottom of every outgoing email.
Hotmail
800
In the paid engine of growth, this three-word metric represents the cost spent to sign up each new paying user.
Customer Acquisition Cost
1200
To test whether consumers in Bangalore would pay for laundry service, the founder of Village Laundry Service constructed an inexpensive MVP by mounting what piece of equipment onto the back of a vehicle.
Washing machine
1200
This analytical approach tracks the independent behavior of specific customer groups who joined during the exact same timeframe.
Cohort analysis
1200
This spooky four-word phrase describes a startup that achieves just enough traction to stay alive, but fails to grow sustainably while burning cash and morale.
Land of the Living Dead
1200
This ominous three-word phrase describes the organizational trap where delays and rework cause batch sizes to grow continually, resulting in massive releases that never ship.
Large-batch death spiral
1200
Ries highlights this classic television digital recording brand, pictured here, as a prime example of satisfied customers advocating by word of mouth.
TiVo
1200
Abbreviated LTV, this metric measures the total revenue or margin generated from a customer over their entire relationship with a business.
Lifetime Value
1600
To test if citizens would pay for digital lobbying, the scrappy @2gov MVP turned tweets into these physical, printed items delivered to members of Congress.
Letters
1600
Two-word dramatic term to describe using PR stunts, marketing spikes, or superficial metrics to look successful without building a sustainable business.
Success theater
1600
Originally opened in 1977 as an antique shop in Chicago, this national chain pivoted into restaurants after selling food items to boost foot traffic.
Potbelly Sandwich Shop
1600
Practiced at IMVU, this software development method involves pushing code updates into live production dozens of times per day.
Continuous deployment
1600
Pictured here, this plastic food storage giant pioneered an offline viral loop by turning customers into sales reps through home parties.
Tupperware
1600
Pictured here, this early dot-com news provider collapsed after its rapid 39 percent customer acquisition rate was wiped out by an identical 39 percent churn rate.
PointCast
2000
Instead of building an expensive national call center upfront, the CFPB tested citizen demand across a few city blocks using this simple contact tool.
Phone hotline
2000
In the Three A's of metrics, data must be Actionable, Accessible, and this third standard, meaning it can be verified directly by spot-checking with real customers.
Auditable
2000
In this specific type of pivot, a single compelling feature inside a larger product is refocused to become the entire standalone product.
Zoom-in pivot
2000
Developed by Shigeo Shingo at Toyota, this four-letter acronym refers to the methodology that reduced machine retooling times from hours to under ten minutes.
SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die)
2000
Financial platforms like PayPal grow virally without conscious word-of-mouth because exposure happens automatically as this natural action occurs.
Product usage
2000
In the sticky engine of growth, if your customer acquisition rate beats your churn rate, your company expands at this financial-sounding rate.
Rate of compounding