Guides
Practical methods for putting search, product, and revenue numbers on one founder view.
Article · Updated August 2026
Which channel actually drove the sale?
The channel that “drove the sale” depends on what you mean by drove. One channel may introduce the person, another may bring them back, and a third may receive credit under the reporting model.
Article · Updated August 2026
Diagnose trial-to-paid and paywall conversion
A low trial-to-paid rate can begin long before the trial.
Article · Updated August 2026
Find where your activation funnel leaks
Find an activation leak by defining one first-value event, measuring every handoff before it and checking the largest loss against the underlying source data.
Article · Updated August 2026
Find failed payments before they become churn
A failed renewal is not yet the same thing as a customer choosing to leave. It is a billing state with a recovery window, a customer experience and an eventual outcome.
Article · Updated August 2026
Founder investor reports without the monthly spreadsheet grind
The slow part of an investor update is rarely writing the opening paragraph. It is finding the current number, reproducing its definition, explaining why it moved and checking that the narrative agrees with the underlying sources.
Article · Updated August 2026
Instrument product analytics without tracking everything
You do not need to track every click to understand whether a product works. You need a small event system that defines who entered, whether they reached the product’s value, whether value became payment and whether they returned.
Article · Updated August 2026
Measure time to value, not onboarding completion
Onboarding completion measures whether someone finished the steps you designed. Time to value measures whether—and how quickly—an eligible account received the outcome they came for.
Article · Updated August 2026
Read GA4 and Search Console together
Search Console shows how a site appears and earns clicks in Google Search. GA4 shows measured sessions and behaviour after a visitor reaches the tagged property.
Article · Updated August 2026
The SaaS metrics worth checking each week
A weekly metric earns its place by changing a recurring decision. A number that is interesting, available or important at some other cadence does not automatically belong in the founder’s weekly view.
Article · Updated August 2026
Stop checking five dashboards every morning
Opening five dashboards is not the same as running the business. A source dashboard is valuable for detailed investigation. A founder brief is valuable for deciding where investigation is needed.
Article · Updated August 2026
Track revenue across Stripe, app stores and multiple products
One revenue view should not flatten Stripe, app-store and product ledgers into one unexplained total. Reconcile each source first, then normalize the measures that are genuinely comparable.
Article · Updated August 2026
Put web, app and revenue metrics on one page
Putting web, app and revenue metrics on one page is useful only when the numbers share a reporting window and tell one continuous story.
Article · Updated August 2026
A weekly founder report you can build in 30 minutes
A useful weekly founder report does not summarize the entire business. It aligns a small set of acquisition, activation, revenue and retention signals, then records the one decision or investigation that follows.
Article · Updated August 2026
Why MRR never matches Stripe or RevenueCat
Two MRR values can disagree without either system being broken. Each may use a different subscription state, normalization, discount policy, currency rate, cutoff or source history.
Article · Updated August 2026
Why every tool reports a different retention rate
Two retention rates can differ because they retain different entities after different starting events on different time boundaries. App retention, product retention and subscription retention are not interchangeable.
Article · Updated August 2026
Why users churn: a practical diagnosis
“Users churn because they did not see value” may be true and still be useless. It combines several different failures into one sentence.