Atlassian's North Star Metric
51+-person team · Australia · atlassian.com
Their North Star Metric
Weekly active teams across products
Reconstructed from public sources. Not officially endorsed by Atlassian. Request edit
Why this one won
Atlassian's products (Jira, Confluence, Trello) work together. The unit of value is a team that uses them, not a single seat. Measuring weekly active teams forces product decisions to favour cross-product stickiness and collaboration, which is where the moat lives.
The Ray
Input metrics that multiply to produce the North Star. Tagged by dimension.
New teams activated
Acquisition
Products per team
Cross-sell
Sessions per team per week
Habit
Time to second product
Platform lift
What they considered and rejected
| Metric | Why it was considered | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Paid seats | Seat count not team utility | Eliminated |
| Weekly active teams | Real unit of value | Kept |
Lessons learned
For multi-product companies, measure the unit that benefits from the portfolio. A team using Jira and Confluence is worth 10x a team using only one.
Related North Stars
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North Star
Weekly active creators sharing videos
Loom's viral wedge is sharing. A video that's recorded but never shared is a private use case with zero network effect. The weekly active creator metric captures both sides - someone recorded something AND they passed it on - and is the single best predictor of team expansion.
Miro
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Weekly collaborating teams (2+ users on a board)
Miro solo is a whiteboard tool; Miro multiplayer is a team brain. The weekly collaborating team metric forces the product to focus on the use case that justifies the price: real-time and async team work. Solo boards are fine but they don't retain.
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Weekly engaged members (post, comment or message)
LinkedIn's business (recruiting, sales nav, ads) depends on members who actually engage with the network. Passive profile viewers don't generate the data that makes the platform valuable. The weekly engaged member metric filters out ghosts and captures the members whose engagement powers the whole business.
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