Superhuman's North Star Metric
21-50-person team · United States · superhuman.com
Their North Star Metric
Emails triaged per active user per week
Reconstructed from public sources. Not officially endorsed by Superhuman. Request edit
Why this one won
Superhuman is a speed product. Signups, pageviews and even DAU say nothing about whether the speed is actually being used. Emails triaged (replied, archived, snoozed) per active user per week directly measures the value proposition: inbox velocity. It also predicts renewal with 90%+ accuracy.
The Ray
Input metrics that multiply to produce the North Star. Tagged by dimension.
Active users
User base
Emails triaged per session
Work per interaction
Sessions per week
Daily habit
Keyboard shortcut usage rate
Power-user depth
What they considered and rejected
| Metric | Why it was considered | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| DAU | Generic | Eliminated |
| Emails triaged/wk | Direct value measure | Kept |
Lessons learned
If your value proposition is a verb, measure the verb. Triaged, shipped, connected, booked - whatever the verb is, count it.
Related North Stars
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North Star
Issues shipped per team per week
Linear sells speed to engineering teams. Issues shipped captures exactly what engineering teams are paid to do and what Linear is supposed to make faster. It's a direct value measure that every product decision (keyboard shortcuts, workflow, integrations) can be tested against.
Amplitude
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Weekly active queries run by product teams
Amplitude's North Star Playbook is famous for a reason. The company itself uses weekly active queries as its North Star because it captures the real habit: product teams asking questions of their data. Every new dashboard, chart type and feature is judged by whether it grows this number.
Dropbox
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North Star
Users with 1 file in 1 folder on 3 devices
Dropbox's early North Star was the cross-device sync aha. Once a user had at least one file in one folder on three devices, they'd integrated Dropbox into their real life. Retention flattened to near-zero churn past that point. Every acquisition, onboarding and product decision was aimed at pushing users across this threshold.
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