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Will it make the boat go faster? How clear metrics are central to building successful products and teams

4 Jun 2026 · first published on Substack

Turns out I really like working towards numbers. I figure it makes progress trackable ergo predictable. The jobs I’ve tended to enjoy over the past few years have taken that shape: the company sets a goal X, defines the metric with which we’ll measure and then proceeds to work towards that. It makes it easier to know the impact of the work I’m doing on the team or the lack of it. I’ve always been one that loves to know where I stand in whatever endeavour I’m in especially if it’s work, I’d like to get honest feedback of whether I’m doing terribly or really well. Performance metrics give me that. I say this in contrast with work environments that have no particular goal in sight. At least not a clearly defined one, ergo no real method of measuring progress. Such environments breed confusion across the organisation and bring about unnecessary arguments & pointless projects. Environments where building features is the goal without really tracking how said feature actually impacts the business or initiative we’re meant to be aiding.

“But building features is important in the discovery phase of startups” Important yes but never to be the focus. Having built startups of my own that have taken both shapes I can confidently tell you that churning out features in its own right is a poor lever for discovery. Even in the earliest days of your project/startup/business, there must be a metric. For instance number of downloads in the early days is a good signal of traction and interest - discovery. Conversion rates, Signups, Usage Time etc are all better metrics to chase in the discovery phase rather than number of features.

What clear metrics and objectives do is they create a single source of truth and maybe that’s what people are afraid of? An honest opinion of their work. Having a singular metric exposes whether or not you’re making progress towards the goal you set out to achieve. That single source of truth buys you three things: it forces creative problem solving, it unlocks creative freedom, and it flattens the hierarchy. Here’s how.

Creative problem solving

Having clear metrics creates room for creative problem solving both at individual and team level, because working towards a metric forces you to understand the problem you’re trying to solve. A poorly performing metric will always be met with the question why, and for any mind that’s objective and curious enough, that should take you down a rabbit hole of the elements that define said metric. As a result it opens up a world of creative solutions across the board. When you understand the metric you understand its levers which then allows you to creatively come up with solutions that potentially move up the metric.

Creative freedom

Besides taking you down rabbit holes of creative problem solving, metrics being the singular truth in an organisation also brings about creative freedom. If the only thing stopping your team suggesting solutions to problems is nothing but whether or not it moves the metric, ambitious and creative suggestions start popping up everywhere. When the mind knows nothing is off the table, that ideas can take any shape and nature and can come from anyone as long as they are justified towards the goal, amazing things happen.

Pushback and flattened hierarchies

The last benefit of having clear metrics is they allow for based pushback and forcing something of a flat hierarchy in organisations. Setting clear metrics means that everyone, from the CEO to customer, answers to one truth, the metric. This means that every assignment, decision and piece of work assigned must pass the “Will it make the boat go faster” question. What this means is anyone in the team can push back on any authority and/or team mates: Oh we should build X feature? Yeah sure, just tell me how it drives sales. Oh you want to add a stories feature in the app? Not a problem, just tell me how that drives number of kids we feed per month. Oh we should add AI to the app? Sounds like a cool project I’d love to work on but just tell me how it increases the number of plastics we clear from the ocean per year. It’s hard to pull that off without clear metrics and objectives as basis. Additionally, the environment created by this culture allows for high agency and attracts agentic talent because the environment says you’re allowed to do whatever you want, as long as it answers the question: Will it make the boat go faster (Morality and legal notwithstanding).

My experience with clear metrics

My time at Mophones is a great instance of having clear metrics. During my time there I built the startup’s first user facing app to assist with loan payments, device unlocks, customer support...the works. When joining I had one explicit goal with clear metrics to track progress: Build the customer self service app and drive its adoption. The metrics?:

  • Number of balance check support tickets. Objective: drive this down

  • Number of weekly loan payments initiated in app vs elsewhere. Objective: drive up

  • Number of device unlock support tickets. Objective: drive down and drive up the in-app feature usage.

What this level of clarity did is it answered 90% of the questions I had about my job:

  • What do I need to work on today? Check the metrics.

  • Am I performing well at my job? Check the metrics.

  • Are the customers happy with the product? Check the metrics.

  • Am I working on the most important thing right now? Check the metrics.

This meant that every other cycle, my work day/week/month/quarter always started with me checking Amplitude to understand where I stood, how the product was performing and then derive what I needed to focus on. This led to the team and I tackling the adoption problem from various angles; obviously the typical channels SMS, Push Notifications and Email but further multiple forms of offline activation, third party software customisations, one-on-one customer trainings at scale and a lot of other things in between. All this enabled by a focus on one objective.

I think building off of that experience is why I’m really having a blast building Unajua, the #1 App in Kenya, so much so that even though it’s just a side project, I’ve set it up to resemble the places I’ve loved and would love to work at. Unajua has 3 simple metrics:

  • Growth: Tracked by the Weekly Active User metric.

  • Engagement: Tracked by the number of sessions per player.

  • Sales: Tracked by Monthly Recurring Revenue(MRR).

Every product decision I’ve made since launching 2 months ago has been driven by one or more of those three.

  • Prioritizing TikTok over Meta checked all three boxes. The result? Over 3 million views across my content in just 2 months.

  • Driving up reviews checked 1 and 3. The result? A 4.7 star average rating from over 1,200 users. Also in under 2 months.

  • Adding an onboarding flow checked 2. The result? Increased engagement.

  • Adding support for M-Pesa payments checked 3.

  • A/B testing MPesa vs in-app-subscriptions checked 3.

  • A/B testing paywalls checked 3.

I’m really enjoying working on this project because while it has its technical complexities, it’s not an exercise of my technical prowess alone but also my ability to convert my product, engineering and marketing expertise into actual business value. Fun times.

Of Vanity Metrics

Worth noting however that there are a lot of other metrics that exist that are either vanity, aren’t worth putting so much effort towards or are simply detractors. Depends on what stage you’re in really:

  • Downloads for instance matter a lot when you’re super early and trying to gauge interest. It’s vanity past some point.

  • Ratings and reviews are social proof so you need them early and it’s essential you optimize for them. However past a certain point resources towards the effort should be just enough to maintain proportion against the size of your user base. Having 100k downloads with just 13 reviews doesn’t inspire confidence in the user. Bad for app store conversion.

  • Signups/Registrations are very similar to downloads in that they signal interest and curiosity but nothing more than that if your app has no usage.

If you’re just kicking off with your startup, having trouble getting your product off the ground or just need a fresh set of eyes on your team, shoot me an email at steve@unajua.co.ke and let’s chat. Happy hunting.