278: The One Success Metric Every Non‑Technical Founder Must Know (Encore)

Many founders think their product’s success can be measured in downloads or revenue.

But here’s the truth: those are business outcomes, not product goals.

In this encore episode, Sophia breaks down the one success metric that every non-technical founder must understand before leading a tech team or pitching investors.

By the end, you’ll know how to lead with clarity, ask sharper questions, and track the metric that matters most — without writing a single line of code.

In this episode, you will hear:

• The one metric that separates product success from business success
• Why Airbnb’s “nights booked” and Facebook’s “daily active users” tell investors everything they need to know
• The mistake most non-technical founders make when they tell teams to “make more money”
• How to connect product goals to business results without confusing your developers

Resources from this Episode

Free AI Mini-Workshop for Non-Technical Founders

Learn how to go from idea to a tested product using AI — in under 30 minutes.

Get free access here: techfornontechies.co/aiclass

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TRANSCRIPT (Unedited)

Sophia Matveeva  00:00

How does a non technical person lead a tech team? Well, it's not by becoming a programmer. It's by knowing what success looks like in the thing that you're building. So in this episode, you will learn how to define the core metric that guides your product success, and it's the same metric that investors look for when deciding whether to write your check, whether you're building an app, a platform or an algorithm, this concept will help you lead with clarity, ask the right questions and make smarter decisions faster.

Sophia Matveeva  00:38

Hello and welcome to the tech fan on techie podcast, I'm your host, Sophia matveyeva, if you're a non technical founder, building a tech product or adding AI to your business, you're in the right place. Each week, you'll get practical strategies, step by step, playbooks and real world case studies to help you launch and scale a tech business without learning to code. And this is not another startup show full of jargon venture capital theater or tech bro bravado. Here we focus on building useful products that make money without hype and without code. I've written for the Harvard Business Review and lectured at Oxford, London Business School and Chicago Booth, so you are in safe hands. I've also helped hundreds of founders go from concept to scalable product, and now it's your turn, so let's dive in.

Sophia Matveeva  01:31

Hello, smart people. How are you today? I am currently in Abu Dhabi, and I went to the beach and swam in the sea on the first of November, and that was such a treat, I recommend it to all of you. In today's episode, we are going to cover a core concept, and we are revisiting an important lesson from the archives of this very show. You're going to learn how to measure success in your product, whether that product is an app, a platform or an algorithm. Basically, you know, a digital thing, a tech thing that you're creating. And this lesson is foundational knowledge for non technical founders, and this is what helps you lead your tech team. And it's also a concept that tech investors are really, really interested in. So listen up. You can't tell your tech team how to code, but you can tell them what success looks like. That's a common language that both of you have, and this is how non technical founders lead tech teams successfully. This episode originally aired in 2021 and originally it was episode number 42 so if you're new to this show, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to the early episodes, because there are lots of really useful foundational concept. And now here is your lesson. In this episode. I want to teach you a key concept that I talk about in all of my courses, and that is how to measure the success of your product, you need to have a clear idea of what success looks like for what you're building, whether that's a site, an app or an algorithm, put simply, if you don't know where you're going, you're not going to get there. Founders, product managers and investors need to know what the key metric of success is for a product. So then you can measure whether you're getting there or whether you're bearing off. So this update is especially important for founders, product managers and investors, but really for anybody who is funding tech product or working on product teams. So developers have asked me about what is the product metric that we're working towards? Because that's a product metric that they're working towards. Designers have asked me the same thing. So literally, this episode is important for anybody who is making tech products or funding them. But remember, what is a product we have an episode on that, on this very podcast. It was just a few episodes ago. So go back and listen to the what is a product? Episode. It is one of the core concept, put simply, a product is a solution to a problem that somebody is experiencing. I like to use the example of a glass. I use a glass because I'm thirsty and I want a sip of water. The glass is a solution to my problem. As a user. I'm thinking about my problem, my problem being that I'm thirsty. I'm not thinking about the solution. I'm not sitting here thinking, geez, I really want to use a glass now I'm thinking, I want to relieve myself of my thirst, and the glass helps me do them. Now that we've identified that a product is a solution to a problem that somebody is experiencing, it follows then that the goal of your product is to solve that. Problem. So literally, that is, that's the most important thing you need to know. The goal of your product is to solve a problem for somebody. So let me tell you what a goal is not gamification is not a goal. Having videos in the product is not a goal. Having 10 or 100 screens in your app that is not a goal. All of these might help you reach a goal, but they are just tools. They're just steps that you would take together. So this is all quite theoretical, so let's talk about something that you are all familiar with, or, you know, I would imagine most of you are familiar with with this Airbnb. If you're not familiar with Airbnb, then look it up. I'm just going to assume that you are. And let's go forward today, you can get a castle on Airbnb, but it had much more humble beginnings. It was not a Castle's lettings, agency, the founders of Airbnb began renting out nights on their air mattress in their apartment, literally to make ends meet, like they didn't have much money, they had an air mattress. They're both designers, and there was a design conference happening in San Francisco, and they literally just put out an ad to people who are coming to the design conference saying, We've got this air mattress, we've got some toast. It's going to be lovely. We're also going to the conference, come and stay with us, and it's not going to be very expensive. Once that worked, other people in the founders network basically started joining them and started doing the same so renting out spare capacity in their homes. What they were renting out were air mattresses, sofa beds, spare rooms to get a bit of extra cash. The first people who were using Airbnb were not looking for castles. They were looking for cheap accommodation for when they travel. This is a perfect match. You have people who want to save a bit of money when they're traveling, and you want to have people who want to make a little bit of money and have capacity. The metric of success for both of these people was a booking.

Sophia Matveeva  07:18

If a booking is made, a guest gets a cheap place to stay, and the host gets paid. So the key metric the Airbnb product would measure is the number of nights booked. Think about it. Each night represents a problem being solved for the host and the guest. So Airbnb is measuring the number of nights booked, the number of nights booked, the number of problems solved, because a product is a solution to a problem. So when you're thinking of building a product or funding one, think about what metric you want to see that says, Yes, we are solving the problem for this person. So this is why you always need to go back to the problem that you're solving and to the person whom you're solving it for. Let's use another famous example, Facebook. What problem is Facebook solving for people? And here, I mean consumes users. It's social connection, connecting with people, seeing what they're up to, sharing your news. As humans, we want to connect with people. And God, haven't we really learned that during this pandemic, and Facebook helps us solve that problem in the digital world, a key metric for Facebook, then, is daily active users. Literally. How many people have used Facebook today? How many people went on Facebook to socialize in some capacity, whether that is maybe posting an update or commenting on somebody else's update or just seeing what their network is up to, literally just socializing a little bit. Note how in both of the cases that I've given you, Airbnb and Facebook. I haven't talked about money, but Airbnb and Facebook are both making lots of money. So the point to note here is that a product goal is not the same as a business goal. This is really important. A product goal is not the same as a business goal. Business goals relate to money, product goals relate to solving a problem. Let me repeat that again, because it is so important, business goals relate to money and product goals relate to solving a problem. It's then up to you to figure out how to make money from solving the problem and thus link the product metrics to business metrics. So let's go back to Airbnb. You could have a great product metric and crappy business metrics. So for example, you could have lots and lots of nice booked but if the car. Cut that you are taking from those booking payments, the cut that you're taking is very small. You won't be able to pay for the tech infrastructure to support this whole system. So you see, profits are not a product goal. They are a business goal. One of the things that product managers and founders have to work out is how product goals help you achieve business goals. And this is what investors are looking for too. Investors are in the game to make money. Literally, that is their whole job. So if you're an investor, always think about how reaching product goals is going to help a company make money. Let's have a look at our Facebook example. Consumers don't give Facebook money to use it. Facebook is free for consumers to use. Facebook monetizes our attention by selling advertising, for which, by the way, I pay as a business owner, through gritted teeth, because it is so expensive. It's so expensive. Anyway, I digress. The Product goal for Facebook is daily active users, and the business goal is the revenue that they would get from their advertisers like me, minus the cost, ie profit, because that's what profit is, right, revenue, minus costs. And this is where terms like unit economics comes in. But we don't have the time to go into all of that in this podcast. Basically, to sum up whether you are building a product or investing in one, you need to have a key metric in your product that you set as a goal. You can then measure if you are moving towards that goal, and you can see whether you're moving towards success. You need to have this goal visible. You need to have it on some kind of analytics panel that you refer to, and you check every time you release a new feature. Did releasing that new feature move you closer to your goal? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But if you're constantly measuring success, if you're constantly iterating your product, releasing new versions, and you understand why you're releasing the versions you understand, okay, we're releasing this new version in order to somehow get more bookings for night on Airbnb. If you're getting more night bookings, that means whatever you're releasing happens to be working the product goal must relate to the problem that you are solving, this means it's going to be different for different products. Airbnb is goal is different to the goal that Facebook has for its product, because they are solving different problems. Product metrics are not the same as business metrics, so do not tell app developers and designers to make you more money that will confuse them, you have to find a way to monetize the product, which means relating how you're solving that problem. So relating your product metric to your business metric. This is an introduction to the basic concept, but there is a lot more. So, for example, in a lot of product product metrics change over time. Growth metrics certainly change over time. And as we have covered before, product metrics and growth metrics have to be kind of baked into each other. If you found this episode useful and insightful, which I assume you did, because you are still here, then make sure to give this show a rating and a review wherever you get your podcast, and if you're not yet a subscriber, well, my dear, it's time to change that. This is the only show specifically for people who want to build tech products and lead tech ventures but do not have technical backgrounds. So if that's you, this is the place to learn, and you know you're learning for free, so what's not to like? And on that note, thank you very much for being with me today and listening to this episode, and I shall be back in your delightful material next week. Ciao.