Viral Value North Star
Measure the completed user action that delivers value and creates the next user.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 97%
The Viral Value North Star starts with the product's intended behavior change and finds the event where customer value and distribution meet. Loom wanted people to communicate through asynchronous video, so merely counting recordings or total views would have been incomplete. Its team focused on a video's first view: the recording had been shared, another person had actually watched it, and that viewer had encountered Loom. Each video can trigger the event only once, which reduces distortion from one viral recording accumulating many views. The team also removed rendering and upload delays so sharing was the natural next action after recording. The resulting mechanism is a loop: create value, expose another person, confirm receipt, and count the completed unit. The metric then rewards broad, repeated communication rather than isolated audience spikes.
Origin
Extracted from The Foundr Podcast
Core principles
- 01Virality should be designed into the value exchange
- 02A sent invitation is not proof that value was received
- 03Count unique completed value events rather than vanity volume
- 04The metric should favor repeated day-to-day use
How to run it
- 1
Define the intended change
State the recurring behavior the product should enable in users' work or lives. Use that change to reject metrics that reward unrelated activity.
Pro tip Describe the change as an action between people, not as growth in a dashboard number.
- 2
Locate the exposure event
Find where normal product use introduces another person to the product. This should arise from receiving value, not from a detached referral prompt.
Watch out An invitation sent does not prove that anyone experienced the product.
- 3
Remove sharing friction
Make the path from creation to delivery immediate enough that users do not leave for another tool. Loom did this by rendering videos instantly and producing a shareable link.
Pro tip Observe where users download, export, or abandon before sharing.
Watch out A viral concept will not compensate for a slow or awkward value-delivery path.
- 4
Choose proof of receipt
Select the event showing that another person actually consumed or experienced the value. Count it at the smallest meaningful unit.
Pro tip Deduplicate the event so one unusually popular item cannot dominate the signal.
- 5
Test strategic alignment
Compare metric growth with the recurring behavior the company wants to create. Prefer widespread repeated use over volume concentrated in a few items.
Pro tip Review outliers to see whether they represent the intended product behavior.
Watch out A metric can be viral yet still reward the wrong kind of usage.
In the wild
Loom made videos render instantly so a creator could immediately share a link. The company then used video first views as its North Star rather than recordings or total viewing volume. A first view showed that a recipient had consumed the communication and encountered the product, while each video contributed only once.
→ The metric linked day-to-day communication value with Loom's viral product loop.
A design-review product lets a creator share a live prototype with a colleague. Instead of counting links sent, the team counts the first substantive response on each shared prototype. That event proves the recipient opened the work, experienced the review flow, and returned useful value to the creator.
→ Growth measurement centers on completed collaboration rather than invitations.
Common mistakes
Counting creation without delivery
Recordings or documents created do not prove that the intended communication reached another person.
Using total views as the North Star
A single popular item can inflate total volume without showing broad recurring product use.
Adding referrals outside the value loop
A generic referral prompt is weaker than exposure that happens naturally while a recipient receives value.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for products whose normal use exposes collaborators, recipients, or viewers to the product.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for products with no natural multi-user interaction or observable recipient value event.
From the transcript
“video first view is our Northstar metric”
“we know that communication happened on our platform”
“we made our Northstar metric virality oriented”
From the episode
506: I Ignored Investors and Built a $975M Company
Joe Thomas