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Comment by throwaway-29382 | Hacker News Reader

Good thing they don't use any BS metrics on their about page.

We don't. Data points (or actions as we say on the about page) correlate directly with the amount of revenue we make. 85-90% of all data points are paid for by our customers. It's how we make money: http://mixpanel.com/pricing

It actually does a better job correlating with our growth than purely the number of customers we have. We've also been public about that.

It makes sense that data points correlate to your growth, but what's interesting is that data points do not necessarily mean higher value for your customers. If there was a metric that only required one data point to measure and that metric could be the basis for a successful company, people would probably use less data points and gain more value. But most people don't know what to measure, so they default to measure everything. Thats good for you, but doesn't necessarily mean its good for them.

That's a valid point. The thing is, our growth in data largely correlates with customer satisfaction. If a customer finds no value but sends us a lot of data, they stop because they are paying for our product. That causes a decrease in data points.

Admittedly, we do use a different metric to determine how "valuable" our product is in a more honest way. We're talking about non-bullshit metrics that highly correlate to growth. Not all valuable products necessarily grow.

What qualifications (or quantifications) do you use to ensure that your value is more honest than someone else's? At the end of the day, value is determined by someone who is not yourself.

This article for more me is pretty straight forward. It's a well crafted PR play (whether made by commercial means or not is irrelevant), that draws readers to putting more importance on what metrics are used to determine valuation. Something that they can draw from using a service such as Mixpanel. The reality is that you, nor I, can definitely provide one metric that clearly correlates to financial valuation. Every case is different and every case warrants negotiation.

Mixpanel appears to be a great service btw. I hope my tone doesn't dictate otherwise.

Nice. ;)

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