If your startup has strong network effects, focusing on active users may be more important initially, with revenue becoming a focus later on. It's crucial to define what 'users' means for your startup, as it can vary significantly. For example, having 100 users could mean they just signed up or that they actively engage with your product daily for about 10 minutes. The latter is a much more valuable metric.

In biotech or hard tech businesses, your primary metric might not be revenue or active users, especially if you're still validating whether your technology works. Instead, focus on technical milestones that demonstrate progress.

In advertising-based business models, having millions of active users is essential before brands will buy ads, making active users a reasonable proxy for revenue.

Real startup progress is defined by tasks that genuinely move the needle, such as growing your primary key performance indicator (KPI), which is typically either revenue or active users.

As a startup grows, the focus shifts from just acquiring users to ensuring sustainable growth and revenue. We learned the hard way that even if users love our product, we must also pay attention to our overall growth metrics to avoid becoming a beloved startup that fails due to lack of financial viability.

It's impressive when founders can fluently discuss key metrics like daily active users or annual revenue per user, as it shows they are in command of their metrics.

Investors are biased towards metrics that may not prioritize the startup's survival, focusing instead on growth and revenue.

It's important to evaluate startups based on whether they have a small number of users who truly love the product, rather than just a large user base.

For consumer startups, achieving at least 15% month-on-month growth in active users is ideal, with 10% being acceptable, while 5% is likely insufficient for long-term viability.