How we measure growth with PostHog dashboards as the source of truth with Monaco as our CRM
We’re using AARRR aka Pirate metrics, a common GTM success metric framework. Specifically, we run a Plastic variant — (A)AA(A)RRR — that adds an Activity and Adoption stage.
Treat metrics as experimental! We want metrics to actually predict outcomes. And even when they predict outcomes, we may outgrow them for various reasons e.g. legibility.
The (A)AA(A)RRR funnel
📊 PostHog: GTM Hub dashboard.
All metrics except Activity are success metrics, meaning they are based on CloudEvents that track user behavior. Activity is an internal metric tracking sales engagement and marketing.
- Activity (internal - operating) — how are we tracking with marketing and sales activities? (not currently tracked)
- Acquisition — how many users signed up?
- Activation — do those new users actually reach value?
- **Adoption (internal) ** — do users commit to building on Honcho? (not currently tracked)
- Retention — do activated/adopted users keep coming back?
- Revenue — how many users pay, and how much?
- Referral — do they like it enough to share? (not currently tracked)
The scorecard spans all three motions — Marketing owns marketing activity and acquisition, PLG owns activation, adoption, and retention, SLG owns sales activity, revenue (especially contract-based) and referral.
PostHog frames Activation, Retention, and Revenue as the three it most directly instruments, with Activation being particularly tricky to figure out.
| Stage | Example metrics | Motion · Tool |
|---|---|---|
| Activity (internal) | # sales calls completed, long-term pipeline generated, # events attended, # content published (blog, X) | SLG + Marketing · Monaco / PostHog |
| Acquisition | Weekly website visits, weekly completed onboardings, finished setup | Marketing · PostHog |
| Activation | Time to first API call, # usage types per week, # days used per month | PLG · PostHog |
| Adoption | Billing info added, spending past the free tier | PLG · PostHog / Stripe |
| Retention | Dialectic calls per week ★, % users returning per week, week-1 cohort retention | PLG · PostHog |
| Revenue | Implied ARR, real ARR, non-credit (paid) ARR | SLG · PostHog / Monaco |
| Referral | Referrals to paying users, viral coefficient, # organic reviews | SLG · Monaco |
★ = North Star metric, defined below in retention section
Defining Activation
Activation is the threshold past which a user is likely to keep coming back. Not that there can be several activation metrics! Per Posthog, activation metrics are particularly tricky to find.
Some qualities of these metrics: unique to the product, rarely a single event, and often means user action(s) taken more than once.
Reference points:
- Dropbox — stored one file in the first week
- Uber — took a first ride
- Instagram — signed up and followed people
- Pinterest — used it >4 days/month (broad-use product → count days, not one action)
- PostHog (session replay) — ≥5 replays
How PostHog found theirs after many experiments:
- List candidate events that might “hook” a user.
- Form 5–10 groups of 3–5 events, varying quantities (e.g. 1 session replay vs. 5 replays).
- Query how each group correlates with retention (a tricky process).
- Keep the group whose retention rate beats the user-average.
- Build a funnel insight and pin it beside the North Star metric.
Adoption — our added stage or a sub-stage to Activation
With onboarding survey v2.0, we can extend the standard AARRR with a Honcho-specific Adoption stage between Activation and Retention.
With that, we can define activation metrics for when a user reaches value, while adoption shows a user’s commitment to building on Honcho.
Some ideas:
- Activation = first API call
- Adoption = add billing info
- Adoption, long-term = spending real dollars past the free tier
Defining Retention
Retention asks whether activated users return, and how often. It is a proxy metric for how happy users are. Activation events frequently double as retention drivers, so define them with retention in mind.
The key here is time horizon: how many uses per what window counts as retention?
Reference points:
- Uber - 3 rides/month
- Pinterest - >4 days/month
North Star metric
A metric only qualifies as a North Star if it does three things: lead to revenue, reflect customer value, and measure progress. Most startups track a “number-of-signups” metric, which is fine at the earliest stage, but it doesn’t reflect value.
We need a hypothesis for what our users are actually trying to achieve and a metric that captures it.
Reference points:
- Facebook → daily active users
- Airbnb → nights booked
- Uber → rides
In use today: # Dialectic calls per week
Defining Revenue
Our pricing lives on the Honcho pricing page; the live numbers are in the 📊 Revenue dashboard.
The dashboard reports three revenue figures, and they intentionally read lower than the pricing page would suggest — for two reasons:
- They only count Dialectic usage. Ingestion and other billable dimensions aren’t included, so all three figures undercount true potential revenue. Treat them as a floor, not a ceiling.
- They’re three lenses on the same business, from most speculative to most concrete:
- Implied — current usage annualized into a run-rate (a forward projection).
- Computed revenue — what metered usage has generated to date at list rates.
- Real paid revenue — actual cash collected past credits / the free tier, as a running total.
History
Major decisions for metrics:
- 2026-07-08 (GTM sync) — Q3 targets set: CAC −20%, API activation rate ~28% → 38% → 50%, and 1000 paying customers past the free tier by end of Q3
References
- Mixpanel — What is a North Star metric
- PostHog — Getting hogpilled · Activation · Retention
- PostHog — AARRR pirate funnel · Finding activation metrics · WTF is activation