net dollar retention

Tom Blomfield explains how startups can use a small, consistent set of metrics to make better decisions, while avoiding vanity metrics and excessive testing. He recommends tracking revenue, burn rate, and runway, and emphasizes retention and net dollar retention as ways to understand whether customer cohorts keep paying and expand over time. He also explains gross margin and why startups should fix negative unit economics before scaling. Throughout, he argues that metrics should complement talking to customers and using product intuition.