01/04/2024

Forget Growth

Optimize for resilience

When you build software, you add little hooks into the code so that, as users open a window, tap a picture, upload a file, the code tattles on them, sending some of their data to another company's server. Log data is sowed; reports are reaped. This is known as "analytics" or, if there are people with advanced degrees involved, "data science."

I cofounded a software company, like a doofus, so I attend a weekly analytics meeting. I nod at the Zoom camera and say things like "Not surprising to see that drop-off" or "Promising, but let's keep our focus on the people who aren't engaged." My cofounder runs "product;" I'm loosely in charge of "the funnel." The funnel, in case you are blessed not to know, is an inverted triangle with horizontal stripes. The top of the funnel, the first stripe, is the stuff that brings in visitors—advertising, YouTube tutorials, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, blog posts, all the endless churn of content. Some fraction of those visitors sign up for the newsletter (that's stripe two), and a fraction of those sign up for the product (three), and a fraction of those turn into customers—conversion! So it's not really a funnel, more of a juicer.

In our analytics meetings, we measure the human juice as it dribbles in: pages visited, sign-ups, actions taken. We talk about how to squeeze more. We behave ourselves and don't track the people who ask us not to track them. We say things like "Team, 98 percent of our beloved users never click the gray button. Have we considered red?" No one ever says, "Eileen in apartment 4A is saving links about fentanyl—let's tell her insurer." They're good meetings. I've done them for years. But this past summer, something felt off.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.