The Metrics Obsession: Building Nothing, Measuring Everything

The Dashboard Trap

Open Twitter. Search #buildinpublic. You'll find:

• "Week 12: $4,200 MRR (+$300 from last week)"
• "Crossed 10K followers today!"
• "Email list hit 5,000 subscribers"
• "Tweet impressions: 2.4M this month"

Numbers. Always numbers. Endlessly, relentlessly, numbers.

But zoom out and ask: what are these numbers measuring? What's being built? What problem is being solved? What value is being created?

Often, the answer is: nothing. The metrics have become the product.

The Measurement Inversion

What Metrics Are For

In a healthy business, metrics serve the mission:

• Revenue measures value delivered
• Growth measures market validation
• Engagement measures resonance
• Subscribers measure trust earned

The business exists; metrics track its health.

What Metrics Have Become

In the content economy, metrics serve themselves:

• Revenue is content (regardless of what generates it)
• Growth is content (regardless of sustainability)
• Engagement is the goal (not a byproduct)
• Subscribers are proof of authority (not distribution for value)

The metrics exist; the business is optional.

The Causality Reversal

Real entrepreneurship: Build something valuable → Metrics reflect value created

Metrics obsession: Post impressive metrics → Appearance of value → Monetize appearance

The map has replaced the territory.

The Taxonomy of Empty Metrics

Type 1: Vanity Metrics

What they are: Numbers that look impressive but don't correlate with business health.

Examples:

• Total impressions (not engagement rate)
• Gross followers (not active audience)
• Revenue (not profit, not retention)
• Waitlist size (not conversion rate)

The problem: They're optimizable independent of actual value creation. You can grow impressions while building nothing. You can inflate followers while having no product. You can claim revenue while losing money.

Type 2: Decontextualized Metrics

What they are: Numbers stripped of meaning through selective presentation.

Examples:

• "MRR" without customer count or churn
• "Revenue" without timeframe or costs
• "Growth" without baseline or duration
• "ROI" without investment amount

The problem: A number without context is noise. "$10K MRR" could mean 2 enterprise customers or 1,000 trial conversions. It could be growing or shrinking. It tells you nothing without context—which is why context is omitted.

Type 3: Manipulated Metrics

What they are: Numbers engineered to be impressive rather than accurate.

Examples:

• Purchased followers added to "organic growth"
• Revenue screenshots from demo accounts
• Engagement from pods counted as real reach
• Testimonials traded among peers presented as customer validation

The problem: The metric is literally false. But it looks identical to a true metric. There's no way to distinguish without verification access.

Type 4: Performative Metrics

What they are: Numbers shared for social effect rather than business insight.

Examples:

• Revenue updates posted to build authority
• Growth milestones shared to attract opportunities
• Subscriber counts displayed to prove relevance
• Engagement rates highlighted to secure sponsorships

The problem: The purpose of measurement has shifted from informing decisions to performing success. The metric is content, not data.

Why the Obsession Exists

Platform Incentives

Social media rewards frequent posting. Metrics provide infinite content:

• Every day has new numbers
• Numbers require no creative thought
• Numbers feel authentic ("just sharing my journey")
• Numbers generate engagement (people love to comment on success)

The format scales. The content writes itself.

Authority Signaling

In a market of self-proclaimed experts, metrics are the universal credential:

• You can't verify claimed expertise
• You can't verify claimed experience
• But numbers feel objective
• Numbers signal success regardless of substance

Metrics become the shortcut to credibility.

Community Validation

The #buildinpublic community is built on metric sharing:

• High numbers get celebrated
• Low numbers get encouraged
• The format is the norm
• Opting out feels like hiding

Social pressure maintains the metric obsession.

Personal Coping

For many builders, metrics provide psychological structure:

• Daily numbers create sense of progress
• Public sharing creates accountability
• Community response creates belonging
• The practice feels productive

The obsession serves emotional needs beyond business needs.

The Actual Damage

To Builders

Metric obsession hurts the people doing it:

Attention misallocation: Optimizing metrics is easier than building value. The metric becomes the focus; the product suffers.

Comparison trap: Public metric sharing creates constant benchmarking against others' curated numbers. Inadequacy becomes chronic.

Incentive distortion: When metrics are the goal, builders optimize for metrics rather than user value. The business becomes a metric-production machine.

Identity fusion: "I am my numbers." When metrics dip, self-worth dips. Mental health becomes tied to dashboards.

To Observers

Metric obsession hurts people watching:

Distorted benchmarks: Constant exposure to inflated metrics creates unrealistic expectations.

False confidence signals: Metrics look objective but are easily manipulated. Observers trust what shouldn't be trusted.

Information pollution: The signal-to-noise ratio in entrepreneurship content degrades when metrics replace substance.

Attention waste: Time spent consuming metrics updates is time not spent building.

To the Ecosystem

The collective effect is corrosive:

Competition for display, not value: Builders compete to show impressive numbers, not to solve impressive problems.

Erosion of trust: When metrics are widely manipulated, all metrics become suspect. Trust in any claim diminishes.

Mediocrity normalization: A "successful" entrepreneur becomes someone with good metrics, not someone with good impact.

The Alternative: Substance Over Signal

What Valuable Updates Look Like

Compare:

Metric obsession: "Week 14: $6,200 MRR (+$400)"

Substance: "This week we shipped [specific feature] because [specific customer problem]. Here's what we learned about [specific insight]. Next week we're tackling [specific challenge]."

The second is harder to write. It requires actually having done something. It can't be fabricated as easily. It provides actual value to readers.

Questions That Matter More Than Numbers

• What problem are you solving?
• Who specifically is better off because your thing exists?
• What did you learn this week that changes how you'll build?
• What's the hardest challenge you haven't solved yet?
• What feedback surprised you?

These questions require substance. Metrics don't.

The Shipping Standard

A simple heuristic: share what you shipped, not how you measured.

• "Shipped dark mode this week" beats "engagement up 15%"
• "Got feedback from first 10 users" beats "waitlist hit 1000"
• "Fixed the onboarding bug that lost us users" beats "retention improved"

Shipping is verifiable. Metrics are claimable.

A Calibration Exercise

Next time you see a metrics update, ask:

What is actually being measured? (Often unclear)

What context is missing? (Usually most of it)

What would falsification look like? (Often impossible)

What decision does this metric inform? (Often none)

What would I learn from the substance behind this number? (Usually more)

Most metrics updates fail all five tests.

For Those Sharing Metrics

If you post metrics publicly, consider:

Why Am I Sharing This?

• To inform my audience? (What do they learn?)
• To hold myself accountable? (Does public posting actually help?)
• To signal success? (To whom and why?)
• To generate engagement? (At what cost?)

What Would Be More Valuable?

Instead of "$X MRR," consider sharing:

• The decision you made that drove that revenue
• The customer story behind the number
• The failure you had to overcome
• The uncertainty you're still navigating

Who Benefits From This Post?

• You (authority signaling, engagement)
• Your audience (education, insight)
• The ecosystem (information quality)

Be honest about the distribution.

Conclusion

Metrics are tools. They're supposed to inform decisions, not constitute identity. They're supposed to track value, not replace it. They're supposed to be accurate, not optimized for impressions.

The metrics obsession in entrepreneurship content has inverted these relationships. The map has become the territory. The measurement has become the meaning. The number has become the product.

Building something of substance requires resisting this. It means choosing depth over display. Shipping over signaling. Impact over impression.

The hardest part is that substance doesn't scale as content. You can't tweet a deep insight daily. You can tweet "$X MRR" daily. The format wins even when it shouldn't.

But you can opt out. You can consume substance and ignore metrics. You can share work and withhold numbers. You can build without broadcasting.

The metrics will measure what you build. They don't need to be what you build.

Explore our FREE Pattern Recognition Guides to learn more about distinguishing substance from signal. Share this piece if you're tired of the metrics theater.