Dashboard or Pipes?
Every startup needs to make a choice: is their product a dashboard product or a pipes product?
Dashboard products are used directly and regularly by end users as their primary interface for accomplishing tasks. The goal for these products is to get customers to live in the product. The primary North Star metric for these companies is active users (daily / weekly / monthly, depending on the natural frequency of customer usage for the category). Facebook’s first product (aka Facebook :)) was a dashboard product.
Pipes products are used in the background to process transactions, data, payments, etc, and customers rarely interact with them directly after initial setup. The goal for these products is to for their customers to send as much of their data / payments / etc through them. Their North Star metrics is a volume metric (eg GPV). Databricks’ core product is a pipes product.
Companies can have both types of products in their portfolio. For example, ChatGPT is a dashboard product while OpenAI’s APIs are a pipes product. However, a given product has to determine which camp it’s primarily in.
This choice dictates product development, growth strategy, and org structure. For example, dashboard products require heavy investment in UI/UX polish, engagement features, and retention loops, while pipes products prioritize reliability, throughput, integration breadth, and seamless embedding into customer workflows. Dashboard products have consumer-style growth teams focused on activation and habit formation to grow [DWM]AUs, while pipes products focus on making their product invisible infrastructure that “just works” and on capturing more and more of their end customers’ volume.
Startup CEOs: do you know what kind of product your company is building? If so, have you set up your North Star metric, your product development processes and your org structure accordingly?
PS a big thank you to @MerrillLutsky for reminding me that I had never posted about this framework.
Every startup needs to make a choice: is their product a dashboard product or a pipes product?
Dashboard products are used directly and regularly by end users as their primary interface for accomplishing tasks. The goal for these products is to get customers to live in the product. The primary North Star metric for these companies is active users (daily / weekly / monthly, depending on the natural frequency of customer usage for the category). Facebook’s first product (aka Facebook :)) was a dashboard product.
Pipes products are used in the background to process transactions, data, payments, etc, and customers rarely interact with them directly after initial setup. The goal for these products is to for their customers to send as much of their data / payments / etc through them. Their North Star metrics is a volume metric (eg GPV). Databricks’ core product is a pipes product.
Companies can have both types of products in their portfolio. For example, ChatGPT is a dashboard product while OpenAI’s APIs are a pipes product. However, a given product has to determine which camp it’s primarily in.
This choice dictates product development, growth strategy, and org structure. For example, dashboard products require heavy investment in UI/UX polish, engagement features, and retention loops, while pipes products prioritize reliability, throughput, integration breadth, and seamless embedding into customer workflows. Dashboard products have consumer-style growth teams focused on activation and habit formation to grow [DWM]AUs, while pipes products focus on making their product invisible infrastructure that “just works” and on capturing more and more of their end customers’ volume.
Startup CEOs: do you know what kind of product your company is building? If so, have you set up your North Star metric, your product development processes and your org structure accordingly?
PS a big thank you to @MerrillLutsky for reminding me that I had never posted about this framework.
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