What are vanity metrics?
Vanity metrics are numbers that look impressive — total registered users, total app downloads, total page views, social-media followers — but don’t reliably translate into business value or actionable strategic insight. Vanity metrics are often growing but don’t reflect product engagement, retention or revenue.
Eric Ries popularised the term in The Lean Startup. Better alternatives are actionable metrics: cohort retention, MRR growth, paying users, contribution margin, NPS. Investors increasingly scrutinise metrics quality to distinguish substance from optics.