I spent €200/month on analytics tools before realizing that a Google Sheet with six numbers told me everything I needed to know. The analytics tools were beautiful. The dashboards were sleek. The reports were comprehensive. And I made all my actual decisions based on the same six numbers I could have tracked in a free spreadsheet.
The analytics industry wants you to believe that more data equals better decisions. It doesn’t. More data equals more confusion, more time spent interpreting rather than acting, and more opportunities to cherry-pick the numbers that support what you already wanted to do.
Your early-stage business needs a dashboard so ugly that no one would screenshot it for Twitter. It needs exactly six numbers, reviewed weekly, tracked monthly. That’s it.
The Six Numbers
Number 1: Revenue this week.
Total money received from customers. Not invoiced — received. Not projected — actual. The money in your account that came from customers paying for your product.
This is the only number that tells you whether the business is working at the most fundamental level. Everything else is a proxy. Revenue is the real signal.
Number 2: New customers this week.
How many people who weren’t customers last week are customers now? This measures the health of your acquisition engine. If this number is zero for two consecutive weeks, something in your sales or marketing is broken.
Number 3: Customer acquisition cost (CAC).
Total marketing and sales spend this week (including your time, valued at a reasonable rate) divided by new customers. If this number is going up, your growth is getting more expensive. If it’s going down, your growth is getting more efficient.
Number 4: Churn this week.
How many customers who were paying last week aren’t paying this week? Churn is the leak in your bucket. If churn exceeds new customers, you’re shrinking even if you’re acquiring. More customers in than out = growth. The opposite = death by a thousand cancellations.
Number 5: Customer satisfaction signal.
This is qualitative, not quantitative. Record the most positive and most negative customer feedback from this week. Just one example of each. This keeps you connected to the human experience behind the numbers.
I’ve seen founders hit great revenue numbers while customer satisfaction quietly deteriorated. By the time the numbers reflect the satisfaction drop (through increased churn), it’s too late. The weekly satisfaction signal is an early warning system.
Number 6: Your hours this week.
How many hours did you spend working on the business? This number, combined with revenue, gives you your effective hourly rate. If you worked 50 hours and made €1,000 in revenue, your effective rate is €20/hour. If that’s below what you could earn as an employee, you need to either increase revenue or reduce your time investment.
The Weekly Review Ritual
Every Sunday evening, I spend 30 minutes on the review. Here’s the exact process.
Minutes 1-10: Fill in this week’s numbers in the spreadsheet. Pull revenue from Stripe. Count new customers from your database. Calculate CAC from your marketing spend tracker. Count churned customers. Record the satisfaction signal. Log your hours.
Minutes 10-20: Compare to last week. For each number, draw an arrow: up, down, or flat. Don’t over-analyze — just note the direction.
Minutes 20-30: Write one sentence answering: “What’s the single most important thing I should do next week based on these numbers?”
Maybe revenue is flat but churn is up → next week’s priority is understanding why customers are leaving. Maybe new customers are strong but CAC is rising → next week’s priority is finding a cheaper acquisition channel. Maybe everything looks good but your hours are unsustainable → next week’s priority is systematizing or delegating.
This one-sentence priority becomes your compass for the week. Not a to-do list — a direction. Everything you do should point toward that priority.
The 30-minute review replaces the 3-hour analytics sessions I used to do. It’s less thorough but more actionable. And actionable beats thorough at every stage of business building.
Why Six Numbers (Not More, Not Fewer)
Why not more?
Every number beyond six reduces the time you spend acting on numbers and increases the time you spend analyzing them. In the early stage, the ratio should be 90% action, 10% analysis. Six numbers keeps you well within that ratio.
More numbers also create decision paralysis. When 15 metrics are moving in different directions, what do you focus on? With six, the picture is clear enough to act on every week.
Why not fewer?
Revenue alone doesn’t tell you enough. You could have great revenue but terrible churn, meaning the revenue will collapse in 3 months. You could have great new customer numbers but unsustainable CAC, meaning you’re buying growth you can’t afford.
Six numbers cover the essential dimensions: money in (revenue), growth (new customers), efficiency (CAC), retention (churn), quality (satisfaction), and sustainability (hours). Remove any one and you have a blind spot.
I tried running with just three numbers (revenue, customers, churn) for a quarter and missed a developing CAC problem. Marketing costs were creeping up while I wasn’t tracking them, and by the time the revenue impact showed up, I’d wasted €3,000 on an inefficient channel. The lesson: unit economics matter and they need monitoring.
Building the Dashboard
Here’s the Google Sheets structure. Columns A through H.
| Week | Revenue | New Customers | CAC | Churn | Satisfaction (+) | Satisfaction (-) | Hours |
|---|
Each row is one week. That’s the entire dashboard.
Below the weekly data, I have three calculated rows:
- 4-week average: Rolling average for Revenue, New Customers, CAC, Churn, and Hours. This smooths out weekly volatility and shows the real trend.
- Month-over-month change: Percentage change from the previous 4-week average to the current one.
- Target: My goals for each metric. Revenue target, customer target, CAC ceiling, churn ceiling, hours ceiling.
The dashboard takes 5 minutes to set up. It costs nothing. It contains everything you need to make weekly business decisions for the first €10,000-50,000 in monthly revenue.
When people ask me what analytics tools I recommend for early-stage founders, I recommend this spreadsheet. Not Mixpanel. Not Amplitude. Not Heap. A spreadsheet.
The fancy tools become valuable when you have thousands of users and need to understand complex behavioral patterns. At 10, 50, or even 200 customers, the behavioral patterns are simple enough to understand from six numbers and direct customer conversations.
What to Do When the Numbers Are Bad
Bad numbers aren’t a crisis. They’re information. Here’s how to respond to each.
Revenue declining: Check churn first. If churn is the problem, focus on why customers are leaving. If churn is fine but new customers are declining, focus on acquisition. Don’t panic-add features — that’s scope creep masquerading as urgency.
New customers flat or declining: Review your acquisition channels. Has the organic channel dried up? Is paid advertising getting more expensive? Have you stopped doing the manual outreach that was working? Often, new customer stalls happen because the founder shifted focus from selling to building.
CAC rising: Either your marketing efficiency is declining (tired creative, saturated channel) or you’re expanding to less-targeted audiences. Refocus on your highest-converting niche before broadening.
Churn increasing: Talk to the people who left. Every single one. Send a personal email: “I noticed you canceled. Would you be willing to share what didn’t work?” The responses will point directly to the problem.
Satisfaction signals turning negative: Don’t wait for this to show up in churn. Address it immediately. If customers are complaining about the same thing, fix it this week.
Hours unsustainable: You’re doing too much manually. Prioritize systematization and automation. Or you’re doing things that don’t directly contribute to the six numbers — audit your time and cut the non-essential.
Key Takeaways
- Six numbers tell you everything: revenue, new customers, CAC, churn, customer satisfaction signal, and your hours. Track weekly in a spreadsheet.
- 30-minute weekly review replaces hours of analytics. Fill in numbers, compare to last week, write one priority for next week.
- The dashboard costs nothing and takes 5 minutes to set up. Google Sheets beats expensive analytics tools at the early stage.
- When numbers go bad, diagnose systematically. Revenue problems trace to either churn or acquisition. Follow the diagnostic chain to the root cause.
- Your effective hourly rate (revenue divided by hours) is the sustainability metric. If it’s below what you could earn as an employee, something needs to change.
