theDataEdge

Latest work, ideas, and insights from theDataStrategist. Also see our work on Medium.com.

Case Studies

How I Used n8n to Build an AI-Powered Dispatch System for a 300-Property Airbnb Management Company

Image explaining mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive

Analytics Strategy

MECE: The McKinsey Principle That Should Guide Every Metrics Framework You Build

An employee completing a task

Analytics Strategy

Task Success Metrics: The Product Metrics You're Probably Not Tracking

Money growing on a tree

Analytics Strategy

How to Decompose Your Revenue Into a Metrics Tree (With Examples)

Case Studies

What It Takes to Build a Data Experience 200 Million People Actually Want to See

Product manager using Net Promoter Score

Analytics Strategy

NPS Isn't Just a Vanity Metric — If You Use It Right

A line of customers splitting in an open field

Experimentation

A Tale of Two Retentions -- Two Types of Retention That Most Startups Confuse

tracking DAU by calendar

Analytics Strategy

DAU, WAU, MAU: The Engagement Metrics Every Consumer Startup Needs to Understand (And Use Correctly)

Explanation of mutually exclusive, collectivly exhaustive

Analytics Strategy

What Is a "Meaningful Event" — And Why Spotify, Medium, and Shopify Each Have a Different Answer

Product managers creating OKRs

Analytics Strategy

OKRs Done Right: A Startup-Specific Framework for Building and Using Them

Metrics misaligning

Metrics

Why Your Metrics Don't Match: A Guide to Data Misalignment

A product manager reviewing metrics

Metrics

The Four First Principles of Good Metrics (Most Startups Violate at Least Two)

A roadmap to money

Analytics Strategy

The Revenue Roadmap Framework: The Map Most Startups Skip

Image of the Information Lifecycle

Revenue Intelligence

The Information Lifecycle: How a User Click Becomes a Business Decision

A X over a BigQuery console image

Data Culture

Why "Being Data-Driven" Has Nothing to Do With BigQuery

A data scientist adding trash to a database

Data Culture

Why More Data Won't Fix Broken Decisions

Analytics Strategy

What Executives Actually Need From Data (It's Not What You Think)

Case Studies

We Analyzed 300,000 YouTube Videos — And the Insights Alone Drove 200,000 Views and 100+ New Customers

Experimentation

How to Measure Real Impact (Not Just Winning Experiments)

Forecasting

Forecasts: What Actually Matters vs. What Doesn't

Analytics Strategy

5 Reasons Why Most Dashboards Fail (And What to Do Instead)

Analytics Strategy

So You Hired a Data Scientist. Now What? Key Players in a Data-Driven Business

A python snake writing Python

Case Studies

What Are Python's Most Used Functions?

Writing a check for data infrastructure

Analytics Strategy

Maximizing Business Impact: A Strategic Approach to Investing in Analytics

Jupyter notebooks on a laptop

Case Studies

A Jupyter Notebook to Start (and Finish) Data Science Projects Faster

A circle with Insights, Product, and Engineering

Analytics Strategy

Insights vs. Product vs. Engineering Data Science and How Each Provides Value to Your Business

A data scientist explaining things to his team

Analytics Strategy

Data Science Interview Questions for Non-Data Interviewers

Data connecting to customers through marketing

Analytics Strategy

Customer Targeting 101: Combining Generic and Personalized Content at Scale

Gold falling from data infrastructure

Analytics Strategy

Building BI: A Startup's Roadmap for Onboarding Enterprise Analytics

An executive meditating

Analytics Strategy

Bringing Kaizen to Your Business: Continuous Improvement Through Iterative Experiments

A strategic bridge over a canyon

Analytics Strategy

Bridging the Gap: Techniques for Data Analysts to Influence Decision-Making

An executive walking down the street with laptop and book in hand

Data Culture

Book Smart vs Street Smart Data Science: 4 Ways to Make Analytics Matter

A business founder walking over stone rocks

Analytics Strategy

6 Easy Steps to a Data-Driven Startup on Day 1

A diagram of 3 types of analytical knowledge

Analytics Strategy

3 Levels of Analytical Knowledge, and Why They're Critical in Every Organization

Brains with known-knowns and known-unknowns

Analytics Strategy

3 Types of Information That Lead to Business-Changing Insights

An old man waiting for insights

Analytics Strategy

4 Reasons Why You're Still Waiting for Insights

A diagram of four statistical processes

Analytics Strategy

4 Statistical Processes That Every Analyst Should Know