Field Notes
Field notes
Practical notes on app analytics for product-led growth teams — activation arguments, cohort cuts, and instrumentation scars.
Short essays from the consultation room. No generic productivity fluff — only questions that show up when product, growth, and data share one screen.
When a PLG team should not hire an analytics contractor yet
If you lack a decision owner or eight weeks of clean events, buy a smaller room first — or wait.
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Event dictionaries that engineers will actually maintain
Naming conventions fail when they live in a Notion page nobody opens. Put ownership next to the event.
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Reading week-1 retention without lying to yourself
Cohort windows, holiday confounders, and the quiet ways product-led teams flatter their own curves.
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Stop calling signup activation
If your activated user has not yet received value, your PLG funnel is measuring politeness, not product.
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