Education

At Female Founder Collective’s The 10th House, we often see founders track dozens of metrics—without knowing which ones actually drive growth. In our session The Data Behind Desire: Building KPIs That Drive Growth, retail strategist and investor Sapna Shah broke down the difference between vanity metrics and true growth levers—and why KPI discipline matters long before Series A.

Sapna’s experience advising and investing across consumer, marketplace, and retail-driven businesses has shown her a consistent pattern: companies don’t stall because they lack data. They stall because they’re measuring the wrong things. KPIs aren’t operational checklists; they’re strategic drivers. A churn target under 5% drives the retention strategy. Support ticket volume, while useful, is tactical. One informs growth. The other informs process.

For early-stage founders balancing DTC, wholesale, and fundraising conversations, this distinction can determine whether decisions are reactive or intentional.

What Founders Should Actually Be Tracking

Here are the core frameworks Sapna shared for building KPI clarity:

Differentiate KPIs from operational metrics. KPIs are growth drivers tied to business outcomes. Metrics track activity. For example, reducing churn to under 5% directly impacts revenue durability. Counting support tickets helps improve service, but doesn’t, on its own, define growth. Founders must anchor teams around metrics that change trajectory, not just output.

Start tracking early—even pre-fundraise. KPIs aren’t just for post-Series A companies. Early-stage founders need a clear view of business health to align teams and make data-informed product and distribution decisions. Without defined KPIs, growth becomes anecdotal rather than measurable.

Organize KPIs into four core buckets. Sapna outlined four standard categories most consumer brands should track:

• D2C performance
• Wholesale performance
• Customer metrics
• Fundraising health

Benchmarks vary widely by category. Beauty brands often target 25%+ repeat rates. Apparel companies aim for under 40% returns, while footwear can tolerate significantly higher return rates. Fundraising metrics are more standardized—investors typically look for LTV to CAC ratios of 3:1 or 4:1, with CAC ranging from $20 to $250 depending on price point and product complexity.

Define your Hero KPI. Every brand should identify one metric that reflects its competitive advantage. A brand built on community might exceed industry retention averages. A food brand known for taste might outperform on wholesale velocity. Your Hero KPI should outperform benchmarks, become the primary focus of goal-setting, and serve as a headline metric in fundraising conversations.

Build KPI culture, not KPI slides. Metrics only matter if they drive behavior. Sapna emphasized assigning ownership, tying KPIs to performance reviews, and setting a consistent review cadence. Some metrics demand weekly or monthly check-ins; others may be quarterly. As businesses evolve, entering new markets, expanding wholesale, and navigating tariffs, KPIs must adjust accordingly.

Use KPIs to inform strategic trade-offs. Data should guide decisions about product launches, distribution expansion, bundling strategies for low-frequency purchases, and even marketplace prioritization (where fundraising conversations often focus more on buyer demand than supply growth).

Raise capital only when growth stalls without it. Fundraising isn’t a milestone, it’s a tool. Founders should pursue capital only when they’ve maximized organic growth potential and can clearly articulate how funding accelerates a defined KPI.

Why Data Discipline Wins

Desire may drive the first purchase—but data sustains the business.

For early-stage founders, KPI clarity creates alignment, sharpens storytelling, and builds investor confidence. A well-defined Hero KPI becomes both an internal north star and an external signal of strength.

If you’re building in DTC, wholesale, or marketplace models and thinking about when—or whether—to fundraise, this session is a reminder that sustainable growth isn’t built on dashboards full of numbers. It’s built on a handful of metrics that truly matter—and the discipline to manage against them.