Look, I get it. You open Amplitude every morning. Check retention. Feel good about that 73% number. Pat yourself on the back.
Meanwhile your biggest competitor just raised $47M and you have no idea what they're planning. Your market's shifting under your feet. But hey, at least your dashboard looks pretty.
I've watched too many good PMs crash and burn this way. Smart people. Really smart. They just forgot that metrics without context is like… checking your speedometer while driving off a cliff. Speed's great. Direction matters more.
Context First (Or You're Already Dead)
Here's what I don't like: We teach junior PMs to be "data-driven" before we teach them to understand their market. That's backwards. Completely backwards.
You need three things before you even THINK about opening that dashboard:
Who's gunning for you?
Not just competitors. I mean substitutes too. That Excel spreadsheet your customer's using instead of your product? That's competition. ChatGPT doing your job for free? Competition.
What rules are changing?
Regulations are boring. I know. But GDPR created billion dollar companies. And killed others. The AI Act coming in Europe? Same thing's about to happen.
Can you name three regulations hitting your industry this year? No? Then you're flying blind and you don't even know it.
Where's the market going?
Markets don't evolve. They crack. One day everyone's buying subscriptions, next day it's all usage-based or you're irrelevant.
These shifts show up in weird places first. Reddit threads. Discord servers. That random Slack community you ignore. Not in your NPS score.
Now Let's Talk Data (But Different)
Okay so you've got context. NOW your data means something.
But here's the kicker… 80% of what matters isn't in your dashboard. It's in the messy stuff:
The stuff you measure: Retention, activation, whatever. Fine. Track it.
The stuff that matters: What are people saying when they're pissed? (Check your support tickets). What are they comparing you to? (Reddit has opinions). How do they FEEL about your product?
Run your support tickets through basic sentiment analysis. Nothing fancy. Just emotional patterns. You'll be surprised what you find. The feature you think is broken might be fine — users might be angry about something completely unrelated. Like your pricing page. Or your email notifications. Or the fact that your competitor just added something they now expect from everyone.
Totally different problem. Would've never found it staring at funnel conversion rates.
And get this: 90% of buying decisions are emotional. NINETY PERCENT. Your dashboard tracks exactly zero emotions.
Intuition (Yeah, I Said It)
This is where people get uncomfortable. "We're data people!" they say.
No. You're decision makers. And sometimes your gut knows things your spreadsheet doesn't.
Intuition isn't magic. It's pattern recognition. It's your brain processing a thousand tiny signals. That weird feeling when metrics look good but something's off? That's worth investigating.
But intuition without context? That's just bias. Intuition without data? That's gambling. All three together? Now you're dangerous.
How to build it:
- Use your competitors' products. Actually use them. Not demos. Real usage. Set up a fake company if you have to.
- Read 10 support tickets every Friday. Raw ones. Not summaries.
- Talk to churned customers. They'll tell you truths your CSM won't.
Your brain starts connecting dots. You feel shifts before they show up in data.
What This Actually Looks Like
Let me show you the difference:
Without context: "Retention dropped 5%" With context: "Retention dropped 5% the week after Competitor X launched their free tier"
See? Completely different problem. Completely different solution.
Without context: "NPS is 42" With context: "NPS is 42 but our power users are FURIOUS about that last update"
Without context: "Conversion is up 2%" With context: "Conversion is up 2% but it's all low-value users who'll churn in 3 months"
Context changes everything. EVERYTHING.
The Part Nobody Wants to Hear
Everyone has the same tools now. Same analytics. Same AI. Same frameworks. Same everything.
You know what they don't have? Your context. Your pattern recognition. Your understanding of where things are headed.
Your competitor can see your retention rate. They can probably guess your revenue. They might even know your roadmap.
But they don't know you've noticed that regulation change. They don't know you've spotted the market shift. They don't feel what you feel when you use their product and realize it's missing something crucial.
That's your edge. Not better data. Better understanding.
Stop Flying Blind
Don't optimize metrics for yesterday's game. No point getting really good at something that won't matter in six months.
It's like… imagine perfecting your DVD rental operations in 2006. Great metrics! Customer satisfaction through the roof! Meanwhile Netflix is about to eat your lunch.
Don't be Blockbuster.
Start with context. Always. Then layer in data. Then trust your gut.
Because perfect dashboards for the wrong reality? That's just failure with documentation.
Your metrics are lying to you. Not because they're wrong. Because they're incomplete.
Fix that. Before someone else does.