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| Criterion |  Product Discovery Working Backwards |  Growth Pirate Metrics AARRR |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Growth North Star Metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When the target state and benefit need to be clear first, it thinks backward from the desired outcome into the product logic. It sharpens vision, objections, and value proposition before elaboration. | For products with complex usage paths, overall growth alone is too coarse to reveal bottlenecks. Pirate Metrics breaks the relationship with the product into consecutive stages and shows where the funnel actually leaks. | When demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. | When product teams track many metrics, the view of the actual customer outcome easily gets lost. A North Star Metric bundles growth, usage, and value contribution into one signal that makes the system's direction visible. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 4-8 h, mehrere Iterationen | 1-2 h Setup, laufend | 1-5 Tage | 1-2 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-6 | 2-8 | Nutzertraffic | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Future Press Release, FAQ, Vision Statement | AARRR funnel, Metric baseline, Experiment backlog | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | North Star metric, Input metric tree, Measurement cadence |
Tagsno overlap | VisionNarrativeAlignment | GrowthMetricsExperiments | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | GrowthMetricsAlignmentRetention |