Indie Dev Analytics — The Metrics That Matter and Privacy-first Implementation

Most analytics guides are written for growth teams at funded startups. Indie developers need a leaner approach: measure what predicts revenue, skip everything else, and keep user data off third-party servers. This guide shows you how to do that with just Supabase.

Picking Your North Star Metric

Before writing a single line of tracking code, decide on one North Star Metric. It should:

Correlate directly with revenue or retention

Be measurable without PII

Be actionable — you can run experiments to move it

Good examples for indie SaaS:

"% of users who complete their first task within 24 hours of signup"

"# of users who use the core feature at least 3 times per week"

The Metrics Hierarchy

North Star (1 metric) ├── Acquisition │ ├── Signup conversion rate │ └── Source / channel attribution ├── Activation │ ├── D1 activation rate (core action on day 1) │ └── Onboarding completion rate ├── Retention │ ├── DAU / MAU ratio…