Metrics question
You are the Head of Product for DoorDash. What would be your North Star metric that you would track? Additionally, what are the other top metrics you would prioritize?
- Meta
- Metrics
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests strategic metrics leadership for a three-sided marketplace (customers, dashers, restaurants): can you pick a North Star that captures the whole system, not just one side.
How to approach it
- Clarify DoorDash's three-sided marketplace nature: customers, delivery drivers (Dashers), and restaurants, meaning a North Star should reflect health across all three, not just orders.
- Propose the North Star: completed orders per active market (or per week), since it directly reflects demand from customers being matched with supply from restaurants and Dashers simultaneously.
- Justify why raw GMV or revenue alone is insufficient: those can grow while masking a broken experience for Dashers (low pay per trip) or restaurants (thin margins from high commission), risking long-term supply health.
- Name the supporting top metrics: customer retention/order frequency, Dasher acceptance rate and pay per active hour (supply health), and restaurant partner retention and margin (assuming a per-order economics assumption).
- Add a guardrail metric: delivery time and order accuracy (correct items, on-time), since marketplace growth without service quality erodes trust on all three sides.
- Explain the hierarchy: North Star tracks overall marketplace liquidity, supporting metrics diagnose which side is unhealthy if the North Star stalls or declines.
What a strong answer includes
- Picks a North Star that inherently requires all three sides of the marketplace to be healthy (completed orders), rather than a one-sided metric like GMV.
- Explicitly explains why GMV alone is a trap, since it can mask Dasher or restaurant dissatisfaction that eventually breaks supply.
- Names Dasher pay per active hour specifically as a supply-health metric, a real and often-cited DoorDash driver-satisfaction concern.
- Structures the answer as North Star plus supporting metrics with clear hierarchy, rather than a flat list.
Common mistakes
- Picking GMV or revenue as North Star without acknowledging it can mask supply-side (Dasher, restaurant) health problems.
- Only addressing the customer side of the marketplace, ignoring Dashers and restaurants entirely.
- No guardrail metric for service quality (delivery time, accuracy).
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you weigh a decline in Dasher pay against growth in completed orders?
- How would this North Star differ across mature versus newly launched markets?
- What would make you conclude the marketplace is unhealthy even if completed orders are still growing?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop