Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
One of the biggest mistakes founders make is relying on aggregate user metrics instead of understanding how any individuals use their product. In this episode of Startup School, YC General Partner David Lieb walks through one of his favorite tools for better understanding your users, the dot plot. It’s a simple two-dimensional grid that maps individual user activity over time and it can help separate signal from the noise in the early days of a startup. He’ll cover why it gives founders a better sense of product health compared to aggregate metrics, what patterns to look for and real-world examples of how dot plots helped teams at Google Photos and PayPal.
Chapters:
00:00 — Stop Looking at Aggregate Metrics
00:52 — Why DAUs Lie to You
01:39 — What is a Dot Plot and How Does it Work?
02:50 — Picking the Right Event to Track
03:34 — Reading Patterns in the Dots
05:17 — Tracking User State & Attributes
06:16 — The PayPal Fraud Insight
07:59 — Dot Plot vs. DAU Graph
08:56 — Finding Features That Drive Retention
10:30 — Scaling Dot Plots to Billions of Users
11:13 — The $80K Contract That Churned
11:57 — Common Dot Plot Mistakes
12:41 — Dot Plots + Cohort Curves
Apply to Y Combinator: ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: ycombinator.com/jobs
One of the biggest mistakes founders make is relying on aggregate user metrics instead of understanding how any individuals use their product. In this episode of Startup School, YC General Partner David Lieb walks through one of his favorite tools for better understanding your users, the dot plot. It’s a simple two-dimensional grid that maps individual user activity over time and it can help separate signal from the noise in the early days of a startup. He’ll cover why it gives founders a better sense of product health compared to aggregate metrics, what patterns to look for and real-world examples of how dot plots helped teams at Google Photos and PayPal.
Chapters:
00:00 — Stop Looking at Aggregate Metrics
00:52 — Why DAUs Lie to You
01:39 — What is a Dot Plot and How Does it Work?
02:50 — Picking the Right Event to Track
03:34 — Reading Patterns in the Dots
05:17 — Tracking User State & Attributes
06:16 — The PayPal Fraud Insight
07:59 — Dot Plot vs. DAU Graph
08:56 — Finding Features That Drive Retention
10:30 — Scaling Dot Plots to Billions of Users
11:13 — The $80K Contract That Churned
11:57 — Common Dot Plot Mistakes
12:41 — Dot Plots + Cohort Curves
Apply to Y Combinator: ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: ycombinator.com/jobs
