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KPIs & Risks

How to Use This Page

Every KPI below has an owner, a definition, and a target direction. Baselines are set in the first 90 days after launch; hard numeric targets are then reviewed quarterly. Dashboards implementing these metrics are specified in Admin & CMS (SRS) and the analytics events in the Growth domain of the Product Map.

One metric that matters (launch phase)

Quotation requests received per paying vendor per month. It sits at the junction of demand (customers sending RFQs), supply quality (vendors worth asking), and revenue (vendor ROI → renewals). Secondary north star: booking conversion rate.

KPI Catalog

Customer KPIs

KPI Definition Direction / target
MAU (Monthly Active Users) Unique customers with ≥ 1 meaningful action (search, RFQ, message, booking) in 30 days ↑ month over month
Registration → activation rate % of new customers who create an event or send an RFQ within 14 days of signup ↑ ; target ≥ 40%
Event creation rate Events created per week; also events per active customer ↑ steadily
RFQs per event Average quotation requests sent per created event ↑ ; healthy range 2–6
Quote coverage % of RFQs receiving ≥ 3 quotes within 48h (priority categories) ↑ ; target ≥ 80% — the core liquidity metric
Time to first quote Median hours from RFQ sent to first quote received ↓ ; target < 6h
Booking conversion % of events with ≥ 1 accepted quote that reach a confirmed (deposit-paid) booking ↑ ; target ≥ 60%
Repeat customer rate % of customers with a 2nd event/booking within 12 months ↑ ; the Event-OS thesis test
Average event value Mean total booking value per event (KWD) ↑ / stable
NPS Standard NPS survey post-event completion ↑ ; target ≥ 40

Vendor KPIs

KPI Definition Direction / target
Active vendors Approved vendors with ≥ 1 quote submitted or profile update in 30 days ↑
Category coverage Priority categories with ≥ 5 active vendors in each major area of Kuwait ↑ to full coverage
RFQs per paying vendor / month Mean RFQs received by Basic+ vendors ↑ ; target ≥ 8–10
Quote response time Median hours from RFQ received to quote submitted or declined ↓ ; standard: 80% within 24h
Quote acceptance rate % of submitted quotes accepted by customers ↑ ; benchmark per category
Free → paid conversion % of Free vendors upgrading within 90 days ↑ ; target ≥ 20%
Subscription renewal rate % of paid subscriptions renewing at term (gross retention) ↑ ; target ≥ 85% annual
Vendor NRR Net revenue retention including upgrades/downgrades ↑ ; target > 100%
Vendor no-show / cancellation rate % of confirmed bookings cancelled by vendor ↓ ; alarm > 5%
Average vendor rating Rolling mean review score platform-wide ↑ / ≥ 4.0

Business KPIs

KPI Definition Direction / target
MRR / ARR Monthly / annualized recurring subscription revenue (KWD) ↑ ; primary revenue line (MVP)
GMV Gross value of bookings transacted through the platform (KWD) ↑ ; monetized via commission from launch (MVP)
Take rate Commission revenue ÷ GMV (live from launch, 5% of booking total) Managed, not maximized (MVP)
ARPPU MRR ÷ paying vendors ↑ via plan mix, not price shocks
Vendor CAC Fully loaded acquisition cost per paying vendor ↓ ; blended < 4× monthly ARPPU
Customer acquisition cost Marketing spend ÷ activated customers ↓ over time (organic/referral share ↑)
LTV:CAC (vendor) Modeled lifetime value ÷ CAC ≥ 3:1 blended, ≥ 5:1 self-serve
Gross margin Revenue minus PSP fees, infrastructure, support delivery ↑ ; SaaS-like at scale
Churned MRR MRR lost to downgrades + cancellations per month ↓
Payment success rate % of payment attempts (subscriptions + deposits) succeeding ↑ ; alarm < 90% — watch KNET flows
Dispute rate Payment/booking disputes ÷ completed bookings ↓ ; alarm > 2%
Support first-response time Median time to first human response, by plan tier Within plan SLA

Risk Register

Scale: likelihood and impact rated Low / Medium / High. Owners: Founder (F), Product (P), Operations (O), Engineering (E), Finance (Fin).

# Risk Category Likelihood Impact Mitigation Owner
R1 Marketplace liquidity / chicken-and-egg: customers arrive, get few or slow quotes, and never return; vendors see no RFQs and churn Marketplace High High Supply-first launch: onboard anchor vendors in 4–6 priority categories in Kuwait before consumer marketing; founding-vendor free Professional plans; concierge ops team manually chases quotes for early RFQs; track quote coverage and time-to-first-quote weekly; concentrate marketing on covered categories only F/O
R2 Vendor quality erosion: unreliable vendors (no-shows, misrepresented services) destroy the trust the brand sells Marketplace Medium High License verification + admin approval gate (MVP); vendor quality standards with automated monitoring; verified-booking-only reviews; ranking rewards quality; delisting process O
R3 Payment disputes & refunds: deposit disputes between customers and vendors escalate, chargebacks rise, trust suffers Financial Medium High Mandatory published cancellation policies bound at booking time (M7); platform-mediated refunds per policy; dispute arbitration workflow in ops handbook; monitor dispute rate; escrow/milestone payments (Vision) structurally reduce this class of risk O/Fin
R4 Off-platform leakage: parties meet on Yam3at, transact on WhatsApp/bank transfer, platform loses data and commission revenue Marketplace High Medium Keep customer side free and quoting genuinely easier than WhatsApp; deposits with receipts and payment protection as customer-side incentive; M4 anti-steering rule; commission kept deliberately low (5%) and captured from the on-platform deposit so staying on-platform stays worthwhile; rebooking and planner tools add on-platform value P
R5 Competition: a regional player (or well-funded copycat) targets Kuwait; Instagram/WhatsApp inertia persists Competitive Medium Medium Speed to liquidity in Kuwait (small market = defensible saturation); Arabic-first depth and KNET-native payments as local moat; vendor lock-in via business tools (calendar, analytics, CRM (Scale)); the real fight is against the WhatsApp workflow — measure activation friction relentlessly F/P
R6 Regulatory & compliance: vendor licensing rules, consumer-protection law, payment regulation (Central Bank of Kuwait via PSP), data-protection requirements across GCC Regulatory Medium High Operate on licensed PSPs (MyFatoorah/Tap) — no direct money handling (MVP); commercial-license verification aligns platform with licensing law; clear T&Cs and refund policy pages (MVP); country-by-country legal review before each expansion (Scale); audit logs everywhere F/O
R7 Technology delivery & scale: modular monolith becomes a tangle; search/messaging/payment engines underperform; mobile quality issues Technical Medium Medium Locked stack and DDD module boundaries per the architecture; shared engines built once (rule); CI/CD with staged releases; load testing before wedding-season peaks; feature flags for risky rollouts E
R8 Concentration in wedding seasonality: revenue and demand spike around wedding season and Ramadan, straining ops then starving quiet months Business Medium Medium Deliberately serve all event types (corporate C2, family C3, birthdays C4 personas) to flatten the curve; seasonal featured-listing products monetize peaks (Scale); annual plans smooth vendor cash flow F/P
R9 Founding-team bandwidth / key-person dependency Organizational Medium High This Product Bible as single source of truth (any new hire onboards from docs); prioritize ruthlessly by phase tags; hire ops lead before scaling vendor count past what concierge quality allows F
R10 Fake reviews / fraud: review manipulation, fake vendors, stolen galleries Trust & safety Low–Medium High Reviews gated on completed bookings (M5); license verification; content moderation queue (MVP); fraud-detection signals and device checks (Scale); report-abuse flows O/E

Risk Review Cadence

  • Weekly (launch year): R1 liquidity dashboard — quote coverage, time-to-first-quote, RFQs per paying vendor.
  • Monthly: full register review in ops meeting; likelihood/impact re-scored; new risks appended with the next R-number.
  • Per expansion market: R6 regulatory assessment and R1 liquidity plan re-run for the new country before launch (Scale).