The highest leverage activity for startups is talking to users and building and iterating the product. Fake startup progress includes focusing on things like attending conferences and winning awards, which are not directly related to growing the primary key performance indicator (KPI). The goal should be delivering real value to the customer, not optimizing startup vanity.

The highest leverage thing you can be doing, talking to users and building and iterating your product.

This is in direct contrast with fake startup progress, which is when founders focus on things that are not directly related to growing your primary KPI.

So common things I see in weekly updates are things like attending conferences, focusing on winning awards, network events, optimizing the wrong metrics.

While you may convince yourself these are good things to focus on, there are actually many steps away from delivering real value to your customer.

The goal is not to optimize startup vanity, but actually delivering value to your customer.


Speaker 0: The highest leverage thing you can be doing, talking to users and building and iterating your product. Nothing else. This is in direct contrast with fake startup progress, which is when founders focus on things that are not directly related to growing your primary KPI. So common things I see in weekly updates are things like attending conferences, focusing on winning awards, network events, optimizing the wrong metrics. While you may convince yourself these are good things to focus on, there are actually many steps away from delivering real value to your customer.

The goal is not to optimize startup vanity, but actually delivering value to your customer.

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Real vs. Fake progress