- The primary KPI for startups is usually revenue or active users, and weekly goals should be set for these metrics.
- The most effective actions to achieve these goals involve talking to users and improving the product.
- Fake startup progress occurs when founders focus on activities that do not directly contribute to growing the primary KPI.
- Examples of such activities include attending conferences, winning awards, and optimizing irrelevant metrics.
- These activities may seem beneficial, but they do not deliver real value to customers.
- Spending significant time on these activities is generally a bad idea.

Your primary KPI almost always is either revenue or active users, and you should always be setting weekly goals for this.

To move the needle on the KPIs, the highest leverage thing you can be doing always comes in the form of tasks that involve 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.

They're actually many steps away from delivering real value to your customer.

And so if all the things you could be possibly doing, spending any significant time on any of these things is almost always a bad idea.


Speaker 0: Your primary KPI almost always is either revenue or active users, and you should always be setting weekly goals for this. To move the needle on the KPIs, the highest leverage thing you can be doing always comes in the form of tasks that involve 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.

They're actually many steps away from delivering real value to your customer. And so if all the things you could be possibly doing, spending any significant time on any of these things is almost always a bad idea.

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Beware of fake progress.