Do you feel like giving up?
A lot of early-stage founders work tirelessly on their journey without stopping and knowing when to give up. Because of a few reasons, primarily driven by their blinding passion to make a difference, and another major reason being unaware of knowing what is defined as progress. In addition, most founders have a sense of overwhelming confidence that they are always taking the right step and giving up is considered weak. In this article, I am not going to be talking about when is the right time to give up, but rather what are some milestones or checkpoints that a founder should be looking out for that informs them that it’s progress.
Before I move forward, let me illustrate what most start-up founders experience when they are asked about their progress. (Pardon my really bad drawing)
Basically what this means is that there’s sudden outbreaks of progress in short intervals of time, but the progress can be lost the very next day. It’s a constant up and down of struggles and making progress and losing the progress. In times like this, it’s very important to have a few metrics that give one the reassurance that things are moving “forward”. In this article, I try my best to share some of the things that I look at before determining that things are “progressing”. Also it is very important to note that, in a start-up journey, progress does not always mean going forward.
One of the biggest indicators that things are going well in the start-up would be that of increasing comfort in the subject matter. As a founder, no matter how good you might be in the industry or the problem which your start-up is tackling, when you pitch or speak to people, there will always be moments when you stutter. Along the way, as your pitches get smoother, and your explanation of what you do gets easier, you have to know that there is definitely progress. If stakeholders are not interested in what you do, you would not be speaking or learning so much about it, meaning to say your pitches and industry knowledge would be stagnating. There is interest from the market, you are getting better at pitches and there is progress definitely happening for your start-up. The more you talk about your area of expertise, the more your pitches and understanding gets better, and you are definitely progressing.
One of the thoughts that I also have in this topic is that progress is very subjective, and it is actually very worthwhile to define what progress means to you at the beginning of your journey. Another thing to note is this definition needs to be dynamic and change according to the stage you are at. If you are a solo founder, you have to have realistic expectations of what progress means to you. However, if you are a well-funded series A or B company, progress could come in many other ways.
The other indicator of progress to me is the growth of a team. Increasing the headcount of a team is definitely a very good indication of progress. Most people do not join something which is not progressing and does not have a clear and promising vision. Set yourself goals, perhaps in 6 months you want to grow your team to 4 people instead of the current 2. Work towards it and achieve it, convincing people to join your start-up is one of the most important things in this journey.
The other and more obvious indicator would be the presence of a prototype. Once your start-up is at the stage where a prototype is available it means that there is a lot of progress. It does not matter if the prototype changes many times after this, but the very presence is something to be happy about. Building a prototype takes time, effort, and user research and those are very good indicators of progress. Prototypes also allow you to go to the next stage of selling and potentially raising funds.
The above indicators are just some of the things that I feel are indicators of progress, however there many other things and I might be wrong about the ones I mentioned. It varies from founder to founder. Just remember that early-stage start-ups are tough battles where progress is not clearly defined, and it is very important to set clear goals and definitions of what progress means to you. This is what helps you in preventing burn out and feelings of desperation.
I hope that this article has helped you!
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