How to set KPIs and Prioritize Your Time

July 11, 2022

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Prioritization matters. KPIs
help you prioritize.

Sure - you should try to do all the things.

But in a smart order.
….and maybe you don’t get to all of them.

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What is a “KPI”? What is “prioritization”?

● “Key Performance Indicator” aka a ● What do you work on each day?

measurable metric you track

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 Today’s Task List (example)
❏ Evaluate 2 more CRMs and pick one
❏ Set up google workspaces
❏ Figure out if you can pay office rent electronically and set up ACH
❏ Respond to inbound angel investor email about “coffee” meeting
❏ Call 5 users
❏ Respond to customer support emails
❏ Incorporate yesterday’s user feedback into sprint and ship V1
❏ Draft investor update
❏ Move dentist appointment
❏ Make Buy [frozen] appetizers for your husband’s bday party
❏ Call your grandmother for her birthday
❏ 30 minute workout
Why KPIs & Prioritization in one talk?

● If you prioritize badly, you won’t move your KPIs

● If you choose the wrong KPIs, you spend your time on the
wrong things

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Why are KPIs and Prioritization Important?

● As a founder, nobody is going to tell you how to spend your

time.
● As a founder, you have to move fast but also make sure you’re
moving in the right direction

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Why the rush? Can’t I just grow slowly?

● No.

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Let’s talk about how to
prioritize.

You’ll never complete your task list ever again.

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 Prioritizing what to work on in
Prioritizing how much to work
your startup
on your startup vs. other things

● Work, health (exercise, mental health), ● Focus of today’s talk!

family ● Make the time you spend on your
● Looks different for each person startup matter.
● Align with your co-founder!

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Identify your top KPI(s) and Blockers

● In 90% of situations, this is Revenue Growth

○ will talk more about choosing your KPIs in the last section of this
talk
● Set a target for what you want to achieve in the short term, make sure it
ladders up to any long term goals you have
● Identify your biggest bottleneck/problem in moving your top KPI

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Identify your biggest bottleneck:
Example from SuprDaily

● Top KPI: Growth, bottlenecked by conversion late in the funnel

● Biggest problem: why are high intent users not converting?

○ Missing a popular milk brand NOT a problem with sign-up flow

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 Simple System to move your KPI(s)

1. Write down ideas that may help

a. Rank & choose a few
2. If your KPI doesn’t move, be brutally honest about why
3. Do honest retros; learn, and adjust course:
a. If it wasn’t working, do something different
b. If it was working, double down
4. Move fast.
For a company that is pre product/market fit….

Things that probably should

Things that *should* be on
*not* be on your list
your list

● Investor “coffees” (except when you’re

● Talking to users / responding to
actively fundraising)
customer support messages
● Conferences
● Building features you know your
● Arbitrary technical milestones
customers will pay for
● Press hits
● Getting users to pay for what you’ve
built

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Common traps when prioritizing

1) Checking things off a list feels good

2) It’s easy to convince yourself something is working when it isn’t
3) Perfectionism and indecision are your enemy: fast decisions are
good decisions
4) Mitigating downside (rather than chasing upside) can feel falsely
urgent
5) Working on secondary problems instead of the existential one

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Prioritization Recap:

● you’ll never get to everything on your task list

● Use KPIs to prioritize your work Move fast.
● Be honest with yourself; fail fast

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Choosing the right KPIs makes sure
that you’re moving fast in the right
direction

Prioritization is only effective if you’re prioritizing against the right north star. You can’t afford to waste time
running fast in the wrong direction.

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 Primary Metric Secondary Metric(s)

● This is the metric that unequivocally ● Things that need to be tracked to make
tells you if your business is working sure you’re not cheating/gaming your
● Most commonly revenue growth primary metric, and in for a surprise
● Examples:
○ Retention/churn
○ Unit economics
Bad KPIs (aka Vanity Metrics) ○ Acquisition cost and payback
○ Amount Raised period
○ Team Size ○ NPS
○ Office Space sqft
○ Press Hits
○ Celebrity Endorsements
○ Instagram Likes
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Case Study: Primary vs. Secondary KPI

DoorDash on Demo Day (S13) Rickshaw on Demo Day (W14)

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Case Study: Primary vs. Secondary KPI

DoorDash in 2016 Rickshaw in 2016

(still laser focused on top line) (focusing on top line & unit economics)

● Rapid growth
● Raised a $127M Series C
● Operating in 19 markets
● Investing aggressively in growth
● Growing slowly and steadily
● ~$1M in Revenue, in 2 markets
● Profitable

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Setting Targets: How much growth is enough?

● From Paul Graham:

○ 5-7% WoW = good
○ 10% WoW = exceptional
● Early growth matters; growth rate compounds
● Some factors to consider:
○ Latent demand may boost early growth
○ Length of Sales Cycle (esp for enterprise products)
○ Organic vs. paid
○ Retention/Engagement

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Two methods for setting goals (do both, see how they compare)

Bottoms up
Top Down

● Pick a milestone/date in the future that
you want/need to hit (e.g. $10k MRR
by Demo Day)
● Work backwards from this for bi-
weekly goals
● What is realistic for you to get done in
the next 2 weeks?
● Work up from this to determine a
realistic future milestone

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More about non-revenue KPIs
● CAC/LTV
○ Focus on payback period
● Free signups/DAUs
○ Only if your product requires a network
effect
● Businesses that may need custom KPIs:
○ Hardware/biotech
○ Open source projects
○ Enterprise products with very long sales
cycles

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Takeaways
● Move fast, but in the right direction
● Prioritization:
○ you’ll never get to everything on your task list
○ Use KPIs to prioritize your work - only work on
the biggest blocker to your primary KPI Prioritization
○ Be honest with yourself; fail fast
● KPIs
matters. KPIs
○ Primary KPI = Revenue Growth, unless help you prioritize
exceptional circumstances
○ Secondary KPIs are important to track, but not
necessarily optimize (yet)
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Q&A

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