
Ask HN: How to set and achieve goals in small startup? - GBiT
I&#x27;m founder of startup with small team of people (4 myself included). I want to ask HN, how you set up goals for the future? How far you plan in future and how detail. How you meter and achieve your goals, employers goals, team goals?
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Snail_Commando
Focus on getting users and keeping them happy. Pass every decision through
that filter. Right now is the only time in the potential timelines of your
company where all goals and incentives are so neatly aligned (between users,
employees, founders, and investors).

You don't need any complicated goal maintenance frameworks right now. You need
to get users, keep them happy, and repeat. Otherwise, you will die. You will
never reach the point where you have divergent goals between entities. So
right now you have a simple goal, you don't need to think about setting
others. It's a simple filter that facilitates all possible legitimate goals of
a tiny startup.

If you have any short or medium term goals right now aside from getting users,
keeping them happy, and acquiring more resources to fuel that positive
feedback loop; why are you even doing a startup?

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joerich
Have you ever read about the "Scrum methodology"? I think it is a good place
to start...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%29)

[https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scr...](https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf)

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icu
Hi, is this a business development question or a software development
question?

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GBiT
Hi, Its business development question.

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icu
Okay well there isn't any right answer here and honestly what you are asking
is extremely broad. Any advice is only valuable if it is tailored to your
situation.

My biggest question to you is, “do you have a business plan?” Sure the thing
gets obsolete the moment it hits the printer but I've found the discipline of
writing one and doing the financials a very good thing.

If you don't have a business plan I would honestly start there. New Venture
Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century by Timmons has an excellent
Business Plan Template. In my younger years I won a business plan competition
at my university with it. The book also has a good opportunity screening
framework which is really helpful. Buy a second hand copy of the book and you
don't need the latest edition. I have the 5th edition of the book and it is
used time and time again when needed to do business plan stuff.

Once the full business plan is done, I have found that condensing it all down
into a one page business plan for the start-up team members keeps everyone in
the loop about the big picture moving forward. You will probably need to keep
revising the one page business plan depending on what is actually going on. I
wouldn't change the full business plan unless you are doing a major pivot or
if any significant amount of time has passed (like 1 year).

Having worked through the full business plan you will have figured out where
you want to go and what you will need to get there. How you move forward
really depends on what type of business you are in, and what your business
model is. You should have also done a bit of project planning in the business
plan and I would have paid close attention to the critical path of your start-
up (and maybe done a Gantt Chart with who is doing what).

Having said that I would pay close attention to your burn rate—or how quickly
you are using up your cash. This is sometimes called your 'runway' for launch
but I like to call it your 'death clock'. You must get to a point as quickly
as possible where you are break even including a living wage for founders and
staff. I think PG from HN has a blog post somewhere about being 'Ramen
Profitable' which might be worth a read.

Anyhow having a 'death clock' can motivate you and your team to hit break even
before you run out of cash and die. Fear is an excellent motivator in the
short run. If you have a great team I don't think you need to really push them
too hard beyond that because they will know what they need to do to get to
break even before you die (if they don't what the heck are they doing in your
start-up team?). Having said that you'll need good team communication and
coordination and I would say weekly meetings with a sort of whip-around where
everyone gets a chance to tell it how it is... something like:

A) This is what I did last week, this is what I'm doing this week B) This is
what I worked, this is what didn't work C) I need help/I'm at full capacity/I
have spare capacity.

Also try to get someone to summarize the team's progress against your critical
path. Are you early, on track or behind? If you are behind what can the team
do to get back on track?

If you have already hit the break even milestone, congratulations... you have
a new type of problem set on your hands. You'll need to do the same sort of
process but motivate with carrots rather than fear. This really starts to get
business specific. If you give more info maybe I can offer more ideas.

Good luck!

