LessonTry Micro Milestones to Push Through Slower Growth
What Startup Founders Should Do During A Period Of Slow Growth
The startup journey is not always smooth sailing, and you may face some miserable times.
The startup founder might be under tremendous pressure due to his poor performance, lack of capital, low sales, sluggish growth, etc.
One of the best ways to get rid of this feeling is to set your own milestones and monitor your startup’s progress.
This post will give you a complete idea of how you can set up your own milestones and monitor your progress with micro milestones in a straightforward manner.
What are Micromilestones?
In short, micro milestones are basically small milestones that you set up in a way to achieve the bigger goals for your startup, which can be divided into three different categories:
Business Goals
These are goals related to the company’s business model and sales model. For example, MailChimp was set out to create an email list building tool with its first milestone being a minimum viable product that could send emails without getting blocked by spam filters.
Time Goals
These goals are related to time-sensitive tasks such as releasing new updates or products, attending conferences or meetings. For example, many startups consider attending conferences as one of their major milestones because most startups get funded.
Funding Milestone
These are goals that are related to getting funding for your startup. For example, Many startups consider a certain amount of funding as a milestone because not all startups can build a product with just their own money.
Even though it is true that your startup will see some growth at the very beginning, you need to set up specific milestones and maintain focus on them.
This will help you keep your thoughts in check and take you to the next step of making your startup successful.
How to Set Up Your Own Micromilestones for Your Startup?
Setting up micro milestones is not something that will happen overnight, so you need to choose your micro milestones wisely.
Choose Your Goals
To achieve great results, you need to set up goals to monitor your progress here and there.
As discussed above, there are basically three goals which you need to set up first for your startups like Business Goals, Time Goals, and Funding Milestone.
Set Up Your Milestones
Now that you have chosen your goals, it’s time for you to set up milestones to help you achieve those goals.
Here are some basic steps that you need to follow:
Calculate the time for each milestone
Decide on the time required to accomplish each step. For example, if it takes two months to build your product, it takes four months to launch it. This will give you enough time to test your product and fix any bugs, if any.
Write down your milestones
After calculating the time for each milestone, write down all of them in a list and divide them into three different categories mentioned above- Business Goals, Time Goals, and Funding Milestones. Once you are done with the list, you can give it a final review.
Use the milestones to your advantage
Now that you have set up all the milestones for your startup, you can start using them to your advantage.
For example, if you have set up a milestone to launch a new product by November, this will help you stay focused for the entire month of November and push you to complete all of your tasks on time.
Set up an alarm
Once you are done with your milestones, set up an alarm in your phone or calendar and make sure that you get reminded about each milestone, helping you stay focused and keep moving forward. This is one of the best ways to achieve great results.
Setting up micro milestones for your startup is one of the best ways to regularly monitor its growth and progress, improving every aspect of it. Leave a comment if you have any queries or suggestions.
About the Author
I am the Founder of Cudy Technologies (www.cudy.co), a full-stack EdTech startup helping teachers and students learn better. I am also a mentor and angel investor in other Startups of my other interests (Proptech, Fintech, HRtech, Ride-hailing, C2C marketplaces, and SaaS). You can also find me on Cudy for early-stage Startup Founder mentorship and advice.
You can connect with me on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderlhk) and let me know that you are a reader of my Medium posts in your invitation message.
