Belsky: Set objective success metrics before launch to avoid post-launch bias

“You know, I mean, listen, you have to set metrics, objective metrics, of what you believe progress looks like up front for a few different reasons. First of all, you know, as the messy middle Is you get lost in it, right? And along the way, the progress you're making sometimes won't feel like progress because it's smaller. And then what you're reading in headlines and the FOMO you're always experiencing, it will always feel like other startups, other products are making so much more progress than you because these headlines need to sound interesting, right? And journalists, of course, are only focusing on things that are disproportionately growing fast based on whatever other factors at play. And so if you start to measure yourself, you know, on a random basis, based on how you feel about the product within the world, you're always going to feel bad about yourself. Instead, what you need to do is have an objective set of criteria up front. Like, hey, you know, in six months, we want to have a thousand customers. We want to have over 30 to 40% weekly active users of those people. We want to have twenty-something percent DAU. And, you know, and this is some of the information maybe on the conversion, you know, funnel that we're starting to see. Let's Let's try to get that in six months. If not, we're doing something wrong. If so, full steam ahead, let's keep going. And then hold yourself to those things.”

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