A: Stop launching. Start shipping.

I’ve developed a rhythm for turning ideas into successful ventures with customers. However, I’ve also encountered ideas that didn’t launch successfully. There are many reasons for this, but two reasons stand out: prioritizing feelings over numbers and neglecting the key business metrics. I love launches—don’t we all? Launching is an exciting milestone and absolutely worth celebrating. It takes incredible effort to bring an idea to life, even more to create something people genuinely want, and even more to build something they are willing to pay for. My advice is to celebrate and acknowledge “launching”, but then quickly shift your focus to tracking what truly matters in these critical early stages.

How to Measure if Your Startup Launch was Successful

A successful launch relies on defining clear business goals supported by measurable performance indicators that offer valuable insights into your business model. For example, how will you build your list of people who could use your solution? How many people can you actually reach? How many of those people care enough to want more information? How many of those people are actively looking for a solution? How many of those people become customers? Was this a profitable customer conversion cycle? How often can you repeat this cycle?

Launches & Math

The primary goal of your launch is to secure a customer. At this stage, your focus should be on understanding what it takes to acquire a customer and generate revenue—even if it’s just $1. Let’s do some math; assume that your marketing channel is email:

• Step 1: Send an email to 10,000 people that represent your target audience.

• Step 2: The average email open rate is 20% (industry agnostic): 2,000 opened the email.

• Step 3: The average clickthrough rate is 2-5% (industry agnostic): 100 people downloaded/read the information 

• Step 4: 10% of those people are in the market for what you’re selling: 10 people

• Step 5: 10% of those people become customers: 1 customer

Fun Fact: Step 1 is REALLY tough but doable if you’re focused and committed to measuring the right things at the right time.

Also: Remember to measure your costs. How much does it cost to acquire one customer (in this example, via email)?