Founders: Ask Yourselves These Four Questions Every Week

As an early stage founder, you spend most of your time in operational mode: primarily building your product and acquiring users, but also hiring, fundraising, working with legal, and putting out ad-hoc fires. It is easy to get stuck on a hampster wheel and lose sight of what matters: making something people want.

To avoid this, at the end of every week, ask yourself four simple questions.

1. Are you growing?

Pick your growth metric (e.g. weekly active funded wallets) and enter your growth number for the week. Why wasn’t growth higher?

2. Are people using the product?

Pick your engagement metric (e.g. number of daily transactions per active wallet) and enter your engagement number for the week. Why wasn’t engagement higher?

3. Are users coming back?

Pick your retention metric (e.g. returning wallet rate, active again on D1, D7, D30) and enter your retention number for the week. Why wasn’t retention higher?

4. Is this still worth working on? [Existential question]

Do people actually want this? Is the market big? If the market is small, will it grow fast?

Thanks to Keone Hon for the prompt and and initial ideas.