How Can Startups Create Manageable Priorities

Every startup founder has big goals and aspirations. Nobody would ever choose to be a founder if they didn’t. However, no founder is going to reach those lofty goals overnight, which means it’s important to set more realistic goals and manageable priorities to achieve in the short term that will ultimately become stepping stones toward achieving those more audacious goals.

Creating Manageable Priorities

Every startup founder has big goals and aspirations. Nobody would ever choose to be a founder if they didn’t. However, no founder is going to reach those lofty goals overnight, which means it’s important to set more realistic goals and manageable priorities to achieve in the short term that will ultimately become stepping stones toward achieving those more audacious goals.

The question is how do startups create realistic short-term goals without forgetting their big vision. Superb founder Zaedo Musa once spoke to me about what he called zooming in on a specific segment.

“You need to not focus on the total addressable market and think you can build a one-size-fits-all product,” Zaedo warned. “We’ve seen a lot of software companies that really try to do this to obviously improve the unit economics, the market sizing, maybe impress investors.”

Zaedo is right to say that focusing on unit economics or just trying to impress investors early can be a mistake. This isn’t going to earn a startup early adopters or make headway in the market, which should be the priorities early on. Instead, Zaedo and Superb took this approach:

“Let’s make the specific addressable market understand what is the vision that we are actually doing and put it in a more understandable way for them (to understand).”

Clearly, Zaedo is a founder who understands the importance of starting small with priorities, even while thinking big. Every founder might have aspirations of reaching the top of the mountain. But the ones who get there know the only way to do it is one step at a time.

“You really need to think big, but you also need to start small. Don’t think big and start big; that’s not a good combo. Thinking big, starting small, and being super strong in that niche is the key to success,” says Zaedo. “You can save a lot of time by actually being really good, very small in a niche where you can control the agenda. You decide what they need and build innovation, and then outgrow that.”

Eventually, growth is possible, including massive amounts of growth. But before that happens, it’s all about setting small priorities and focusing on daily achievements. One step up the mountain may not seem like a big deal, but it is one step closer to reaching the top.

Matt Tucker, whose startup Koan was acquired by GTMHub, knows all about this. As a founder, he preaches an operational cadence that covers everything from multi-year goals all the way down to daily accomplishments. This is how Matt explained it to me:

“How do we write down our mission and our vision and be clear about our values and define the strategy? And then that cadence starts working down into ‘All right, how do we set goals every quarter so we define the outcomes that we want to achieve?’ And then even down to: ‘Well, what happened this week? Let’s reflect on it. What did we achieve? Did we do as much as we wanted to? What should our priorities be?’ And then even down to every day. ‘What am I working on? Where am I blocked? And where do I need help?’”

In the end, it really does boil down to setting goals and priorities every day. Staying focused on small steps every day is truly the best way to keep moving toward the top of the mountain. Founders should always ask themselves what can be accomplished today that will help them achieve their lofty goals and reach the top of the mountain in the future. The answer to that question is how you can create manageable, short-term priorities.

There is a lot more insight from Zaedo, Matt, and other successful founders waiting to be discovered in the book Midstage Momentum. The book features more than 50 of the top founders from around the world sharing their experiences and learnings to help the founders behind them.