Knowledge Base
Planning 6 min read

How to set goals for your startup

Most startup goal-setting fails for the same reason: the goals describe activity instead of evidence. This is the method we use in FounderVision, and the template behind the default timeline.

The 18-month timeline template

Every milestone below is dated relative to the day you start planning.

NOWNEXTLATERstartM3M6M9M12M15M18Problem proofproductv1 with design partnersproductFirst paying customersgrowthRepeatable channelgrowthFounding hireteamRaise or default alivefundingRetention proofgrowthFounder resetpersonal
The default FounderVision template: eight milestones across 18 months, grouped into Now, Next and Later horizons.
  • Problem proofStart

    20 customer conversations, one written problem statement.

  • v1 with design partnersMonth 2

    Ship to 5–10 named partners, weekly feedback loop.

  • First paying customersMonth 4

    Price it. 10 logos paying anything beats 100 free.

  • Repeatable channelMonth 7

    One acquisition channel you can describe in a sentence.

  • Founding hireMonth 9

    The one role that removes you from the critical path.

  • Raise or default aliveMonth 12

    Either open the round or hit break-even on burn.

  • Retention proofMonth 15

    Cohorts flatten. Churn under target for 3 months running.

  • Founder resetMonth 18

    Two weeks fully offline. Scheduled, not hoped for.

Set goals as evidence, not activity

A goal should name the thing you will be able to prove on a given date. "Redesign onboarding" is activity — you can do it and learn nothing. "40% of new signups reach first value in day one" is evidence.

Write each goal so a stranger reading it in six months can tell, without asking you, whether it happened.

  • One sentence, one outcome, one date.
  • Prefer a number you already measure over a number you'd have to invent.
  • If two people could disagree about whether it hit, rewrite it.

Work backwards from the next unlock

Founders plan forward from what they're building. It's more useful to plan backwards from the next thing that unlocks the company: the round, the hire, break-even, the enterprise logo.

Name that unlock, then ask what has to be true 3, 6 and 12 months before it. Those answers are your goals; everything else is a task.

Three horizons, five goals

Keep no more than five live goals at once, spread across three horizons. More than five and you're not prioritising, you're listing.

  • Now (0–3 months): proof you can ship and that someone cares.
  • Next (3–9 months): proof it repeats — a channel, a cohort, a price.
  • Later (9–18 months): proof it compounds — capital, team, retention.

Balance the categories

Every category in the planner exists because founders systematically under-plan one of them. Product and Growth crowd out Funding, Team and Personal until they become emergencies.

A healthy 18-month plan carries at least one Funding goal, one Team goal, and one Personal goal. The last one is not decoration — burnout is the most common cause of a missed timeline.

Review monthly, re-date freely

Once a month, walk the timeline and do one of three things to every goal: keep it, re-date it, or kill it. Moving a date is information, not failure — a goal that has slipped three times is telling you it was never the real constraint.

Mark goals done the moment the evidence exists, even if the work continues. The timeline is a record of what you learned, not a to-do list.

The template behind this timeline

The graph above is the default FounderVision template: eight milestones over 18 months, offset from the day you start. Use it as a starting shape, then replace anything that doesn't match your company.

Add each milestone as a goal with its own date, pick the matching category, and the timeline and 3-month calendar will fill in automatically.

References

The ideas above are not original. They are borrowed, remixed, and occasionally argued with.

  • High Output Management — Andrew S. Grove

    The original source of OKRs: objectives should be evidence you can measure, not tasks you complete.

  • Measure What Matters — John Doerr

    Doerr's framework for stretching goals and public scoring — useful for teams that already have metrics in place.

  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz

    The mental model that the next company unlock — the hire, the round, the market — should drive every quarter's priorities.

  • Startup = Growth — Paul Graham

    Graham's argument that a startup is defined by its growth rate, which makes growth goals the central constraint for most early teams.

  • The Lean Startup — Eric Ries

    Validated learning as the unit of progress — the "evidence over activity" idea in a product-experiment form.

  • Zero to One — Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

    Thiel's insistence on identifying the one thing that matters most, rather than a long list of marginal improvements.

Put the template to work

Add these milestones as dated goals and watch them fill the timeline and the rolling 3-month calendar.

Open the planner