When people think or hear about startups, they often picture a dynamic and modern work environment. Startups mean radical ideas, enthusiastic teams, and a focus on growth and evolution. But behind all these are huge responsibilities. Startups require careful planning, measurement, and serious decision-making – all fueled by key performance indicators for startups. After all, 90% of startups fail in the long run, with 10% failing in the first year.
So, while the excitement of passion projects and innovation is part of the core of a startup, it’s only half of the equation. The other half is monitoring and evaluation using key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs aren’t just random metrics or fancy business talk. They’re navigational tools to give startups clear indicators of their performance and how to thrive successfully moving forward.
Are you growing a new business concept? Or trying to scale your startup through a complicated business environment? No matter what you’re doing, using the right KPIs lets you measure your success in a tangible way. KPIs let you spot areas that need improvement and make informed decisions that support your business’s growth.
Understanding Key Performance Indicators
In the startup world, numbers exist to tell the business’s tale. These numbers are essentially what key performance indicators are. They are quantifiable metrics that tell you how business is doing and predict where it might be heading. By nature, startups and small businesses are more experimental and unconventional than larger corporations. They have a much larger appetite for risk.
So, having clear, accurate, and actionable KPIs on hand can keep the company on track. Essentially, they bring clarity to the potential chaos within a startup by filtering what matters from what doesn’t.
Of course, they don’t just exist in their own vacuum. 95% of leading marketers agree that businesses must tie KPIs to broader business goals to matter and make a difference. For example, if the startup’s goal is to acquire more customers, then the best KPI for the scenario could be the number of new customers gained per month. On the other hand, if they’re focusing more on profitability, then they could use gross or net profit margin as a relevant KPI.
KPIs also pinpoint potential issues before they evolve into larger issues that could lead to the downfall of the business – which, as we’ve highlighted, is a major concern for startups. The proactive nature of key performance indicators for startups means that team members can pick up on these early warning signals and outmaneuver their competitors.
Especially with smaller and more inexperienced businesses, well-defined KPIs can drown out the guesswork and emotions that may cloud decisions. They can subsequently move on from subjective decision-making to decision-making backed by facts and figures.
Types of KPIs for Startups and Small Businesses
There are so many KPIs a business can use. Some will have the power to reveal deep insights and shape decisions for your business more so than others. Choosing the right KPIs is a task in itself. It requires you to have an intimate knowledge of your company’s goals, industry, and customers. Let’s take a look at the four broad key performance indicators for startups and small businesses.
Financial KPIs
Financial KPIs are all about the fiscal health of your business.
- Profit Margins – Profit margins outline the percentage of total sales revenue a company retains as profit, minus all operating expenses. It’s an indicator of whether or not your company is profitable. Higher margins mean better efficiency when it comes to converting sales into profit.
- Cash Flow – Cash flow refers to the amount of money moving in and out of your business. A positive cash flow means a company’s liquid assets are increasing, granting you enough funds to cover operational costs.
- Return on Investment (ROI) – ROI measures how efficient an investment is, demonstrating the financial returns you’re getting from specific spending. High ROIs indicate a profitable investment that is contributing well to your startup's success.
Customer Acquisition and Retention KPIs
This type of key performance indicator aids in understanding the consumer landscape and how effective your marketing efforts are.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) – This KPI measures the resources that a company needs to use to acquire a new customer. It lets you know exactly how much you’re spending to gain a new client in order to adjust your marketing strategies to optimize spend and increase the number of new customers.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – CLV helps predict net profit from the entire future relationship with a customer. Essentially, it shows you the value a client brings to your business. It helps you determine how much money you should invest in acquiring customers and retaining existing ones.
- Churn Rate – Churn rate is the percentage of your customers who stop doing business with you over a given period of time. A high churn rate often means that your product or service isn’t meeting a core customer need.
Operational Efficiency KPIs
Operational efficiency KPIs gauge your business’s productivity and efficiency in regard to your operational processes. These indicators usually point out any inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement.
- Inventory Turnover – This indicator measures the rate at which you use or sell your inventory in a given time period. You want to be wary of an overly speedy turnover, which can put you at risk of low stock and loss of sales.
- Order Fulfillment Rate – How long does it take for a customer to receive an order? Interestingly, customers seem to be moving on from the expectations of same-day and two-day shipping. They prefer lower-cost shipping and tracked shipping. Despite this new trend, customers still don’t want to wait too long.
- Employee Productivity – Figuring out how much a single employee can contribute to the business within a set time frame can reveal just how efficient and effective your workforce is. As increased productivity often leads to better business profitability, it’s certainly a worthwhile metric.
Marketing and Sales KPIs
Marketing and sales KPIs can shed light on how effective your marketing strategies and sales teams are and the overall growth of your business in terms of revenue, market share, brand recognition, and more.
- Conversion Rate – Conversions are the percentage of visitors or users who take a desired action, like making a purchase or filling out a form.
- Lead-to-Customer Ratio – This KPI calculates the number of leads (potential customers) that get converted into actual customers. Perfecting this ratio means optimizing your sales process and customer journey so that as many leads as possible turn into paying customers.
- Sales Growth – Sales growth determines the increase or decrease in your startup’s revenue over time.
Formulating Key Performance Indicators for Startups
Creating new KPIs for your small business isn’t just a matter of identifying a business goal and coming up with a metric to track it. It typically is more involved, requiring a strong understanding of your business dynamics and future objectives. Get started on the right foot by following these tips.
Define Clear Objectives
The very first step in establishing effective KPIs is to define your objectives. All business goals need to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. For example, instead of going with a broad goal like “increase our customer base,” it’s more effective to say, “increase our customer base by 20% in the next quarter.” You need to be able to measure these goals. They must be challenging yet realistic and have a timeframe.
Identify Key Business Areas
As startups can be just as complicated as larger businesses, certain aspects hold greater importance than others. These are your key business areas. These could be related to marketing, sales, operations, customer service, or finance, to name a few.
To help figure out these areas, start by spotlighting objectives that your business wants to achieve in the short term and long term. If your primary business goal is increasing market share, for instance, your key business areas could be marketing and sales.
Select Appropriate Metrics
Metrics might sound the same as KPIs, but there are actually a few differences between the two. While metrics are broad measures of progress that give insight into different areas of a business, KPIs are a subset of metrics that are linked tightly to objectives. Narrowing down a few metrics in line with your objectives can give you a more concise focus on what sort of KPIs to go for.
Set Targets and Benchmarks
Even after you’ve set fitting KPIs for your startup, there’s a next step – setting specific targets. Benchmarks provide much-needed context for KPIs, setting up a point of reference to measure your startup’s performance against. Without them, it might be a struggle to find out what the raw data is actually trying to tell you. These benchmarks are based on the performance metrics of other companies in your industry, which helps you determine how well your startup is performing in the broader market.
Taking a Holistic Approach to KPIs
While financial metrics like revenue growth, cash flow, and ROI are famously important, they don’t necessarily encapsulate your startup’s overall health and potential for future growth.
To get a big-picture idea of business performance, you want to combine fiscal indicators with non-financial KPIs, such as employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Adopting a holistic approach gives you a more well-rounded story of your business journey beyond the bottom line.
Leading vs. Lagging Indicators
Leading and lagging indicators give you a two-fold perspective of your business journey. Lagging indicators measure the outcomes of past actions. Examples are revenue growth and total number of customers, which will clearly show success or failure. On the other hand, leading indicators focus on the path ahead.
These proactive metrics predict future outcomes and let you make adjustments in your strategy to improve results. Some examples include website traffic, employee satisfaction, and customer feedback. Prioritizing these can lead to outcomes like increased customer loyalty or sales.
Feedback Loops and Continuous Improvement
Startups are constantly evolving, which means that adaptation is simply part of the equation. This is equally true for key performance indicators for startups. Startups need to keep pace with fluctuations in market conditions, customer preferences, and competition. Make sure your KPIs are dynamic and adjusted over time, using the handiness of a feedback loop to review your metrics.
Avoiding Vanity Metrics
When looking at your business, it’s easy to be captivated by vanity metrics. These are numbers that might look impressive at the start but don’t provide any meaningful insights into how your business is doing. They might be nice to look at, but they likely won’t have any real value. Vanity metrics, such as likes, views, and followers, can trivialize reality, as a thousand likes often don’t necessarily mean a thousand sales. KPIs will help you stay anchored with a realistic image of business operations and give you a clear direction of where to go.
Utilizing KPI Dashboards and Analytics Tools
The job doesn’t end at defining and monitoring KPIs, either. How you interpret, visualize, and put your resulting data to use is just as important – if not more so. Taking advantage of digital analytics tools can provide you with a centralized platform to make sense of these performance indicators. These platforms offer a suite of features, such as sophisticated data visualization capabilities and predictive analytics, to turn all that data into actionable insights.
Conclusion
When you fully understand and implement KPIs, their transformative potential is boundless. These laser-focused metrics provide startups and small businesses with a clear path forward, allowing teams to thrive and strive rather than struggle to keep pace.
From carving out an exact course for growth to backing up big decisions, key performance indicators for startups are the method to the madness – giving you the insights to improve and compete in a bustling and complicated business environment.
Nick Saraev is a writer & entrepreneur who pivoted from a path in medicine to forge a series of successful digital media businesses. He’s been featured in Popular Mechanics, Apple News, & Bloomberg, and is an Amazon Kindle best-seller.
