OKRs for startups: real examples, explained

Overall, this is a strong OKR, but it's quite sales- or finance-oriented, leaning almost a little too much toward a budget. The only strategy here is a focus on a specific geography. What that often means is that it's directed at a specific team, maybe not a rallying cry for the entire organisation. When these work, what I usually see is the sales effort, together with marketing, needing to adapt to a new language, for example. Product needs to adapt to a new market, or maybe legal even has to start work to support the sales effort in Germany. It is possible to rally the entire organisation around something as simple as a new geography with financial metrics like this, but this example does not quite show that yet.

Overall, this kind of OKR works well. I would say all three hold up here, including shortening payback. For clarity, if this is a strategic OKR for the entire organisation, it would be nice to write out customer acquisition cost, but it's also hard to understand how that fits into the objective. Why do we have a CAC target on this one? Maybe we need to clarify the objective, then talk about how DACH can sustain the next stage of growth. For example, sales in this new market need to hit a specific level of profitability. For the right organisation in the right context, this hits the marks.

Overall strong, clear, and very ambitious, which is common with startups. Many times startups are exactly the kind of organisation that can really benefit from ambitious OKRs. With a lack of baselines, experts, and experience of what actually works, you can see results that double or triple the current level.

Number three is a fun one: reach 40% of users who would be very disappointed without the product. At the same time it needs some kind of measurability settled up front. Will this be measured at the end of the quarter with a survey to all customers, or is there a better metric for this satisfaction score?

This OKR has its heart in the right place, and it's clear what it wants to achieve. I would say the key results are maybe a little limiting, or uncertain about whether they're hitting the right thing here. Would this potentially force the founder out of the room in important sales processes? Is that really what the team wants to achieve? And is playbook adherence really the road to building a sales engine without the founder involved?

There are a couple of thoughts in here that might have the effect that the team avoids taking support from the founder, or avoids taking the decisions needed to close the deal because they're adhering to a playbook. It risks having a problematic effect on the team, even though its intention is clear. I think it's more about reformulating and finding stronger key results for this one.