Gary Ong | August 2nd, 2021

Startups come and go. In a startup, we succeed and fail everyday. So, it can be difficult to measure whether we are doing things right, and whether we are doing the right things.

Like every founder, I know about key performance indices. Like every founder, I strive to and I hit them. Yet, even after I hit them, I feel my heart sinking. While key indices are essential to track the progress of the company, it does little to track the personal progress of a person. It seems void of all other considerations in the process. Often, I wonder if I had sacrificed something more important (culture, wellbeing, values, people) just to hit a metric.

So, I have stopped obsessing over metrics. I have them. I take them seriously. I just don’t idolize them. Rather, I measure my day with something simpler: have I been helpful today? This might mean being supportive to my employees, being helpful to my community of entrepreneurs, or creating value that advances the company’s mission, even if it’s just a little. It’s not as quantitative. There is no hockey stick for helpfulness, and I honestly cannot tell you if it’s right. But, I do know this: it helps me sleep at night, and that is enough for me.