Most KPIs Explain the Past. The Best Ones Drive the Next Move.

Metrics need to report performance but also drive decisions

Peter Brauer

5 min readMay 13, 2026

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Startups are built around moments.

A launch. A funding round. A breakout feature.

The first cannonball.

Everyone is focused on the splash.

Did it land? How big was it? Who noticed?

And the metrics reflect that obsession. Growth spikes. Signups. Press. Engagement.

But then comes the quieter, more dangerous question:

What’s the next cannonball?

The teams that can’t answer this do not last.

Not because they lack ideas… their strategy never defined what success looked like.

Their plans focused on tactics over vision and defined their KPIs to measure the splash, not to plan the next move.

And when someone asked the inevitable question:

“So what do we do next?”

The room goes quiet.

Do you want to be the splashy startup…

or the company others measure themselves by?

Splashy startups build…