How do you define progress in the earliest days after launch?
Working towards launching my app.
It's too early for meaningful data, growth trends, or any real signal on what's working, and I'm okay with that.
What I've noticed though is that the internet is full of milestone posts. First 100 users, $10k MRR, viral launches. And when you're pre-data, it's easy to accidentally use someone else's month 18 as your week 1 benchmark.
I'm not losing sleep over it, but it did get me thinking about how founders define meaningful progress before the numbers are there to tell the story.
My current approach is staying focused on qualitative signals are the right people finding it, are early users actually engaging, are conversations happening. But I'm curious what others have done:
How did you measure progress in the first few weeks post-launch before you had real data?
Did you set internal milestones, or just stay heads down and let the market respond?
Looking back, what was actually a meaningful early signal vs what turned out to be noise?
Interested in how other makers have framed this stage practically.
Replies
In the first weeks I usually look for qualitative signals more than numbers.
Things like: are the right people finding the product, are a few users coming back on their own, and are they giving specific feedback instead of generic comments. Even a small group of engaged users can be a strong early signal.
Another good sign is when conversations start happening naturally, people asking questions, suggesting features, or sharing how they’re using the product.
Early on I try to focus less on growth metrics and more on whether the product is actually solving a real problem for someone.
@alpertayfurr I agree with this method and when people find your product it makes it all the better, organic growth is the best, but gotta start somewhere.
@alpertayfurr 100% agree with this. Qualitative metrics help with that in-deoth understanding of whether the product is actually working and bringing results or not.
I struggled with this early on too because there’s almost no quantitative signal at the beginning. What ended up mattering more for me were small qualitative signals: things like whether the right people were responding, whether conversations were happening naturally, and whether people started asking deeper questions about the product instead of just giving polite feedback.
One thing that surprised me was that curiosity was often a stronger signal than early usage. If someone started asking how something works or how it would fit into their workflow, it usually meant the problem resonated.
The biggest mistake I almost made was comparing those early signals with public milestones from other founders. Most of those posts are months or years into the journey.
Early on it felt more like progress was measured by shortening the loop between idea → showing someone → getting a real reaction.
@pashupathi Agreed, something I felt was helpful was interviewing and demoing literally everyone and getting that feedback from the beginning even before metrics.