Not long ago a founder showed me his company’s OKR sheet. Ten objectives, six key results each, for a team of eight people. Two weeks after he wrote it, nobody on the team could say which objective they were working on.
I have seen this pattern many times. Founders read how Google or Intel use OKRs, copy the format, and forget why it exists. An OKR is not a form to fill in. It is a way to point a small team at the one or two things that matter this quarter.
What an OKR actually is
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. The objective is qualitative and short: where do we want to go? The key results are two to four numbers that tell you whether you got there.
A simple example for an early-stage startup: the objective is “Become the first choice for customers in our segment.” The key results might be a Net Promoter Score above 50, more than 70 percent of customers renewing after month one, and at least 20 customers who refer someone else without being asked. None of the three is the objective. Together they prove it.
KPIs are different. A KPI is a health reading you watch all the time: revenue, churn, customer acquisition cost. The list stays almost the same from quarter to quarter. OKRs are deliberately ambitious and change each quarter. If your team hits 100 percent of every key result, the objectives were probably too timid. Reaching 60 to 70 percent is a good quarter.
How I would write them for a team under 20 people
One company objective per quarter, sometimes two, rarely more. Two to four key results under each. No personal OKRs at this stage. A team of eight does not need a cascade of documents.
If you are still searching for product-market fit, the objective could be “Confirm that our product solves the core problem for our target customer.” The key results: interview 30 prospects this quarter, reach 40 percent of users saying they would be “very disappointed” without the product, and have 10 customers using it for four straight weeks without leaving. Each of these can be answered with yes or no.
“Improve customer experience” is not a key result. There is no number that confirms it.
The part most founders skip: the rhythm
This is where my own experience matters more than the template. I joined the board of Nina Ecom Center, a Vietnamese company that runs large online-to-offline ecommerce shopping centers, with clients such as Masan and Nutifood. Before I came, the board met in only one situation: when something went wrong. The effect on the team was easy to predict. Whenever someone heard “the board is meeting,” the first thought was “something is broken.”
We rebuilt the cadence in three layers. A strategy meeting every quarter with the board, the CEO and the CFO. A monthly operations meeting where the CEO reports to the board. And a data dashboard updated weekly, so board members can check numbers themselves without asking for another meeting. We added one hard rule: board members do not call or message the team for figures outside the agreed schedule. The team stays focused on running the business instead of explaining it all day.
After that change, the company expanded about three times faster than before and received five investment offers. It chose to work with a fund backed by the Australian government. I would not claim the meeting structure alone produced that result. But it removed a lot of noise, and it is exactly the frame an OKR system needs: set objectives at the quarterly strategy meeting, review results at the next one, and use the weekly dashboard to track key results in between.
Three mistakes I see most often
Too many objectives. Eight objectives for ten people means none of them gets real attention. Keep it to three to five at most, and for a very small team, fewer.
Nobody looks between the start and the end of the quarter. Set in January, remembered in March. A short weekly or biweekly check-in fixes this.
Vague key results measuring intent, not behavior. I recently read a public AI review of a pitch deck where the startup reported “50 percent intent to subscribe.” The review’s advice was blunt: intent to pay is not paying. A better key result would be launching a paid beta and counting real payments.
Who writes them
For companies under 30 people, I prefer a split. The founder decides the one to three company objectives, because strategy needs a single voice. Each team then proposes the key results it will commit to under those objectives. Commitment is much higher when people helped write the number than when it was handed down. Mixing the two roles, where the founder dictates every key result or the teams choose their own objectives, is the usual reason OKRs become a ritual instead of a tool.
At the end of each quarter, do not just grade the numbers. Ask what really drove the result, whether OKRs guided daily decisions or only appeared at review time, and whether next quarter should keep the objective with harder key results or replace it.
If you remember one thing: choose fewer objectives, measure behavior, and give the team a rhythm they can trust. The template is the easy part.
Hai H Nguyen is the founder of BeginGuru, a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia (2017) honoree, and a fundraising coach who has served on the boards of several Vietnamese companies, including Nina Ecom Center, VCO Group, and HOPE Corp. He has spent 14 years working with founders on valuation, fundraising, and governance.
Editor’s note: This contributed article has been lightly edited for clarity and TNGlobal house style. The views expressed are those of the author.
Share your perspective: TNGlobal welcomes contributed insights and expert commentary from across Asia’s technology and innovation ecosystem. Submit a contribution for editorial consideration, or explore more perspectives in TNGlobal INSIDER and conversations in the TNGlobal Q&A and Interviews archive.
Featured image: Startaê Team on Unsplash
Post-money SAFEs: Certainty for investors, the bill for founders