Building Moonshots

WAY 41Publish Your Moonshots Metrics: Sharing ambitious models and milestones publicly brings resources.

About the Way

When financing moonshots or seeking finance, teams will need to speak in the language of numbers—especially as they aim to engage investors, partners, and other stakeholders. Numbers offer evidence that a team is serious and going beyond a good story to making an idea real. Similar to financials in a startup pitch deck, metrics show moonshot teams have taken account of the current state of knowledge about various aspects relevant to their specific moonshot, such as industry forecasts, commercial readiness levels, and demographic statistics. Without overdoing the fortune telling, metrics can reveal much about the ambition and assumptions of the moonshot leader and team. (See Way 22: Adopt Bold Metrics.) What do they see as important measures of achievement or scale? How are they thinking about their next milestones? What do they expect from others when their moonshot is making progress, quantitatively and qualitatively?

Near‐term goals tend to be easier metrics to define with hard numbers, such as an increase in customer prospects that show profitability or material cost savings that show organizational efficiency. Mid‐term goals often focus more on metrics related to new program creation and business development that show category growth, such as quarter‐to‐quarter sales increases for a new business unit. Metrics for long‐term goals vary, possibly including ...