How to Set Great OKRs: 7 examples for VC-backed startups

Objectives and key results (OKRs) are an incredibly powerful way to set direction, focus your team on unified outcomes, and accelerate learning.

And yet, it can be far too easy to pick the wrong targets (an expensive mistake!), especially when VC-backed executive teams set OKRs for the first time.

That’s why it’s important to know what makes for great objectives and key results. Here, we’ll look at some examples of good and bad objectives and key results and explain why the latter don't quite hit the mark.

The Criteria of "Good" Objectives and Key Results

Before we dive into the examples, let’s quickly review what makes for good objectives and key results.

An objective should be ambitious, aligned, prudent, strategic, qualitative, and charitable.

Key results should be quantitative, concrete, informative, efficient, coherent, stewarded, and exclusive.

OKR examples

With those criteria in mind, let’s look at some examples of great OKRs:

Good Objective and Key Results Example #1 – Private Jet Company

This example is for a fictional private jet company that provides jets for crypto oligarchs to travel to charter cities in Latin America. Their ambitious, yet attainable objective was to:

Substantially reduce door-to-door time for crypto oligarchs during day trips to charter cities in Latin America by March 1st, 2023

Their three key results were:

1. 3 letters of intent signed with Latin American charter city authorities
2. 10 paid round trips to Prospera (a charter city in Costa Rica)
3. 1 whale (a crypto whale with more than 250,000 followers) tweets about their experience flying with them

Good Objective and Key Results Example #2 – Mental Health Startup

This example is for a mental health startup that uses VR to connect therapists with kids. They had recently discovered that their technology was the best fit for providers who had to switch to Zoom during the pandemic, but had difficulty getting neurodiverse clients to stay attentive and focused during remote session. Their objective was to:

Help licensed mental health professionals across the US achieve breakthroughs with neurotypical adolescent clients via remote talk therapy in virtual reality by June 3rd, 2022

Their three key results were:

1. 50 therapists using the platform with at least one client
2. 1 group practice w/ >5 providers purchases >2 platform licenses
3. 3 provider video testimonials published that include “ADHD” and/or “autism”

Good Objective and Key Results Example #3 – Biotech AI Platform Startup

This example is for a biotech AI start-up. After pivoting from a point solution to a platform strategy, they wanted to aggregate as much supply as possible and demonstrate that their was some non-zero demand for web-based, AI-driven biotech data analysis by clinical researchers around the world. Their objective was to:

Help drug discovery AI developers at top research institutions go code-to-clinic faster than ever by December 15, 2019

Their three key results were:

1. 23 third-party AI tiles on a storefront
2. 100 analyzed datasets interacted with through the web interface
3. $50,000 of CRO services booked

Good Objective and Key Results Example #4 – Healthcare (Ultrasound device) Startup

This example is for another healthcare start-up that was going to market with their recently FDA-approved cardiac ultrasound, targeting a brand new market segment that they had never made contact with; they aimed to:

Connect professionally organized tier-one community centers into the cloud by transforming their provider’s cardiac ultrasound workflows by March 12, 2020

Their three key results were:

1. 200 new leads contacted
2. 20 demos given
3. 1 center of excellence letter of intent signed

Note that 1 and 2 are examples of a "quality input" and a "vital outcome," respectively.

Good Objective and Key Results Example #5 – US to Japan Freight Company

This example is for a company that does US to Japan specialized freight shipping. After executives returned from a few weeks at the front lines of Japanese trade authority offices, they observed that there were key issues that they were uniquely equipped to tackle that were preventing their customers from being able to reliably predict when the authorities would approve their shipments of high-end critical semiconductor manufacturing components for export by plane.

Their objective was then to:

Make our semiconductor SMB manufacturers fall in love with us by urgently unblocking US to Japan hypersonic air freight shipments by October 10 2021

Their three key results were:

1. One customer double-spend versus three previous three month period
2. 3 gushing video testimonials published to marketing site
3. <12-hour average wait time at customs over trailing seven days

Good Objective and Key Results Example #6 – Health Tech Company

This example is for another health tech company that provides specialized fertility health services, mostly via telehealth. They discovered that handwritten letters to primary care physicians yielded lots of referrals, but they didn't know why and wondered whether other types of upstream providers might refer patients as well.

Their objective was to:

Reliably generate new patient demand via physician referrals by March 28, 2023

Their three key results were:

1. 30 new patients acquired via physician referrals
2. 6 physician outreach experiments run
3. 1 patient referred by a non-primary care physician/endocrinologist

Good Objective and Key Results Example #7 – HR Tech Startup (pre-seed)

This example is from 2 founders at the beginning of their start-up journey, before they'd even incorporated the company. They set out to use AI and psychographic data to revolutionize strengths-based talent management within remote corporations.

Their very first objective was to:

Find out if there’s a "there there" for a 10-year start of journey toward creating a human capital platform unicorn by December 2nd 2018

Their three key results were:

1. 100 insight-generating primary market research interviews with HR buyers and benefits advisors
2. 2 psychographic diagnostic reviewed together
3. 1 letter of intent signed with a total contract value of greater than $100k

Not-so-great Objective and Key Results Examples

Now let’s look at some examples of less-than-ideal objectives and key results.

Bad objectives

• Become a multi product company: This is non-specific and self-oriented, and focused on outputs (the products) rather than outcomes (what the products do).
• Grow revenue: Not specific, unclear why this would be a good strategy, and no choices made or crux of the problem identified.
• Make our customers love us: Good sentiment but how and for whom this should be done is not defined.
• Run 10 performance marketing experiments: This could be a good key result, but it’s quantitative and not a good objective.
• Document all processes in Notion: This is more a task than an objective, and lacks clarity on the desired end goal.

Bad key results

• Ship 10 updates: This is focused on outputs as opposed to outcomes, and may not solve a real problem for customers.
• 100 app downloads: While this may demonstrate interest, it does not necessarily lead to providing value or delivering users their desired outcome.
• 30% decrease in cost of acquiring a customer: Unclear where this is starting from and without more context, it’s not a good measure (drawing a line in the sand of acceptable CAC would be better).
• Increase revenue: Not even quantitative.
• Very clever measure that requires some additional instrumentation: While clever, this measure isn’t immediately available and should be saved for a later quarter. Always choose measures that are currently available, even if they're imperfect.

Generally speaking, what makes these examples bad is that they’re non-specific, self-oriented, focused on outputs rather than outcomes, aren't strategic (no discernible choices or crux coming into play), are not quantitative, and/or require additional product instrumentation.

Conclusion

Setting good objectives and key results is not easy.

But if you follow the criteria outlined above and use the examples provided, you’ll be able to set objectives and key results that are ambitious, aligned, prudent, strategic, qualitative, and charitable, with key results that are quantitative, concrete, informative, efficient, coherent, stewarded, and exclusive...

...and, most importantly, get your team on the same page, decrease management overhead, and take massive quarterly strides toward your long-term mission and vision!

Ready to take things to the next level?

I work with VC-backed founders and chiefs-of-staff to get remote teams hyper-focused with OKRs (as well as attention management techniques and methods for accelerated customer discovery).

If you'd like some help setting good OKRs and getting your team on-track, we should chat.

Book a time for us to talk here!