What milestones and goals should an early-stage founder set during the first three months of launching a free MVP?

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Accepted Answer

For Month 1, your primary goal should be to define and observe 'usefulness' qualitatively. I'd suggest conducting a 'smell test' with 5-10 target users: show them your app for 10 seconds, then ask: 'What problem does this solve?', 'Who is it for?', 'Why is it better?', and 'What should you do next?'. If they can't answer cleanly, your value proposition isn't clear. By Month 3, if qualitative signals are strong, you can start to implement very basic, non-invasive tracking for a single dominant metric. This might be a specific action within the app, like 'number of times a user completes a core task' or 'number of shares/referrals.' The key is to focus on repeat usage and genuine pull, not just initial downloads. You're not waiting for time, you're waiting for enough data to trust the result, even if it's anecdotal initially.