How Startup Leaders Make the Best Decisions For Their Business

The root of every business decision is money and time

6 min readAug 2, 2021

I’m going to tell you something that sounds obvious but ruins a lot of founders: The key to startup success is making good decisions. And the key to making good decisions is to maintain the focus on your goals and prioritize the necessary steps to reach those goals.

I know this isn’t news to you.

However, like a lot of business advice, the devil is in the details and the details are often hard to come by. A lot of folks will preach the gospel of goals, priorities and decision making. But no one ever tells you how to deal with conflicting goals, multiple priorities and split decisions.

In this post, I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned over 20 years as an entrepreneur and startup leader making decisions to give my business its best chance for success.

Solving the root of the decision equation

You have goals for your business and your life. Whether or not you reach your goals comes down to clearly defining those goals and then prioritizing them above all else. Acting on those priorities — rather than just paying them lip service — is driven solely by the decisions you make.

It’s a simple cycle, but there’s a key part that’s often overlooked. The root of all business decisions always comes down to this: How much does it cost, and how often does it happen?

That’s it. That’s the game we’re playing. For every emergency, every problem, every need, every request , the data we’re searching for is money and time.

It works on the proactive side, too. For every new feature, marketing campaign, sales initiative, even new hire: How much revenue does this add, and how long until it’s profitable?

That’s the equation. Once we understand the equation, we need to solve it. And oftentimes, we don’t know how. That’s OK.

Here’s how we figure it out.