Starting a new company is difficult. How difficult? So difficult that an estimated eight out of ten don't last beyond their fifth year. For software development companies, things may be even harder than that. The reasons for that are manifold. For one thing, many software development firms depend on a single product to fuel their bottom lines at the outset — and there's quite a bit that can go wrong with immature software products.
That reality means that anyone running a software development startup has to execute a perfectly choreographed high-wire act if they want their company to survive long enough to thrive. Doing that, however, requires vigilance, powered by as much real-world operational data as possible. However, not every software development startup knows which KPIs to watch to gauge their overall health and odds of success. To remedy that, here are the three most relevant KPI categories to software development startups and five specific KPIs every one of them should track.