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Measuring and tracking the success of startups within an incubator or accelerator program can be tricky, but it’s absolutely critical for the health of any program. Stakeholders, staff, and startups all need to know if everyone is making sufficient forward progress.

The following are five tips on how to effectively gauge that momentum:

1. Manage expectations and start with the WHY. Be clear with startups in your program why metrics are needed, and explain the value metrics provide not only to your program’s stakeholders, but to the startups themselves. In other words, it’s to the entrepreneurs’ own advantage that they establish metrics for success.

2. Realize that every startup is unique unto themselves, and the aside from metrics such as jobs and revenue, the types of metrics appropriate for each of them will vary by industry and their stage of development. Consider working WITH startups and allowing them to create their own metrics, not creating them yourself and trying to force them into your own box.

3. Try to align your metrics with the metrics already being tracked within the startup. Avoid having startups create new metrics if they are simply comfortable with sharing their existing ones. Encourage them to see the value in tracking their own metrics, refer them to books such as Lean Analytics.

4. Understand the difference between direct and indirect economic impact. Startups are like a pebble thrown into a pond. There is the direct impact of the pebble hitting the water (jobs, capital investment, etc.), but there are many other ripples that result afterwards and cause an indirect economic impact. Those ripples are a bit more difficult to quantitatively measure, but they can still be qualitatively accounted for.

5. Create a system of accountability. In fact, some entrepreneurs join incubators and accelerators (at least in part) for this very reason. They want to be held accountable for their own success. And that’s a healthy attitude to have!

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