Leadership

How to Celebrate the Small Wins in a Startup

Acknowledging your team’s hard work is a powerful motivator—even when there’s nothing obvious to celebrate.

It took six months and more than a pound of flesh, but finally our seed round was closed. We’d done it! Obviously, a celebration was in order, so the whole team and our new investors gathered in a private room at a trendy restaurant in London. The atmosphere was electric.

One of the investors got up to say a few words. After expressing his excitement about the future, he offered some words of advice: ‘celebrate the small wins.’ The whole team looked around, nodding and smiling at each other. This was the kind of advice that’s easy to hear.

Patiently Waiting

Fast forward six months, and we hadn’t celebrated anything. Closing the fundraising had been clear-cut, concrete, definitive. In contrast, the slow progress in building our business was far from concrete.

Sure, we’d closed a marketing partnership . . . but it wasn’t clear whether it would generate results. Yes, we’d released some cool features this sprint . . . but none seemed big enough to warrant a celebration. So we waited . . . and waited.