Last week, summer officially arrived at the Berkley Center with the start of the 2025 Stern Venture Fellows (SVF) Summer Accelerator, a rigorous 10-week program that offers funding and cohort-curated programming and coaching to help NYU founders take their startups further, faster.
This year’s cohort, focused on the digital health and wellness space, came together for the first time to help us kick off this year’s program. Joined by members of this summer’s MBA Venture Associates program, who will provide startup support to our cohort, it was a day packed with valuable lessons not only from the workshops and panels but also from one another, as the Fellows shared more about themselves, their journeys, and their ventures, and the while Venture Associates emphasized their skillsets and the role they’ll play as collaborators helping the founders sharpen ideas, pressure-test strategies, and make tangible progress.
Getting Aligned: Metrics That Matter
The day continued with the Venture & Founder KPIs Workshop, led by former founder and Berkley Center Associate Director, Steph Shyu. Fellows spent the afternoon doing the deep work of pinpointing where their ventures stand now, where they need to be by the end of summer, and how to measure real progress in between.
Working through concrete stages, whether refining MVPs, building traction, or preparing to raise, founders mapped out clear Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for the accelerator and identified 2–3 high-impact Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to serve as their north star. Steph emphasized that the best KPIs are not just numbers to report, they are signals that tie day-to-day execution to a clear purpose. Fellows distinguished primary KPIs (like revenue or active users) from supporting metrics (like retention or engagement) and were encouraged to reject vanity metrics that look impressive but don’t move the needle.
To ensure these goals are realistic and actionable, the Fellows were introduced to the SMART framework, in which every objective must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Fellows also turned the lens inward, defining personal OKRs to build better habits in time management, decision-making, and resilience, because sharper metrics require sharper founders.
Building Community: Real Talk at University Night
To close out the day, the cohort made their way to the Founder Institute’s University Night, where the Fellows had the chance to network with other entrepreneurs from NYU, Columbia, and Cornell Tech. The evening featured an honest, cross-campus panel discussion about navigating early-stage trade-offs and tips on how to make the most of the resources that schools have to offer.
Moderated by Jeremy Kagan (Textbook Ventures), the panel included candid stories from early-stage founders like Nyamitse-Calvin Mahinda (NYU Tandon ’23), founder of Vital Audio Inc. and winner of the 2023 NYU Entrepreneurs Challenge Healthcare & Life Sciences track. Panelists shared how they bootstrapped, seedstrapped, and found traction through resourcefulness and community support, reminding the room that product-market fit is something you earn, not something you find fully formed.
Tips & takeaways
- Measure what moves the needle: Every KPI should tie directly to traction, not just activity.
- Ditch the vanity metrics: Big numbers that feel like progress are meaningless if they don’t move meaningful business levers.
- Track with discipline: Define KPIs clearly and review them consistently to uncover real insights, not just assumptions.
- Build the founder, not just the startup: Noticing your own habits or patterns and tracking time management and communication are just as important for you as a team lead as your product roadmap.
