Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions for 2026. Create your OKRs Instead

“Resolutions require only words. Results take action. “

Tony Robbins

It is December 2025. As we look toward 2026, the temptation for every founder is to draft a list of New Year’s resolutions. You know the type: “Grow revenue,” “Hire better engineers,” or “Finally launch that mobile app” or maybe on a personal level, “lose weight”, “read more” etc.

But here is the hard truth: Resolutions are just wishes. They are often vague, binary (you did it or you didn’t), and rarely survive past February.

If you want to reverse engineer a massive year for your startup, whether that means raising money, launching a product breakthrough, or scaling your team, you need a framework designed for high-velocity growth. There are many ways to set goals, but one that I found particularly effective from my years at Google is Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). This is the methodology originally used by Intel to dominate the microprocessor market and later popularised by Google as the company scaled from a startup to one of the most iconic companies in history.

Starting with OKRs can feel overwhelming, so here’s a short guide to get started with setting the OKRs for your startup in 2026.

The Distinction: Resolutions vs. OKRs

The fundamental problem with a New Year’s resolution is that it often describes a process or a desire rather than a measurable destination.

• A Resolution is fuzzy: “We need to improve our customer service in 2026.”
• An OKR is rigorous and uncomfortable: “Objective: Delight our customers. Key Result: Publish customer satisfaction levels of 90%+ by March 7th”.

Resolutions are often “business-as-usual”, goals you think you can hit without changing how you operate. In contrast, OKRs are designed to be “stretch goals.” If you are 100% confident you can achieve your plan for 2026, you aren’t aiming high enough. In the OKR framework, the “sweet spot” for success is actually achieving 60% to 70% of your objective.

Step 1: Define the “What” (The Objective)

To reverse engineer 2026, you must first ask: Where do I want to go?.

Your Objectives are your “big bets.” They should be significant, concrete, and clearly defined. When drafting your pillars for 2026 (Funding, Product, Team), avoid expressions that don’t push for new achievements.

• Bad Objective: “Keep hiring engineers.”
• Good Objective: “Build a world-class AI engineering team”.

These objectives serve as a “social contract” that aligns your entire startup around the few things that actually matter, pushing aside the noise of daily tasks. The best practice is to first define 3-5 objectives which are the high level goals. The next step is to create 3-5 key results that support each objective.

Step 2: Reverse Engineer the “How” (The Key Results)

This is where most founders fail. They confuse outcomes with outputs.

If your 2026 plan includes a list of tasks like “Meet with VCs” or “Write code for Feature X,” you have created a to-do list, not a strategy. To reverse engineer success, you must measure the impact of those tasks.

Here is how to structure your 2026 pillars:

Pillar A: Funding & Revenue

• The Resolution Approach: “Raise our Series A.”
• The OKR Approach:
  • Objective: Accelerate financial growth to Series A readiness.
  • Key Result 1: Secure term sheets from 3 top-tier VC firms by Q2.
  • Key Result 2: Implement initiative to increase revenue per user by 20%.
  • Key Result 3: Launch 3 revenue-specific experiments to learn what drives growth.

Note: We measure “term sheets” (outcome), not “meetings” (output).

Pillar B: Product Launches

• The Resolution Approach: “Launch the new dashboard.”
• The OKR Approach:
  • Objective: Revolutionize the user experience with Dashboard 2.0.
  • Key Result 1: Launch feature X to all users.
  • Key Result 2: Shorten response time to user-flagged errors by 30%.
  • Key Result 3: Reduce data quality errors as reported to the support desk by 50%.

Note: If you launch the dashboard but user errors increase, you have failed. The Key Result protects you from shipping code that doesn’t add value.

Pillar C: Key Hires

• The Resolution Approach: “Hire a Head of Product.”
• The OKR Approach:
  • Objective: Scale the leadership team to support 10x growth.
  • Key Result: Secure tech support to build feature X in Q1.
  • Key Result: Interview and personally reach out to top 20 industry leaders by Jan 31.

The challenge in setting the objectives is to avoid ambiguity and be as specific as possible.

The key with OKRs is that they ‘trickle down’ across the company. Each departments has its own OKRs which when completed essentially achieve the company goals. Once again from Zapier, here’s an example of departmental OKRs – note that the they are specific, ambitious and time bound.

Step 3: The Moonshot Mentality

As you visualise 2026, you must embrace the risk of failure. Google’s philosophy is that if you set “moonshot” goals, goals just beyond the threshold of what seems possible, you will attract the best people and create the most exciting work environment.

More isn’t always better. But when you’re setting goals, it’s good to be ambitious, like the adage by Norman Vincent Peale: “Shoot for the moon and land among the starts”.

In 2026, stop rewarding effort and start rewarding results.

Think of your startup’s year like a mountaineering expedition. Your Objective is the summit. Your Key Results are the altitude markers you must hit by specific times to ensure you reach the top before nightfall. If you only focus on the activity of walking (resolutions), you may walk all day but never gain elevation.

Execution is everything. Let’s make 2026 the year of measurable, audacious impact.

For further reading and document templates to draft your OKRs, I recommend this OKR guide by Google.

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Eze Vidra

Co Founder and Managing Partner at Remagine Ventures

Eze is managing partner of Remagine Ventures, a seed fund investing in ambitious founders at the intersection of tech, entertainment, gaming and commerce with a spotlight on Israel.

I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.

I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.

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