We Solve Our Startup Like a Math Problem: The Compounding Milestone Model

At Disclosure Facts, we’re running an atypical operational experiment.

Instead of multiple departments chasing their own KPIs that ladder up to a company milestone, we operate like one organism focused on a single survival probability at a time. The next milestone that raises the odds of everything that follows.

We call it the Compounding Milestone Model. It’s a way of sequencing company milestones so every success increases the probability of the next.

We pick one milestone like “Build credibility among advertising counsel and the regulatory community.”

Then every function orients around that single outcome.

If a function doesn’t materially raise the odds of that milestone, it doesn’t run.
No exceptions.

Engineering doesn’t ship. Sales doesn’t sell. Design doesn’t design (until they need to again).

For an unusually long stretch, that was our reality. Engineering had no role to play, so it paused completely for several months.

When the milestone is done, we move to the next, and only with the right people.
No one runs a side race doing work that’s immaterial to increasing the probability of the company’s current milestone focus.

Why We’re Testing This

We’re testing this because, for the first time, it’s possible.

Before AI, companies had no choice but to run multiple threads in parallel.

But with GPT-level leverage, a small team can now execute sequentially at the speed that used to require five teams running in parallel.

That means we can trade multitasking for focus. We can sequence milestones so each win compounds into the next.

It looks slower on the surface, but in an AI-powered world, it should be faster and more cost efficient in outcome.

The Compounding Probability Framework

We structured our milestones as a dependency chain each one making the next more likely.

M1 → M2 → M3 → M4 in that exact order. Do or die.

Each milestone’s “independent probability” isn’t a market forecast.
It’s the internal likelihood that our team can hit that goal if 100% of company energy is focused on it. No distractions, no competing priorities.

We use 70% as a working baseline for a focused, well-executed milestone.

At face value, the idea that a pre-everything startup could establish an entirely new compliance standard for the advertising industry in just 18 months sounds like a founder’s delusional vision.

But zoom in, and it’s not delusional.

Without a deliberate sequencing method, the probability of hitting all four milestones in 18 months would collapse to below 15%.

By contrast, structuring them so each milestone maximally increases the probability of the next lifts our compounded odds above 50% within the same timeframe.

That’s the real insight.

It’s not that sequencing makes milestones faster.

It’s that when each one is designed to de-risk the next, the improbable becomes structurally and mathematically feasible even at the scale of reinventing a regulatory compliance standard in under two years.

Early Results

We’re tracking both leading and lagging indicators to test whether compounding focus actually increases our odds of success.

Leading Indicator: 100% of our current pipeline is warm or inbound, a signal that credibility now drives pull instead of push.

Lagging Indicator: Runway extended by ~17 months on the same cash burn, evidence that efficiency compounds too.

These early results suggest that singular focus delivers not just momentum, but endurance.

Disclaimer: This Model Breaks Traditional Management

For example, we treat team members as mission specialists, not permanent fixtures.
People are helicoptered in to accelerate a specific milestone and rotate out when it’s complete.

Some become long-term members because they repeatedly prove right for the next mission.

“Permanence” is the result of repeated fit, not an assumption at hire.

This keeps the team lean, focused, and psychologically built for sprints of precision rather than broad maintenance.

Traditional CEO metrics like annual planning or talent retention don’t belong in this equation.

I also recognize this may need to evolve as we scale.

I don’t see myself as a traditional CEO. When the time comes for a true operator to take it further, I look forward to handing it off.

Key Learnings

After a year of running this way, a few patterns have emerged that we now treat as operating laws:

• Context switching kills compounding.
  Even top performers can’t raise multiple probabilities in parallel. Focus isn’t optional it’s math.
  

• People thrive in clarity.
  When everyone knows exactly what “done” means, performance becomes predictable and stress becomes directional.
  

• Alignment compounds as much as effort.
  The more tightly a team’s energy converges on one outcome, the higher its odds of success even without more resources.

How This Model Differs

Most startups structure milestones for narrative coherence to show investors, employees, customers, or the market that progress is happening.

We structure ours for probabilistic coherence so each milestone directly increases the odds that the next one will succeed.

We don’t pick milestones for optics.
We pick them for compounding probability.

That’s why we don’t measure success by how much is happening at once, but by how inevitable the next milestone becomes because of the last.

Instead of trying to look like a company that’s growing in parallel, we’re designing a company that compounds in sequence.

That’s the difference.

Kaeya