The concept of “rocks” is inspired by the rocks, pebbles, and technique for prioritization. Essentially, if you fill your glass with sand and pebbles, you don’t have room for the big rocks.
We define rocks as the critical things we prioritize (at the expense of other things) because they are so important. Each quarter, our leadership team gets together to identify 5-10 important things that must get done across the business. In the spirit of clarity, we write a sentence for each goal: “We will know this is done when ____________.”
A single person on the leadership team is accountable for each rock. While there is plenty of good debate about responsibility vs accountability, we prefer accountability in this context. Essentially, if you “own” a particular rock or metric, you are making a pledge to your colleagues that you will do what it takes (including asking for help, delegating key tasks, making hard trade-offs, etc) to get it done.
For Q1 2026 we’re focused on six big rocks, as well as a zillion pebbles and plenty of sand. Please note, we’ve slightly sanitized these
AI CDN Started with Roadmap (Zac)
We will know this is done when we have started a formal engagement with a strategic partner, have an agreed technical/business roadmap, and initial machines deployed.
One “design win” partner committed (Manish)
We will know this is done when we have a formal commitment to work with a magnetic partner (e.g. data, security, AI infrastructure) to release a capability in Q2 that is significant to Datum, provides validation in the market, and includes shared customers.
Hire and onboard the right engineers in Q1 (Drew)
We know this will be done when we have 2+ new industry-leading engineers meaningfully contributing.
Datum Cloud is live with 100+ active users (Drew)
We know this will be done when we have 100+ users who are touching our platform every day with production workload (DNS, Tunnels, etc).
Updated platform and product vision (Jacob)
We will know this is done when we have a strategic, agreed-upon vision for releasing distinct products and features in a scalable way.
Features & use cases in website and decks (Jacob)
We will know this is done when our website includes conversion-oriented feature pages and 3-5 use cases, and our various decks have been refreshed.
Trust Center ready for implementation (Steve)
We will know this is done when Milo’s per-org trust center feature (including compliance, DPA, agreements, etc) is designed, spec’d, and ready for implementation on Datum Cloud in Q2