'the first stepping stone' is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is used to refer to an event, experience, or accomplishment that serves as a milestone or starting point for further progress. For example, "Getting my first job was the first stepping stone towards establishing my career."
Instead, let's make it the first stepping stone in a new and exciting direction.
Obviously the Commonwealth and the Europeans were cool but English schools for me was the first stepping stone.
If the "project" is to go forward, the league title now has to be the first stepping stone.
Just two days earlier, he had received official confirmation of his promotion to alférez, or second lieutenant, in the Naval Air Force — the lowest officer rank, but, all the same, the first stepping stone to admiral.
She didn't realise this agency represented the celebrated J D Salinger, author of the Catcher in the Rye, or that it would be the first stepping stone on the way to becoming a writer and later, the novelist she is today.
The Faroes were the first stepping stone beyond Shetland for the dispersal of European people across the North Atlantic that culminated on the shores of continental North America in the 11th century AD, about 500 years before Columbus made his famous voyage.
Paul Kenyon visited one of the first stepping stones on this route, Shagarab refugee camp in Sudan.
These islands are the first stepping stones for new colonisers as the climate is less harsh than along the Antarctic Peninsula and the main continental landmass.
Joonpyo "JP" Lee, the CEO of Enswers America, says that the company's first stepping stone in the region is through Samsung's broadcasting partners in the U.S. Since 2012, all Samsung Smart TVs sold in the U.S. have embedded Enswers' technology, which sends information to the company's partners so they can push out interactive content and ads to viewers.
"Cohesity pioneered hyperconverged secondary storage as a first stepping stone on the path to a much larger transformation of enterprise infrastructure spanning public and private clouds.
This work is a first stepping stone in identifying suitable molecular structures that can be selected or even individually adapted to the requirements of the tracer tests and prevailing aquifer conditions.
