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The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

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Re: The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

#31

Post by dartos »

alephnerd wrote: post #30
jeffreportmill1 wrote: post #26

Having a corporate job is usually a 'mediocre success'. If you strike out on your own with something that involves your passion and you earn a comparable income, you are a stellar success. Don't let a nepo baby tell you otherwise.

I agree, but this blogpost is NOT about professional trajectory. It's about sales and GTM success criteria for startups > That’s the danger of the mediocre success. The point of startup experimentation isn't the success itself; it’s the learning that comes with clear-cut success or failure. You don't really care about the sales revenue generated by your first two reps; you care about whether this is a strategy you ca…

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Re: The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

#33

Post by karaterobot »

> The worst outcome, the very worst outcome, is to get a small but non-zero number of sales — say 1 or 2. Because now you're in a bind. Do you double down or pull the plug? Does cold-calling work or not?

That seems like a failure to define success in the first place. That seems like doing an experiment and then deciding how it made you feel. You probably want to declare beforehand what your minimum number of sales would be in order to qualify as a success. I agree that the results can still be ambiguous, but the situation he's describing sounds like a poorly designed experiment anyway.

Re: The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

#34

Post by 1970-01-01 »

Yes, there are nuances to success and failure with business. But, the worst outcome for a startup is being sued for millions by a patent troll and losing the business over it. It's the worst outcome due to the inherent pure evil within the system itself.

https://techhq.com/2023/02/patent-trolling-latest-victim/

Re: The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

#35

Post by skobes »

ekianjo wrote: post #21
throwaway2562 wrote: post #18

Clickbait, deceptive title. What the author means is ‘get real about continuous learning’ Of course it takes money to run experiments you can actually learn from, and the article is bereft of practical advice about doing this on the cheap. However, I clicked. But you don’t have to.

I did not see any practical advice in the post. Did I miss something?

"Bereft of" means lacking, so you agree with the person you're replying to.

Re: The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

#36

Post by mattgreenrocks »

I think people are getting hung up on "mediocre" and "success" here.

Author argues for trying to be objective about the viability of business ventures here. It's easy to tell yourself lies that doing just one thing a little better on the execution front will magically triple your conversion rate.

Re: The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

#37

Post by alephnerd »

karaterobot wrote: post #33

> The worst outcome, the very worst outcome, is to get a small but non-zero number of sales — say 1 or 2. Because now you're in a bind. Do you double down or pull the plug? Does cold-calling work or not? That seems like a failure to define success in the first place. That seems like doing an experiment and then deciding how it made you feel . You probably want to declare beforehand what your minimum number of sales w…

> You probably want to declare beforehand what your minimum number of sales would be in order to qualify as a success

It is hard to define that and sometimes can be noise or mask important information.

For example, some products have long conversion times due to pricing. This is a critical metric to follow, but would be ignored by the metric you defined.

Re: The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

#38

Post by sumanthvepa »

As an entrepreneur, my observation is that the vast majority of the experiments I run result in an outcome where the null hypothesis cannot be rejected. That is the case for most social science experiments (which is what marketing experiments really are.) But since I don't have to publish anything, I don't p-hack my results.

If you think that scientific rigour will help you avoid the need for good judgement, you're in for a great deal of distress. Edited for typos.

Re: The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

#39

Post by regularfry »

ulf-77723 wrote: post #11

I worked in a SaaS company selling an A/B Testing app where I saw a lot of tests and their outcomes from different clients. Of course there are the low hanging fruits, which scored the clear success. Most of the tests although were not a clear success, but just a slightly better conversion rate. Multiple tests applied after each other slowly increased the overall value. If taken the advice not to implement the change…

"Just slightly better", if you can have confidence that it's not a mirage, is a success and should be taken as such. I don't think that's inconsistent with the article, which is more about the danger of allowing a gap between success and failure which, if you land in it, leaves you with no clear direction to go in.

Re: The danger of the mediocre success when testing startup hypotheses (2023)

#40

Post by anon291 »

By the title, I thought this would be another clickbaity post about how we should all quit our jobs and become entrepreneurs, but in actuality, the post is better described as 'if you're going to do that, the worst outcome is to be moderately successful'. Which I agree with, and it's something that really gives me pause when thinking about launching on my own.

I mean, my corporate job is realistically pretty cushy and as the sole income earner, my family depends on me. I'm sure I could do well on my own, but it's hard to predict the success of any venture. Failure I actually don't mind, because the answer is easy... just get another job. The worst possible outcome is 'success' where you have a customer base and demand, but it's just never going to be enough to make up for that lost income. That would truly be the worst. You can't just quit without damaging your reputation; on the other hand, selling would likely be difficult without significant recurring income.

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