The joyless world of data-driven startups

The implications of the hypothetical extension of this trend are clear to a lot of people. As long as some percent of people are pushing the boundary, culture will be fine. Let everyone else enjoy their sequels and reality shows.

Historical data on sales of paintings would've never told Picasso to pursue Cubism, or for Salinger to write 'Catcher in the Rye'.

It was data that causes so many publishing houses to reject future bestsellers. Sales figures for past children's books told publishers that "Harry Potter" would never work.

We all know how that played out.

As for business, existing data would have never told Jobs to build an iPhone - simply because there really was no data on touchscreen devices.

"Bipsync provides a research automation platform to maximize the productivity of professional investors. Founded in Silicon Valley in 2012 by experienced investors and software developers at Stanford University, the company uses modern technologies and user-centered design to speed up data capture, automate research maintenance and identify insights that drive better decisions for investors and funds." [1]

I mean, maybe I shouldn't be looking for patterns, because, y'know, data. But it seems oddly conflicting to be pitching a product that encourages the use of data to drive decisions and then publicly condemning... the use of data to drive decisions.

Aside from that contradiction, the company just got seed funding four months ago. It's probably far too early to make decisions about the efficacy of being "data-driven." From personal experience, trying to manage people by telling them, "I'm right, let's do it my way," is terribly demotivating (and very prone to error). Conversely, trying to weigh everyone's input equally and sift out good ideas is an organizational nightmare that creates a ton of complexity. Complexity slows down execution. And who decides on the best ideas?

Creating a mental framework for hypothesis testing and building a product based on optimizing for specific metrics is, in my mind, what being data-driven actually means. There are no inconsistencies or personal biases. It's scalable. You can teach the entire team how to approach the design of a feature as a problem with a testable hypothesis. Politics go out the window as execution strategy is determined by return on investment of engineering resources. Being data-driven doesn't discourage creativity, it just allows you to reframe problems.

Buzzfeed clickbait titles are but a small (and, well, effective) subset of a vast array of largely positive things that come from being "data-driven." Attempting to demonize patterns of logical, rational decision-making because you (personally) don't like one outcome is... well, an anti-pattern. (It happens all of the time. See: The history of the scientific method. ;))

Sure, it's not sexy. But it doesn't need to be. It just needs to work.

1. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bipsync

A bit off-topic, but it explains why we got Windows 8x and the upcoming Windows 10 - data driven metrics.

When will Microsoft learn that developers and advanced users turned off the "phone-home" metrics gathering functions in Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Office?

People want Windows 10 to be Windows 7.5. It would be nice to get some lost Windows XP functionality back and shell bugs fixed that are in since Vista.

In that case I wish art would be data-driven, and produce more of the pre-Picasso paintings that are fun to look at and pre-Salinger books that are fun to read.