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Apart from the God-awful layout, the article is pretty light on anything useful or actionable. > I need merely two variables [...] resulting in a simple yet ac

by dvt 6y ago

Apart from the God-awful layout, the article is pretty light on anything useful or actionable. > I need merely two variables [...] resulting in a simple yet accurate model. It's accurate-enough, but not accurate accurate. This is why things like quantum gravity are being researched. Maybe I'm looking too deeply into this analogy, but I think it's a really bad one. > In highly complex systems such as business, things like butterfly effects can cause massive distortions rendering our models flawed. Most businesses fail due to a lack of product-market fit. This has nothing to do with chaos theory or initial conditions. In fact, I'd say if you have product-market fit, the market tends to be very lenient of initial conditions. > In order to perfectly predict the weather, you’d need incredible amounts of data and an equally overwhelming number of data points and then somehow synthesize that into an accurate prediction. I'm pretty sure that we're still not sure if you can even actually predict the weather -- like, ever (we aren't sure if Navier–Stokes is smoothly solvable in 3D). All these physics analogies are just shallow and inaccurate. > It’s easy for the takeaway to be human behavior is difficult, business is complex, all data is meaningless, we can’t apply a scientific process at all, let’s wing it. And while there are people who lean heavily on intuition (Gary Vaynerchuk comes to mind) I believe if that’s the takeaway, the pendulum has swung too far out of whack. I'm not sure why this is "out of whack" -- to me, this seems like a perfectly valid strategy. As I get older, I value intuition more and more. There's a reason Warren Buffet's moniker is the "Oracle of Omaha."

rjyoungling 6y ago
Thanks for your comment. > lay out. I've been told that in this thread. I'll try to improve. Thank you for letting me know. > Not accurate accurate True. But it would be overkill to use complex equations for 1 dimensional motion. The degree of error is negligible in that context. > markets tend to be lenient of initial conditions post PMF That's a very fascinating point, you bring up. But I'm not sure how one can separate initial conditions from PMF. PMF takes initial market conditions into account by definition. At least, if we're going by Don Valentine or Andy Rachleff's definition. > shallow, inaccurate analogy I'm not sure how to respond to that. > not sure why this is "out of whack" Perhaps I didn't express myself well enough. I was referring to fully negating any utility data might have and solely relying on intuition. My point was that there's a middle ground but it's further toward intuition than most people think in our data driven world. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the essay. I do appreciate you reading it as well as the time you took to give me feedback. I'll try to use it in order to improve future work. Thank you.
- dvt 6y ago
  > That's a very fascinating point, you bring up. But I'm not sure how one can separate initial conditions from PMF. PMF takes initial market conditions into account by definition. At least, if we're going by Don Valentine or Andy Rachleff's definition. I don't agree. Initial conditions are minutiae that, on the surface, don't seem to matter -- hence the canonical example of a butterfly flapping its wings cascading into a hurricane a few weeks later. Product market fit is not that. If "Facebook" would've been called "Smilebook" (which is an initial condition), do you really think it would've failed? In fact, worrying about your domain name, and what your LLC is going to be called, and what you logo should look like are all rookie mistakes when founding a business.
  - rjyoungling 6y ago
    Possibly. But what if Zuckerberg went to a different university. Or fell in love with design instead of building, snd so on. It's too easy, connecting the dots looking back. I believe we have to be careful with hindsight bias. > In fact, worrying about your domain name, and what your LLC is going to be called, and what you logo should look like are all rookie mistakes when founding a business. I agree. But that's not my point. My point was, avoid trying to think your way to PMF, it's too complex. Just try a bunch of stuff and iterate based on real world feedback.

by dvt 6y ago

rjyoungling 6y ago

Thanks for your comment. > lay out. I've been told that in this thread. I'll try to improve. Thank you for letting me know. > Not accurate accurate True. But it would be overkill to use complex equations for 1 dimensional motion. The degree of error is negligible in that context. > markets tend to be lenient of initial conditions post PMF That's a very fascinating point, you bring up. But I'm not sure how one can separate initial conditions from PMF. PMF takes initial market conditions into account by definition. At least, if we're going by Don Valentine or Andy Rachleff's definition. > shallow, inaccurate analogy I'm not sure how to respond to that. > not sure why this is "out of whack" Perhaps I didn't express myself well enough. I was referring to fully negating any utility data might have and solely relying on intuition. My point was that there's a middle ground but it's further toward intuition than most people think in our data driven world. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the essay. I do appreciate you reading it as well as the time you took to give me feedback. I'll try to use it in order to improve future work. Thank you.

dvt 6y ago
> That's a very fascinating point, you bring up. But I'm not sure how one can separate initial conditions from PMF. PMF takes initial market conditions into account by definition. At least, if we're going by Don Valentine or Andy Rachleff's definition. I don't agree. Initial conditions are minutiae that, on the surface, don't seem to matter -- hence the canonical example of a butterfly flapping its wings cascading into a hurricane a few weeks later. Product market fit is not that. If "Facebook" would've been called "Smilebook" (which is an initial condition), do you really think it would've failed? In fact, worrying about your domain name, and what your LLC is going to be called, and what you logo should look like are all rookie mistakes when founding a business.
- rjyoungling 6y ago
  Possibly. But what if Zuckerberg went to a different university. Or fell in love with design instead of building, snd so on. It's too easy, connecting the dots looking back. I believe we have to be careful with hindsight bias. > In fact, worrying about your domain name, and what your LLC is going to be called, and what you logo should look like are all rookie mistakes when founding a business. I agree. But that's not my point. My point was, avoid trying to think your way to PMF, it's too complex. Just try a bunch of stuff and iterate based on real world feedback.