Why a Startup is Like a Science Experiment | Hacker News Reader

Why a Startup is Like a Science Experiment

arunshroff.com

22 pointshitechsites9 comments

Every product a startup creates is really an experiment that test a particular hypothesis about the market - just like a science experiment.

Open articleView on HN

In a science experiment, your initial experimental design may yield uninterpretable results. So, prior to investing large amounts of grad student hours and resources into a particular experimental design (common rookie inclination), you do a pilot study. Just collect 5-7 data points.

Just run it and see what happens. Since you only spent a relatively small amount of time/resources on the pilot study, it's not a terrible waste if you get null/negative/inconclusive/uninterpretable results, and you could get a quick turnaround on the next iteration. If you're lucky, you might get to estimate the number of data points you need to collect based on the variability in the sample. It might tell you that this setup doesn't have a good signal to noise ratio. You may need to go back and change your design.

Or you might find something completely unexpected, and find yourself asking a different question altogether, that you need to change your overall direction. Your project proposal might have an elaborate tree of potential experiments that depend on the outcomes of each one before. And you find something so different you need to redesign everything, armed with this new information. That's a good thing. Trust me.

Entrepreneurship is like science in that experiment is the sole judge of truth.

"Entrepreneurship is like science in that experiment is the sole judge of truth." - well said!

The pilot study is like creating a minimum viable product in a startup - you spend very little time and resources to get a working product in the hands of customers. Then you test to see if you got it right and iterate.

This is certainly a useful analogy and easy to remember as follows : Hypothesis = Idea for Product; Experiment = Product ; Experiment Success = Market Acceptance. Experiment failure = Revise Hypothesis/redesign product & iterate, Also scientist = entrepreneur and nature = markets; Paradigm shifts = Paradigm shifts!

A startup is like a science experiment because its product design is a hypothesis about its market and its product is the experiment to test that hypothesis. And you the entrepreneur are the scientist conducting an experiment.

The difference is, if you control all of the other variables in an experiment, you can always predict the outcome after you've proven the hypothesis in a science experiment. However, market behaviors change over time and so the experiment can never control enough variables to be right 100% of the time. That's why I like the business world. Change is fun!

In a startup, most of the time you do not even know what the variables are that can affect the outcome; so you have to guess and hope for the best. The learning comes from examining the outcome and then discovering all the variables you never even knew existed - so you go back and change your hypothesis or product to deal with the new variables. And so it goes...

At my last startup, we had a customer derisively call our product a science experiment. It became a fun excuse for the sales department.

I guess sometimes there is a fine line between a product that looks like a science experiment and a product that you design interatively like a science experiment :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com