Ask HN: Model Business as Markov Chains?
This could be immensely valuable to check your overall understanding of your market. Are your mental models in sync with your assumptions about the economy’s fundamentals and the underlying mechanisms of cause and effect? If your micro-models don’t add up to your macro-projections, you’re either having delusional dreams about the future OR your everyday decision making is impaired due to flawed models.
Such a simple model could give answers to highly complex questions, e.g.: how much additional money do we need to raise when inflation hits our input factors with 10%, while we limit our price hikes to 6.5%? What if our most important channel for leads gets 100% more expensive and 10% less effective? What I want is a mathematical model of cause and effect, written in the language of probabilities, translating micro-estimations into tangible long-term projections.
Financial planning via Excel sucks. This is what we need - or don’t we?