What to Do When the Data Doesn’t Give You an Answer

There was one point where we were running a B tests around whether we should truly fully switch over to a chat based interface or keep the search based interface around. 50, 50, 50% of the users saying I like this the old way, 50% saying I like it the new way. And so when you get into those situations, what do you do?

If you have a big intuition about something, believe in it, but go validate it, Go, go bring it into existence, but also be open to being objective if it invalidates or, you know, so how do you draw that line? Right, Because I think this is where a lot of founders get messed up. They, they take it too far, even when the customers, the world, the investors are telling them no. And when do you know when they're right or when you're right? Right. This is this fine line.

I don't know that you can know ahead of time, but if anything, I would lean harder into forcing them to show you you're wrong. And why do I say, especially in the early stages? Because there were two points in U.com's history that were particularly hard for, for me and Richard. I think as scientific, we have scientific backgrounds, right? So in many cases we are very data driven. We want to run experiments, we want to let the data show us we have our convictions, but then we want to be told by the world what is actually right or wrong so we can change our model. And there was one point where we were running a B tests around whether we should truly fully switch over to a chat based interface or, or keep the search space interface around. Now in hindsight, that seems like an obvious question, but if you talk to a lot of people in the space, if you talk to investors, everybody's like, well, is this whole chat thing, is that gonna be, you know, is that a fad, like what's going on? And you know, you run a B test because you wanna learn. 50, 50. Every time, 50, 50, you have 50% of the users saying, oh, I like this the old way, 50% saying, I like it the new way. And so when you get into those situations, what do you do then? You, you just, you kind of have to rely on your intuitions and your convictions because no one's telling you what to do. And at the end of the day, that's part of what being the founder is about too. Like you're founding because you're taking a huge risk going in that direction. And, and like I said before, you're only really going to find out and you're only going to learn and tune your own intuitions and if you test your intuitions so you've got to push them as hard as possible until you're you're sure they're wrong. That's when you've learned if there's any doubt in your mind oh what if I would have done this or that then you don't get to absorb the lesson fully. You also discount the lesson. Your brain won't fully update so you gotta go all the way. Happens again. You know when we started shifting more and more towards Enterprise and B2B use cases of course we have tons and tons of users asking constantly for consumer like features. How do you say no to that? Most of the world is telling you go in one direction but you have to go in a different direction because of your own intuitions and convictions. And a lot of times it's delayed when you get that validated feedback. It's just a risk. It's pure risk in many ways.