A Smart Bear: On Analysis

Many startups fail despite identifying a real problem and building a product that solves that problem. This explains why, so you can avoid their fate. —April 2023 | 6,800 words.

Even Facebook and Slack did not grow “exponentially,” as frequently described. Here is the correct model that you can use to understand and affect growth. —March 2022 | 5,600 words.

Companies that achieve Product/Market Fit – both self-funded and VC-funded – exhibit the same prototypical metrics curves and subjective experiences. —November 2023 | 2,400 words.

Even at wildly successful startups, the first few years are gut-wrenching, uncertain, on the brink of collapse, where pessimism is realism, and yet optimism is required. —April 2024 | 1,200 words.

A novel system for selecting and presenting product KPIs, satisfying not only the product team, but also stakeholders, executives, and customers. —July 2023 | 2,600 words.

A simple workshop that evaluates new business ideas relative to your existing strengths – the key to expanding without overreaching. —May 2024 | 2,400 words.

When to prioritize individual autonomy, and when to standardize for global optimization. —August 2024 | 2,200 words.

Is it LTV? Retention? NRR? Magic Number? Rule of 40? Or: Do you need to un-ask the question. —November 2024 | 1,000 words.

Half of your “successful” A/B tests are false-positives. This is why, and how to fix it. —November 2024 | 2,000 words.

Discover how to leverage the wisdom of the crowds, but also when to avoid it, as it can easily lead you astray. —January 2009 | 1,100 words.

A contrarian look at logical “fallacies” that maybe aren’t so illogical after all. —October 2024 | 2,100 words.

Don’t use phrases like “unlikely” or “almost certainly.” Here’s real-world data showing why not, and what to do instead. —July 2023 | 1,000 words.

“You’re so lucky.” That’s true. There’s also decades of sacrifice, emotional turmoil, long hours, perseverance. So… is it lucky? —March 2009 | 1,100 words.

Traditional fairytale structure fits naturally in our brains, and thus can guide strategic problem-analysis, and a plan that everyone understands. —November 2023 | 4,100 words.

If we happened to evolve with nine fingers, we would have “Top 9” lists. So, a “Top 10” list probably doesn’t have the correct number of things. —December 2023 | 400 words.

Some of the most enticing, important metrics are impossible to measure, even after the fact. Here’s how to identify and avoid this trap. —October 2023 | 1,800 words.

A lesson all pilots know: How you must use multiple dials, employing different sources of energy, to report identical data, because some of it is always lying. —February 2022 | 800 words.

A simple, decentralized, scalable, constant-memory mechanism for independent replicas to record events in time, preserving the “happened-before” relation in almost all cases. —February 2019 | 3,100 words.

We’re often told that some things are 10x better than others. Is that really how things work? If so, we’d better act like it. —December 2016 | 500 words.

How do you assess forecasts, when the forecast is only a probability? It’s not just about accuracy. Let’s dive into the math. —June 2016 | 2,200 words.

We humans are terrible at discerning patterns from randomness, and in marketing data we unwittingly find “insights” that are actually noise. Here’s how to fix that. —June 2010 | 1,500 words.

A/B testing tools often lie about whether something is “statistically significant.” Here’s an extremely simple, mathematically sound formula to compute it for yourself. —April 2009 | 1,500 words.