Experiments Fail When We…

At the core of every great project, in my opinion, is an assumption. The best projects have the boldest assumptions.

Often times, these assumptions are tough to swallow. They go against the norms of society. They are big bets on things that may or may not be true. They are not obviously right.

The best builders not only identify and create on top of these assumptions — they also design experiments to test and fine tune them.

This is far easier said than done. It is really hard to build an elegant and efficient experiment. Why?

I believe the biggest thing that prevents us from creating clean experiments is personal ego:

Building things is hard. It takes time. Energy. Emotional effort. When we factor in those feelings into our projects, we develop something inside us that is rooting for our product to succeed. We want to win. We want our product to win. We are hoping our product does a certain thing or evokes a certain emotion out of users.

That belief in the irrational or belief in our own assumptions is helpful as a tool for motivation — but it is also one of the more dangerous and hardest things to deal with when building a project.

Why?

It is hard to separate our own desire from the true nature of the product.

We imbue our own personal/creator bias, built from the effort we put into the product, and hope that it succeeds.

This is hard to swallow. It goes along the lines of the notion of sunk costs.

But merely understanding sunk costs is not enough. We have to separate our own will from the truth.

It is hard — but necessary .

Originally published at gonen.blog.