At its heart, a startup is a catalyst that transforms ideas into products. - Eric Ries

Compare two startups. The first company sets out with a clear baseline metric, a hypothesis about what will improve that metric, and a set of experiments designed to test that hypothesis. The second team sits around debating what would improve the product, implements several of those changes at once, and celebrates if there is any positive increase in any of the numbers. Which startup is more likely to be doing effective work and achieving lasting results?

Peter Drucker said, “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”2

The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build — the thing customers want and will pay for — as quickly as possible.