Zero invites imagination, but small numbers invite questions about whether large numbers will ever materialize. - Eric Ries

Here’s how to use Five Whys analysis to build an adaptive organization: consistently make a proportional investment at each of the five levels of the hierarchy. In other words, the investment should be smaller when the symptom is minor and larger when the symptom is more painful.

I consoled myself that if we hadn’t built this first product — mistakes and all — we never would have learned these important insights about customers. We never would have learned that our strategy was flawed. There is truth in this excuse: what we learned during those critical early months set IMVU on a path that would lead to our eventual breakout success. For a time, this “learning” consolation made me feel better, but my relief was short-lived. Here’s the question that bothered me most of all: if the goal of those months was to learn these important insights about customers, why did it take so long? How much of our effort contributed to the essential lessons we needed to learn? Could we have learned those lessons earlier if I hadn’t been so focused on making the product “better” by adding features and fixing bugs?

Successful entrepreneurs do not give up at the first sign of trouble, nor do they persevere the plane right into the ground. Instead, they possess a unique combination of perseverance and flexibility.