(In)Validate Your Business Model

A poorly understood concept from the Scientific Method

is that a guess or theory or model can never be 100% proven right.

It can only be proven wrong.

It is possible to formulate a guess, build a model,

and run experiments that validate your model for some time.

But as you increase the number of experiments and/or observed experiences

you might gather experiences that don’t agree with the theory

which proves the theory wrong.

This is what happened to Newton’s Law for the motion of planets.

He guessed the law of gravitation,

computed the consequences for the solar system,

which matched up with experiments for several hundred years

until a slight anomaly was discovered with the motion of Mercury.

During all that time, the theory hadn’t been proven right,

but in the absence of being proven wrong, it was taken to be temporarily right.

This is why true science is hard.

The good news is that entrepreneurship, by comparison, isn’t this hard.

Unlike scientists, we aren’t searching for perpetual truths but temporal truths.

Our job is wielding these truths into a business model or growth hack

that works for some slice of time before it is proven wrong by a disruptor.

Herein, lies another parallel between science and entrepreneurship

that drives the lifespan of your guess:

If you aren’t constantly trying to disrupt yourself,

i.e.prove your business model wrong,

someone else will.

Credits: Richard Feynman