Why I’m against obsessing over measuring too early

Know the difference between design and validation

Build-Measure-Learn has made “measuring” central, often through A/B tests. But early-stage startups rarely have clear hypotheses.

At that stage, the real challenge is to design possible value propositions. That’s very different from validating one. Philosophy of science distinguishes this as the context of discovery versus the context of justification.

Still, many founders obsess over validation methods while their value proposition is vague. If you talk to 20 potential customers and 10 say yes, that looks like a strong signal. But what exactly did they say yes to?

Early measurement often creates a false sense of validation because the hypotheses aren’t precise enough to test.

On the other extreme, I’ve seen founders do 100 interviews and still doubt the significance of 30% shouting “YES, I want this.”

There’s no perfect balance. The key is to recognize these two traps: measuring too soon, or never trusting the signals you already have.

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