Lean Analytics

What is a start-up, exactly? It's an organization that aims to build a sustainable and replicable business model. Perhaps you’ve dreamed of founding one yourself?

If so, you'll need to stay informed about data. Data, in addition to guiding you along your journey, makes it hard to delude yourself.

So what is data?

It’s the numerical information that's vital to your business. If you run a media site, for example, you'll need data about ad-click numbers. If you're an investor, you'll need to know all the figures about the returns on your investments.

One reason that data is so crucial is that entrepreneurs often lie to themselves a bit when assessing their success. After all, they often need to convince other people (like investors!) of their ideas without having any hard evidence that these ideas will actually work.

However, if you believe too much in your dreams, your start-up probably won't survive. You need to stay grounded in reality – and that's where data comes in.

Data is the antidote to self-delusion. By allowing you to soberly measure your success, it keeps you on track: you'll know exactly where you stand as you work toward your goal.

You shouldn't become a robot that just follows the numbers, however. Your personal judgment is important too! You don’t want to be data-driven; instead, stay data-informed.

Though data is undeniably important, collecting and analyzing it can become addictive. Moreover, you'll run into trouble if you use data to optimize just one part of your business.

Imagine, for example, that you run a website, and your data shows that pictures of scantily clad women increase your click-through rate. If you just blindly follow that by filling your page with models in bikinis, you might undermine your business's image or integrity.

So don't become a slave to your data. Remember: data is ultimately just another tool.