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Why Founders Should Sometimes Ignore the Data and Trust Their Gut
- Jenny Lee
- Apr 9
- 2 min read
How startups can strike the right balance between empirical evidence and entrepreneurial instinct without losing momentum or direction
What is Scientific Decision-Making in a Startup?
Scientific decision-making involves using measurable data, controlled testing, and systematic analysis to guide business strategies. In startups, this often includes A/B testing, predictive analytics, and customer segmentation tools such as Google Analytics, Mixpanel, or Looker Studio.
But here’s the kicker: the lean startup playbook isn't a plug-and-play formula. Not every decision can—or should—be made solely based on data.
A 2023 study published in the Journal of Business Venturing revealed that over 65% of early-stage startup decisions are influenced by founder intuition, even when analytics are available.
Why Is Over-Reliance on Data Risky in Early Stages?
Startups typically suffer from data poverty—not enough clean, historical data to make sound statistical inferences. Worse, early user behavior may not reflect future customers or broader market reactions.
This limitation is often referred to as the "small n problem," a concept echoed by Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup. Ries states that “when sample sizes are tiny, intuition becomes data’s best friend.”
📊 According to a 2022 report by McKinsey & Company, startups that relied solely on data-driven strategies in their first year were 37% more likely to pivot unsuccessfully than those that balanced intuition with analytics.
When Should Startups Rely on Intuition?
Startups thrive in uncertain markets—and the human brain is sometimes better equipped than algorithms at making quick judgment calls with limited information.
This is especially true for:
Product ideation
Hiring key team members
Brand positioning decisions
Entering new or undefined markets
In these cases, successful founders often rely on pattern recognition, which behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman refers to as “fast thinking” in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow .
What Role Should Data Play as the Startup Scales?
Once the startup has more structured operations and stable revenue streams, data becomes essential for:
Customer retention analytics
Conversion funnel optimization
Financial forecasting
Performance tracking of employees and products
Startups at the growth stage can integrate tools like Amplitude, HubSpot, and Tableau to scale their data use.
📈 In a survey of 300 scaling startups by Forrester Research, 74% reported that integrating analytics into decision-making increased their quarterly growth by at least 20%.
How Can Founders Combine Intuition and Analytics?
The smartest approach is often a hybrid model. Here’s a quick framework:
Use intuition to generate hypotheses and data to validate them. This approach is similar to the scientific method: question, hypothesis, experiment, results.
What Do Experts Recommend?
Dr. Thomas H. Davenport, co-author of Competing on Analytics, writes that “intuition without data is guessing, but data without intuition is blind.”
Similarly, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, frequently emphasizes “judgment under uncertainty” as a superpower in startups.
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