Startups should not rely too much on data: stay away from junk metrics

At a meeting, blogger and Twitter founder Evan (Evan Williams) suggested startups should not rely too much on data. Williams is currently working on a new release platform, Medium. He says some of the startups he invests are changing too fast, not insisting on what they should do, and that valuable projects are often not immediate. Therefore, he believes that startups should have the spirit of challenging difficulties. "I think that's a common mindset, especially in Silicon Valley," he says. There are many engineers-driven startups who think they can keep trying to succeed without acknowledging failure. However, in the face of really difficult problems, you will not immediately see success. You need to walk through the dark forest and believe there is something you can fight for, because if you don't, you will never be able to make it. I think that's the problem that many data-driven companies are facing today. "At present, young entrepreneurs have more ways to measure their success. Through services such as Mixpanel, Chartbeat and optimizely, entrepreneurs will not only know how many people have visited or downloaded apps, but also know how often users are being reused for a given day, and which pages they have visited at a particular point in time. Entrepreneurs can keep experimenting with different buttons and link designs. To a large extent, this is a good thing, because it helps people stay away from "garbage targets", avoid bragging, and thus more purposefully operate. However, these analysis and optimization services may be overused. It is hard to be creative if you have expected results before you start. In some cases, Mr Williams points out, the data will show that some practices are meaningless, but the opposite is true.