Startup Advice

This article is written by Mohammad Eslim, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

Adam Berk is a lean entrepreneur, lean teacher, and Serial Entrepreneur. He is one of the more intrepid experimenters. He is currently an Implementation Coach at Pearson and Entrepreneur-In-Residence at The Entrepreneurial Science Foundation.

I don’t know what kind of jokes have to do with doing experiments, but from where I see it seemed funny to whoever hear it even my tenth grade classmates, and I still don’t get it even now many years later. What comes to my mind though when someone say experiment is a series of things that starts with chemistry lab with flasks on the table with the colorful, smelly reactions between different chemicals, and ends up with the A/B testing that software engineers love to do.

But if we really just come to understand and fulfill the need to experiment in human nature, we would understand why people are doing it constantly in almost everything in their lives. As we know, the human nature always feel the need to know, gaining knowledge in any aspect of life the human can reach was the humans’ push to experiment almost everything from physical to theoretical stuff. 

The advantages of doing experiments are so much we can point a few as to not go on writing forever. Doing experiment as we said is an essential process to gain knowledge, although not the only way, but it gives people the experience of being close to that knowledge first hand.

And as we are mostly talking business, it gives the programmer the necessary information on how to design and program an application or a website according to how he tested the potential customers, family and friends. If he built the application without testing it by people then how would he know what people prefer and what they are content and happy with as a design or as a service?

Doing experiments is one thing when you need to, it takes time and most times effort and resources, which takes us to another important point regarding doing experiences in the business as an entrepreneur starting a company or as an entrepreneur already a founder of a company.  

In the first case it’s all about your MVP, a minimum viable product is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development. That is, dear readers, the epitome of what doing experiments means in the business lifecycle.

The entrepreneur has an idea and eventually thinks of a way to turn it into a product or a service that solves a problem that people face, the product isn’t fully developed yet as the entrepreneurs experiments with the MVP to make it do what customers expect. Then after a whole lot of testing, you and your product are finally ready to face the business as a newcomer.

When you found your company, or even as an employee there in a department, you look at how the business is going. Then imagine one day you got a report indicating the falling out of your product or the service you are providing, the customers are shifting or unhappy or the sales are not where it should be.

Right in that moment, you have to do something even when the board doesn’t see the problem’s significance. What should you do then? Go out there and do testing, change and test and after that keep testing. Not everyone should wound up happy with it but the vast majority have to be or there is something wrong with it. 

Another piece of advice, don’t wait up until you face a change or a problem to test and experiment but rather you do your tests and experiments long time ahead than you waste time trying to solve a problem the time you see it. Keep your eyes and mind open to all probabilities!