This deception happens nearly every day and is especially rampant in Silicon Valley where new business models are created and standard metrics aren’t always available. It also reflects the optimistic nature of the Valley. We want to see exponential growth. We see hockey sticks everywhere. Even worse, these statistics get thrown around in the echo chamber and presented as fact. And as they get reblogged and retweeted, they lose the disclaimers that made them technically true in the first place.

Every time I see a statistic, I try to figure out how much it was tortured. I want to know what it really means as opposed to what the person who is telling me the stat wants me to think it means.

Rocky Agrwal has a great post on VentureBeat calling out Larry Page’s sloppy use of statistics this week while commenting on the growth and engagement of Google+ users. A whole bunch of overzealous bloggers and news sources fell into the trap, misinterpreted his comments and reported Google+ to have grown much faster than in reality, drawing flawed comparisons with Facebook’s daily engagement (credit to Jeff Bercovici at Forbes for calling out the rest of the media with the correct interpretation).

This misuse of statistics and accompanying obsession with vanity metrics is a pet hate of mine. Rocky calls it “intellectual fraud” - but as an entrepreneur you’re fooling yourself just as much. When you start to thrive off other people’s celebration of your vanity metrics you begin to live and breathe your own spin. Just as with announcing your plans in advance, celebrating success based on vanity metrics is likely to give you a premature sense of achievement or completeness, reducing your drive to succeed where it really matters. Worse, you’re likely to be driven to maximise the vanity metrics - actually deviating from your core path.

Just as with all our projects and ventures, ultimately whether Google+ succeeds or fails won’t be down to the press reaction or people’s perception of how big it is. PR is not a sustainable marketing strategy, and the perception of popularity does not make users more likely to enjoy and gain value from your product. On the flip-side, setting overly generous expectations only sets you up for a fall when investors or stakeholders discover the hard truths.

Focus on what matters, and be proud of that.

Source: venturebeat.com

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