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SPECIMEN No. 033 · Growth ritual
Experimentation
Running many small bets to learn what works, and occasionally learning that nobody agreed what was being tested.
📈 Proliferating- 🏠 Habitat
- Startups with more ideas than users
- 🦈 Natural predator
- Statistical significance
- 🤒 Common symptom
- Twelve live A/B tests on the same 2,000 users
THE DEBATE
The room is split
If the whole team walked into the review, who would reach for Experimentation, and who would push back.
💖 Would reach for it
MayaThe Visionary“A roadmap is a guess with a deadline; an experiment is a guess with an answer.”
JoThe Cowboy“Production is the only place that tells the truth, so put the idea there and listen.”
TaylorThe AI Native“When trying costs nothing, ten experiments are cheaper than one meeting about which one to run.”
GregThe Hedger“Small bets at 5% are reversible by design, which is the only kind of decision he likes.”
🛑 Would push back
NoraThe User Advocate“An experiment without a user and a question is activity; twelve tests on 2,000 users mean nothing.”
HugoThe Perfectionist“Every experiment is code someone maintains, and the someone is him, at 11pm, after it worked.”
RuthThe Maintainer“Nobody remembers what experiment 4 tested, and she has seen the same idea tested in 2014.”
FIELD REPORTS
Stories about Experimentation
TAKES
