4 What Do You Need to Know to Decide?
By this point, one thing should be clear: recognizing that a decision is difficult does not yet tell you how to make it.
Understanding that profit is uncertain, or that demand matters, is not enough. Many entrepreneurs reach this point with a sharpened sense of risk but no clearer sense of direction.
They know the decision matters.
They know uncertainty is unavoidable.
They know they should not proceed blindly.
And still, the next step remains unclear.
This is not because the problem is too complex. It is because the question has not yet been made specific enough.
4.1 Knowing That Something Matters Is Not the Same as Knowing What to Learn
Early-stage decisions often feel overwhelming because too many things appear unknown at once.
Who exactly the customer is.
What problem matters most.
How price-sensitive demand might be.
Whether demand is large enough to matter.
Whether competition will respond aggressively.
All of these questions feel relevant. None feels decisive on its own.
As a result, entrepreneurs often default to one of two moves: gathering information opportunistically, or postponing learning altogether. Neither approach brings clarity, because neither begins with a clear sense of what must be known in order to decide.
The problem is not a lack of data.
It is a lack of focus.
4.2 Decisions Do Not Require Answers to Every Question
It is tempting to believe that good decisions require comprehensive understanding. That if enough questions are answered, the right action will become obvious.
In practice, decisions are made under constraint. Time, attention, and resources are limited. Not every uncertainty can be resolved, and not every unknown needs to be.
What matters is not whether uncertainty exists, but which uncertainty stands in the way of acting responsibly right now.
Until that distinction is made, learning remains diffuse and effort remains unfocused.
4.3 Many Unknowns, One That Matters Now
At any moment, entrepreneurs face many unknowns.
Some are obvious. Others only become visible once work begins. New information often reveals additional uncertainty rather than eliminating it. This is not a failure of planning. It is a feature of acting in unfamiliar territory.
The mistake is not acknowledging uncertainty.
The mistake is treating all unknowns as equally important.
Decisions are made one at a time. Each decision is blocked by a different kind of uncertainty. The uncertainty that matters is not the one that is most interesting, most frightening, or most discussed. It is the one that prevents responsible action now.
This is the entrepreneur’s most urgent unknown.
The most urgent unknown is the question that must be better understood before the next decision can be made with integrity. Until it is addressed, action is either reckless or stalled.
Other uncertainties may still exist. They may even be larger in an absolute sense. But if they do not affect the decision immediately at hand, they are not yet the right focus.
Identifying the most urgent unknown does not eliminate uncertainty. It creates order within it. It also suggests what comes next: once this unknown is reduced, the next most urgent unknown takes its place.
Once one uncertainty is reduced, another often takes its place. Learning does not shrink the space of unknowns so much as it rearranges them. New questions emerge. Old concerns recede. Attention shifts.
This is not a problem to be solved once. It is a discipline to be practiced repeatedly.
Entrepreneurs who fail to make this distinction often work hard without making progress. They collect information that does not change what they do. They mistake motion for learning.
Entrepreneurs who can identify their most urgent unknown, even imperfectly, gain something more valuable than certainty: direction.
What matters is not whether uncertainty exists, but which uncertainty stands in the way of acting responsibly right now.
That distinction is easy to name and hard to make—because it requires choosing one unknown to treat as primary.
4.4 From Urgent Unknowns to Entrepreneurial Questions
Identifying the most urgent unknown is only a beginning.
An unknown becomes actionable only when it is translated into a question that can guide learning. This translation is where many entrepreneurs struggle—not because they lack curiosity, but because not all questions serve the same purpose.
Some questions describe the world.
Others inform decisions.
Both can be interesting. Only one reduces uncertainty about what to do next.
An entrepreneurial question is not defined by the kind of data it uses, but by the role it plays. It is a question whose answer would change the action taken—or increase confidence in the action already under consideration.
This is why clarity matters more than precision at this stage.
A question can be answered accurately and still be useless if it does not connect back to a decision. Conversely, a question can be answered imperfectly and still be valuable if it reduces the uncertainty that matters most.
The distinction becomes clear when uncertainty is viewed through the lens of action.
- If the most urgent unknown is about demand, then questions about population size, customer characteristics, or interest levels are only useful insofar as they help determine whether demand is strong enough at viable prices to justify proceeding.
- If the most urgent unknown is about pricing, then questions about willingness to pay and price sensitivity matter. Questions about features or branding may not—yet.
- If the most urgent unknown is about scale, then questions about repeat purchasing, usage intensity, or capacity constraints become relevant.
In each case, the entrepreneurial question does not stand alone. It is derived from the decision and shaped by the uncertainty that blocks it.
This is why entrepreneurial questions are often broader than factual questions, but narrower than strategic aspirations. They sit between action and evidence.
A common failure mode is to begin with questions that are easy to answer rather than questions that matter. Data availability quietly substitutes for decision relevance. Learning occurs, but uncertainty remains.
When the entrepreneurial question is clear, learning gains a natural stopping rule. Evidence is sufficient when it no longer changes the decision under consideration.
Only at that point does it make sense to ask how the question can be answered responsibly.
4.5 Demand Is Often the First Urgent Unknown
Once the decision, the uncertainty, and the entrepreneurial question are made explicit, a pattern usually emerges.
In many pre-revenue decisions, the most urgent unknown turns out to involve demand.
This is not because demand is the only uncertainty that matters. It is because demand is the uncertainty that most often determines whether a venture is worth doing at all.
Questions about costs, competition, and execution matter. They can meaningfully affect profit. But in early decisions, they rarely block action in the same way demand does.
Costs can often be estimated within a usable range. Competitive responses can sometimes be bracketed. Operational challenges can be anticipated, even if imperfectly.
Demand is different.
Demand determines whether revenue exists at all, whether prices that cover costs are plausible, and whether refinements to cost structure or competitive positioning are worth pursuing in the first place.
For this reason, many entrepreneurial questions ultimately reduce to some version of the same concern: is there enough demand, at viable prices, to justify moving forward?
This does not mean demand is always the most urgent unknown. There are decisions where regulatory uncertainty, technological feasibility, or organizational constraints dominate. But in pre-revenue profit decisions, demand is often the uncertainty that matters first.
Recognizing this is not a commitment to any particular method. It is a prioritization move.
Once demand becomes the most urgent unknown, the task is no longer to speculate about it, but to learn it deliberately.
4.6 Looking Ahead: Learning Demand Deliberately
Identifying demand as the most urgent unknown does not resolve it.
Demand is not revealed automatically, and it is not learned by observation alone. It must be inferred from evidence, gathered intentionally and interpreted carefully.
Poorly designed learning creates false confidence. Well-designed learning reduces uncertainty in ways that actually inform decisions.
This distinction matters because learning is never neutral. The questions asked, the data collected, and the assumptions embedded in measurement all shape what can be concluded.
Without clarity about the decision and the question, it is easy to collect information that looks relevant but does not change what is done next.
The chapters that follow focus on learning demand in a disciplined way—beginning with what demand is and is not, and then turning to how evidence about demand can be generated responsibly.
Only then does it make sense to design the experiment.