Entrepreneurs and managers can consciously design experiments to surface flaws in their business plan and spur revision. An entrepreneurial experiment, as I use the term, is a test designed to reduce uncertainty critical to success before committing additional resources. Common examples include customer research, prototypes, regional service, and beta customers. Based on the results of these experiments, entrepreneurs may decide to cut their losses, revise their working hypothesis and run another experiment, or harvest the value they have created. Below are some examples.

• Identify the deal killers. Every plan includes countless assumptions. Rather than worrying about all of them, an entrepreneur should identify potential deal killers, variables that could prove fatal. Deal killers vary: In commercial real estate development, title disputes or environmental liabilities could scotch a deal, while a software start-up faces a deal-killer if a deep-pocketed rival has a valid claim on the underlying intellectual property. Deal killers are often discernible early on, and managers and entrepreneurs should try to surface these critical source of uncertainty early. New deal killers may appear as the venture proceeds, while others prove tractable.
• Know what you are betting on. In turbulent markets, multiple variables influence the an opportunity’s
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