[dahart]

Yes if you earn an income comparable to a corporate job, yeah that’s a big win. “Mediocre success” unfortunately isn’t well defined here, but I assumed the author wasn’t suggesting a corporate salary. It seemed like he was talking about a few early sales but not enough to sustain the business. Imagine starting a company with two other people and grossing $12k the first year and $22k the second year, and then running low on funding. Should you keep going? Should you seek investment, assuming you can even get it? What if the growth remains linear, and it will take at least 10 years to reach sustainability?

[taneq]

Wouldn’t “not enough to sustain the business” be failing? I’d think “mediocre success” would be doing well enough that you can’t just throw in the towel, but not well enough that you can escape the grind.

[dahart]

The author defined mediocre success to be the relative outcome of an experiment, such as an A-B test, he wasn’t talking about income levels or overall success. It might be assumed that, since we are talking about startups and experiments, that we are not discussing self-sustaining businesses? Either way, which interpretation makes the rest of the article make the most sense?