Managing to the Number or Opportunity

Talking with many entrepreneurs I get a sense that too many of them are managing too much to an arbitrary number and not enough to the opportunity at hand. Some categories of numbers I’ve heard:

• Company value at time of exit
• % of revenue allocated to sales, marketing, or some other function
• % difference from projected budget
• Required cost to acquire a customer

Entrepreneurs I talk to are most often at the idea or seed stage and don’t have enough operating history or scale to know what their business will become. There’s no crystal ball. I believe it’s much more important to build an agile, data-driven company that stays close to the customer as opposed to correctly guessing in advance the value of a number. Startups are about testing hypotheses, learning, making changes, and doing it all over again. Learning quickly is much more important than guessing perfectly.

What else? What are some other examples of managing to a number instead of an opportunity?