The most important reason to do good research is that it can keep you from destroying your company. Bad data can ruin your product.

Some people say, “bad data are better than no data,” but this is a mistake. After all, if we know we don’t have any data, we can go do some research and learn something. But if we have some bad data, we think we already know the answers. Confirmation bias will make it even harder for us to unlearn that bad information. We’re going to stop looking and start acting on that information, and that may influence all of our product decisions.

Unlike any given feature or piece of code, collecting data is guaranteed to be part of your process for the life of your company. You may change the way you collect data or the types of data you collect, but you’re going to keep doing it, because there’s simply no other way to make informed decisions.

Because this is something that you know is absolutely vital to your company, it’s worth getting it right early. The quest for good data should be more about avoiding bad data than it is about making sure you have every scrap of information available.

If you don’t have all the data, and you know you don’t have all the data, that’s fine. You can always go out and do more research and testing later.

Summing-up: You don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to make sure you don’t have any wrong answers. And you do that by setting the bar for “good enough” pretty damn high on your data collection skills.