Champagne Dreams on a Beer Bottle Budget

I’m reading Sam Ladner’s thesis.

It’s strong work, and quite possibly one of the best reading experiences I’ve had since “Reading Virtual Minds”.

On Page 149, there’s a quote in explaining the common occurrence for ‘fires’ to occur as a result of low-ball estimation:

Curt: Why do they have the fires?

Sam: Yes

Curt: There could be a million different reasons if you think about it, I mean, clients coming in with aggressive timelines period or everybody will come in with big dreams, right?…Like you never lose the champagne dream even if you’ve got a beer bottle budget, right? You always dream big but you might not be, like, okay…”

And I’m in awe.

What a gem.

And I ask myself: how can we optimize and predict dreams? How we do rationalize the denominator here?

What a fascinating business problem.