PracticeCritical Thinking & First Principles
A plausible number, unsourced
The benchmark the model supplied
The situation
Your developer-tools product added a free tier four months ago. Hana has drafted the annual plan: a revenue model and a hiring plan for four people. The model's central assumption is a free-to-paid conversion rate the team asked an AI assistant for.
Hana · Finance lead: “The board pack goes out Friday. It’s a standard range; do you want me to change anything?”
The plan is well built and the range is plausible. You have time to check one thing before Friday.
What you can see
E01 · The planning premise
The plan states an 'industry-standard 3–5% free-to-paid conversion' and uses a 3.5% midpoint. The figure is attributed to an AI assistant's answer, quoted in a footnote. No other source is given.
E02 · What rests on it
At 3.5% the model projects enough new paid accounts to fund four hires starting next quarter: two engineers, one support, one sales. At 1.5% the same model funds one hire. The hiring plan is written for four.
E03 · The document
Twelve pages, clearly structured, with a sensitivity table, three scenarios and hedged language throughout. It reads like the work of a careful analyst.
Step 1 of 2
What do you check?
Your first choice is kept. Changing your mind later counts as a retry.