Nejatian: Companies go bankrupt when executive models drift from ground truth
Kaz Nejatian · Excellence Is the Capacity to Take Pain · Jul 21, 2026 · at 20:23
Opendoor executive Kaz Nejatian explains Friedrich Hayek's 'map is not the terrain' mental model and its application to business failure.
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“It just so happens that unless you recognize you're looking at a first derivative of a fact, not the actual fact, you almost always will build models of the world that end up drifting from reality. And this is how companies go bankrupt over time, because they continually drift more, more derivative.”
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