Of course, it’s very hard to build models from your own data if you don’t have a lot of data and the only way to get a lot of data is to lose a bunch of money. […] The punchline is you only find out what works when you use the data that describes your own system, and that means processing a lot of transactions and bracing for impacts because a lot of the transactions are gonna go sour. One of the things that happens for a brand-new launched credit card: done right, you lose about 50% of the dollar volume in the first several months which is terrifying because it’s half the money, literally.
Find source| 0 | source | Max Levchin |