I think the argument is that financial forecasts for startups are equivalent to wearing a business suit; they are both anachronisms that signal our desire to succeed but have no causal relationship to the nuts and bolts of succeeding.

I’m of both minds. We need a rough business model (a type of Fermi Estimate ) and metrics to help track and validate our assumptions. At some point these estimates become detailed enough to gain predictive power but assuming they begin that way is a recipe for failure.