If what you're saying 1) is true and 2) does matter in the success of a business, then wouldn't anyone be able to displace an incumbent trivially by applying a bit of rigor?

I think 1) holds (as my experience matches your cynicism :), but I have a feeling that data minded people tend to overestimate the importance of 2)...

Rigor helps for better insights about data. That can help for entrepreneurship.

What also can help for entrepreneurship is having a bias for action. So even if your insights are wrong, if you act and keep acting you will keep acting then you will partially shape reality to your will and bend to its will.

So there are certain forces where you can compensate for your lack of rigor.

The best companies have both of those things by their side.

> does matter in the success of a business

In many experience, many of the statistics these people use doesn't matter in the success of a business --- they are vanity metrics. But people use statistics, and especially the wrong statistics, to pass their agenda. Regardless, it's important to fix the statistics.