rborovoy's blog

[If the video is not embedded above, go here]

Everyone knows that creating a startup involves a carefully-ordered sequence of steps -- eg, don't start selling your product until you have a product (actually, that's surprisingly easy to screw up). However, there's a guiding principle about designing the right sequence that doesn't get talked about enough. You need to think about designing your "Validation Trajectory". Here's the deal:

In the Pony Diving phase (see Episode #1), you're trying to put together an idea with funders, users, and a development team. But each one of these key groups is going to need to see a certain amount of proof about the viability of the project, i.e. validation, before they sign on. Of course, the killer is that these same people are going to help you establish validation, so you've got the makings of a brutal chicken-and-egg problem. The solution is a workable validation trajectory: The first key player you sign on has a low validation "buy-in". That player then produces some validation "benefit", and now you have more validation to recruit the next player. A workable validation trajectory moves you from where it's just you waving your arms to where you've got all the key players on board. A broken one leaves you needing some high-validation-buyin player without any way to get the validation to bring him/her on.

Here are pointers to a few things I called out in the video.

• Here's where Vinod Khosla discusses the Ethanol Trajectory
• Here's the LostInBoston.org project I talk about
• Here's George Eberstadt's Blog. He's my colleague who would always say "How do we get there from here?"

So now you tell me. Is this obvious? Is this useful? Is this obviously useful? I need feedback. Post it below.

Welcome to Episode #2 of Rick's Startup Whiteboard (the video is at http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/4106-ricks-startup-whiteboard-episode-2-ear... if it's not showing up above). This one focuses on the importance of working with partners -- not employees, not contractors -- when you're the pony-diving stage of a startup project, still trying to figure out the key pieces of the puzzle (see episode #1 on pony diving). Personally, I learned this one the hard way in a start-up. We contracted out the design of our next generation product and wound up on the rocks. There were a lot of accusations and alibis, and a distressing lack of "we're going to keep at this until it works". Lesson learned: when the project is in the early stages, and still involves as much problem-finding as problem-solving, you need to work with people who have as much at stake as you do.

When have you been on the right or wrong side of this?

Welcome to the first video webisode of "Rick's Startup Whiteboard" (it's at http://bit.ly/eqeAX if you don't see it above for some reason)

It's a sharper-than-broken-glass-and-every-bit-as-dangerous look at what's involved in getting a new social technology project started. The first clip is about "Pony Diving" -- the very early stages where you're trying to put together an idea with a technology that can implement it with a group of people who will use it, another group of people who can an build it, and a third group of people will fund it. Here's the feedback so far:

• "Your head is too shiny" -- Totally true
• "It's too long" -- Also true.
• "Good ideas. Loved it" -- Thanks, Mom.

So give me 7 minutes on this one, and give me some feedback, and I'll make the next ones shorter and better.

And if you're wondering what I know about this: I co-founded a startup in 2002 based on my Media Lab Ph.D. work on technology for face-to-face community building (check out http://ntag.com). On top of that, I've gotten many social technology-oriented projects off the ground, and have thought a lot about the process.

Rick Borovoy
Visiting Researcher, Center for Future Civic Media, MIT