A Race To Somewhere Starting Nowhere

Working at a startup is like you’re in a rally car trying to win a race where the finish line is unknown, the route is unclear and your speed virtually limitless.

The faster you go the more fuel you use, and you only have limited fuel. So maybe you keep some fuel in reserve. Or maybe some company gives you free fuel in exchange for putting ads on your car. Or maybe you use that otherwise reserve fuel to boost your speed for a while.

But, since the destination’s unknown, even if you decide to move faster it’s not clear you’re going in the right or wrong direction more quickly. And, even more, (since you’re human) your tolerance for speed is also limited: you might get sick from the turbulence and/ or get scared you’ll crash.1 So basically you go as fast as you and your vehicle can tolerate.

For some reason, I envision this as a scene from a Charlie Chaplin film where’s there’s no sound and it’s slapstick all the way. He’s driving around in a Model T as fast as he can on a muddy, bumpy road stopping often to get out and fuel up, spilling gas and tripping as he does.

It’s alot like that. Except not as funny.

Implications of Rolling Start + Unknown Route

Oh, by the way, there’s also no official start to the race. It only starts for you when you start. But, by that time, typically lots of others have already started.

You don’t know how far ahead others are, because they’re scattered along “the route.” Even when you can see them, you don’t know who’s ahead becuase it’s difficult to tell where the finish line is.

It could be that even though you’ve started later, you’re closer to the finish because your product (at its inception) is more like the final, winning solution in some fundamental way.

A common, concrete example is Facebook. There were many social network websites in 2004, but somehow it won because it started off properly. (Some say the main reasons they won are (a) they solved the identity problem in that they tied people’s accounts to their college email addresses (as a way of verifying their identity) and (b) they moved quickly. So they started out closer to the final, winning solution at their inception, and they moved more quickly than all others in realizing that solution.

And I think all of this implies for other startups that it’s definitely worth giving thought to your starting point. How can you position yourself fundamentally closer to the final, winning solution? Which isn’t easy. You have to envision the route and the finish line without a proper map.2

Times N

This is all also a simplification.

You’re usually not focused on a single big race,3 but instead have the chance to participate in some number of potential races N. And you have a small fleet of vehicles, each with limited fuel, drivers and all the rest. You have to choose which races to join, in some cases pay fees to enter, and then go through all the operational hurdles to get your vehicles to some starting point with proper fuel, drivers, etc. 

In short, it’s a challenging and tricky business to try to make something valuable from nothing and win in the market. To beat others trying for the same thing.




1. G-forces aren’t pleasant.

2. Another tricky bit here is the challenge of not setting your sights too low (like possibly early social networking sites did), to envision the best end point possible. And useful here is a framework from AirBnB founder, Brian Chesky, called the 11-star experience. Think of a 5-star hotel, and how it compares to a 1-star hotel. What is the equivalent of a 5-star hotel of your product type? What about an 11-star equivalent?

3. Though likely this is the best way to do it.