The Experimentation Layer

We tell entrepreneurs to find a need, test, and trial until they find a solution to that need, move fast, and break things. Yes, betas work; our method is a process of induction, right out of the playbook of the scientific method. Yet we need to insert a framework of intentionality into that process so that at the end of our experiments, we have a

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Put through that process, reality usually hits like a truck. Many concepts that sound good on paper are infeasible to implement, or simply don’t produce the expected results. It’s frustrating when that happens, of course, but the pace of experimentation and learning at a startup is unparalleled. I think this is an especially important form of rigor... See more

If you go out and all you do is make the same mistakes that I could have gotten in some other company, then there's no ROI on this investment […] I can buy those mistakes somewhere else. I think that, in some ways, this pursuit of original mistakes is sort what one is doing as a startup founder in a constructive way, right? […] It's a huge red flag... See more

By definition, you will likely succeed a vanishingly-small percentage of the time, but—as the saying goes—that’s a feature, not a bug. The point is to venture—fistfuls of money in hand—at the furthest extremes of capitalism, hoping to stumble upon that rare, proper intersection of technology and commerciality.By design, most investments will miss t... See more

Science experiment products face a lot of technical risk early on, and getting a product to market can take a lot of time and capital. But when a product is finally objectively good enough, they can face less market risk. Launches are often preceded or accompanied by research papers. Think categories like AI, biotech, energy, chips, and space.

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Many concepts that sound good on paper are infeasible to implement, or simply don’t produce the expected results. It’s frustrating when that happens, of course, but the pace of experimentation and learning at a startup is unparalleled. I think this is an especially important form of rigor for theorycels like me. Building product forces a different ... See more

21:40 - Science is good at the long game of extending the tip of human knowledge. While brazen startups are good at acting boldly off of naïveté.

First is the observation I’ve made throughout: that people are building companies based on ideas from the 1950s and 1960s.

This is a very real thing. Earlier this week, I met with Tyler Hayes at Atom Limbs to see the robotic prosthetic he and his team are building. After he slipped the cuff on my arm and as we were waiting for the system to boot up... See more