Validation

This expresses the betaworks philosophy totally, from our friend Saul Klein (the emphasis is mine):

Validation comes in many forms: previous successes, persuading a killer person to join your team or even be an advisor, signing a paying customer, acquiring lots of users, getting positive press or blog reviews. The list goes on. But without some form of validation, however good your idea might sound - if you have no track-record its just so hard to get off the ground.

First timers have no start-up track record - they have to build one.

So how do you do that and how do places like Seedcamp or YCombinator help?

Its hard to get to achieve most of the list above at the very early stages, so probably the biggest thing that Seedcamp and YCombinator do is that they force teams to ship - and ship quickly.

We both want teams that can code, not just think, and the added forcing function of limited time and limited capital makes getting something out the door imperative. There’s nothing like a deadline to keep focus.

Its not important to have a finished product, even less a finished plan - what’s important is to show that you can create a prototype that you can share with other people: a verbal and visual representation (to paraphrase Fred’s great point) of what’s going on inside the collective heads of your team.