How to Start a Business

Step 2 Know Your Team Beforehand

The founders of Squid Labs -- Colin, Dan, Saul, and I -- worked together on various projects around MIT for a number of years. Colin, Saul, and I were all graduate students in what was known at the time as the Molecular Machines group, headed by Joseph Jacobson, at the MIT Media Lab. Dan, Saul, and I all built kite-powered vehicles at our MITERS clubhouse and went on kitesurfing and ice-kiting adventures as often as possible. While working as a researcher in the Physics and Media lab across the hall, Dan was instrumental in helping Saul build the hardware for his thesis. Saul and I taught a number of bicycle and kite design and build classes over MIT's Independent Activities Period (IAP - a month-long period every January between the official school terms).

Working and playing together -- and sometimes even saving each others lives when kiting experiments went awry or someone (me, actually) fell through the ice -- meant that we knew each others' strengths and abilities, and could trust each other to work towards a common goal.

If you want to start a company that requires a highly motivated and tight-knit team, you should already be working with that team. If there's no one in your research group, club, current job, or social circle that you're already doing cool projects with, branch out and find the people who are. In my experience, it doesn't take long before you know, or are connected to by a mutual friend, everyone in town who is building cool stuff. While it may be fashionable to say innovation can come from anywhere, great teams are easiest to put together in the intellectual hubs. If you're serious, it's worth moving to one of those hubs.

True story: Tim Anderson, a role-model and mentor-of-sorts for Squid Labs in general, showed up and started wandering the hallways of MIT begging for free robots that he could teach to paint. Before long, he'd founded the successful company Z Corp., and was later running MITERS when we showed up.