In exploring Startup Maze, your goal is to travel from “zero” to “one.” “Zero” is where your journey begins, essentially with nothing. Few startups reach “one” after successfully creating and dominating a new market. (I’m using Peter Thiel’s concepts from Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.)

In exploring the maze, you will discover several key check points along the way:

1. Tech-User fit. Discovering a technology that people want to use.
2. Biz-Tech fit. Creating a feasible operation for building the product’s technology.
3. User-Biz fit. Converting user engagement with the product into value for the company.
4. Scaling user base. Customer growth.
5. Scaling tech. Infrastructure that can match usage demands.
6. Scaling biz. Profit numbers that soar up and to the right (like the path extending from the large triangle to “one.”

On the way to each check point, you face constant danger of hitting a dead-end or regressing to an uncertain place in a region you thought you had previously conquered. Good luck!

Note: this maze applies a visual framework I’m developing at Product Logic.