Why #Hyperloop Has Doomed Itself to Fail
And the simple (but difficult) fix.
You may have noticed Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, or HTT, trending in your Facebook newsfeed this week. The SoCal startup — which emerged from online incubator JumpStartFund under the leadership of CEO-by-proxy Dirk Ahlborn — is a research company using crowdsourced engineering to make Elon Musk’s famed Hyperloop a reality.
HTT relaunched its public presence on Facebook last Friday, when — after 14 months of “stealth mode” and a marked absence from the collective conscience — it reemerged to announce a year’s worth of “significant progress” made by “over 100 engineers around the world” towards the design of an ultramodern network of inductive tubes to shuttle passengers between cities at nearly 800 mph (1,300 km/h).
The biggest news — as covered in viral media — is that HTT is “now just a decade away!” from deploying the first operational Hyperloop. Of course, the reality is it’s at least a decade away, not “just” a decade, but we’ll address that momentarily.
HTT capitalized on this mindshare renaissance with some (slightly underwhelming) new brand assets, first-rights coverage in international outlets, and renderings of the Hyperloop in U.S. cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been a huge fan of the Hyperloop project since it was announced. When the blueprints debuted in Musk’s now-famous SpaceX whitepaper over a year ago, I joined a chorus of futurists and pundits celebrating transit’s induction (pun intended) into the 21st century. It felt like a veritable “the future is now!” moment.
So when HTT burst out of reclusion a week ago, I was eager to explore the independent group that had so dutifully taken up Musk’s mantle for the future of transportation. I’m largely unaware of successful crowdsourced startups operating on this scale, so to see one materializing at all — much less with this product — was exciting and inspiring.
Indeed, when HTT announced “the next phase of our operation[,] which includes building the Hyperloop community [and] an official #Hyperloop app” on Christmas Eve, I was thrilled to spread the word and learn about getting involved.
That is, I was thrilled… until I noticed HTT’s next status update, just over an hour later. It read:
The attached image portrays the U.S. Capitol Building, a neoclassical emblem of American government. It is captioned with the snark, “Some are prepared to challenge #Hyperloop. Will YOU stand with us?”
OK, hold the phone.
Yes, U.S. policymaking is a labyrinthine exercise in bureaucracy, diseconomy, and pettiness. Yes, state and federal regulators can hinder some tracts of development. But in this dichotomous era when big infrastructure and big tech contracts are both increasingly privatized and increasingly regulated — no matter how you feel about it — why would you poke the bear when you desperately need it to be your friend?
In fact: while he has attempted to duck regulatory red tape on occasion, Elon Musk himself proudly and publicly embraces the role of crucial government support — financial and regulatory — in the success of his flagship corporations (Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal). As they do in other areas, HTT would be smart to heed Musk’s example in this. While HTT CEO-by-proxy Dirk Ahlborn certainly has his own strengths and priorities, there’s a lot to learn from Musk’s win-win interactions with the political sphere.
But it’s not the hypocrisy of HTT straying from its progenitor that’s problematic. After all, any startup commercializing another’s vision at scale will make its own strategic decisions, and they shouldn’t have to justify them just because they might conflict with precedent or antecedent.
No, the issue is this: HTT is attempting to mobilize public support — though what that means at this stage, I’m not even sure — by creating an enemy where there need not be one.
However small it may seem, this confrontational cynicism signals HTT may not the company we should trust with building our transit of the future. Apparently, the wisdom of the crowd(source) has not prevailed. That, or HTT is juggling a dysfunctional communication cascade — which may not warrant our trust either. I’m certainly not saying HTT (or whoever builds the first Hyperloop) won’t face regulatory hurdles. Of course they will; mountains of them. But it is potentially a fatal mistake to approach them with preemptive provocation.
As an alumnus of Watson, the world’s first degree-granting startup accelerator for entrepreneurs, I’ve spent a great deal of time investigating “social aikido”, a concept pioneered by my friend, innovation researcher and author Dr .Scott Sherman of the Transformative Action Institute. Praised by Nobel Laureates and entrepreneurs alike, Scott’s work proposes that just as an Aikido master never attacks first — and if attacked, merely captures, leverages and redirects the energy of his attacker to be productive in his own interests — so startups must capture, leverage and redirect opposition to make it work for them instead of against them.
Likewise, startups gain little by attacking first. HTT, for example, might have considered galvanizing public support by crowdsourcing a strategy for private- and public-sector collaboration, or by securing letters of support from notable former policymakers now working in enterprise. It’s obvious they feel the need to emphasize their audacity and vision in branding, but frankly, the product takes care of that per se — no need to suggest it’s audacious just because a pointed “some” are “prepared to oppose it.”
❝ Sustainable startups capture and redirect opposition to make it productive instead of destructive.❞
Let’s say we chalk it up to beginner’s error. Assuming HTT can learn from the mistake and move on, will this one incident of carelessness ruin its chances at being the first to build Hyperloop? Will I (or anyone else) actually pull their support for the project?
Of course not. HTT boasts a crack team of innovators across 4 continents, balancing their generous sweat-equity with full-time jobs at NASA, Boeing, SpaceX, Yahoo, Salesforce, and UCLA. It’s one of the most creative and innovative technology teams on the planet right now — all convened remotely, on a voluntary or high-risk basis. They deserve applause for the work they’ve done — and doubtless, the work they’ll continue to do.
But this mistake is a symptom, a risk factor predictive of disease if not headed off at the pass. It calls for prophylaxis: some way to prevent the potentially fatal illness we’ve identified from killing HTT before it’s grown up and birthed beautiful, healthy supersonic train babies.
That prophylaxis, quite simply, is to ditch the incendiary cynicism and approach regulators as one would approach any other stakeholder: with open arms, in same collaborative spirit as the crowdsourcing whence HTT emerged. If in the future this approach no longer serves the best interests of all stakeholders, it would be appropriate to reevaluate. But in the meantime, assume all signs point to positive sums.
Remember: it’s a rare and fortunate thing that a serial innovator and billionaire entrepreneur conceives of such game-changing technology in the first place, much less that he would open it up to the world to finalize and bring to market. The project deserves all the support it can muster.
So there’s a great deal of good to be done — and profit to be made — in Hyperloop. But to capitalize on it, HTT will have to embrace reality, not fight it. There’s no such thing as luck: either you make your own luck, or the people around you make it for you; if you alienate the people around you, that luck is going to be very scarce. And with a vision as important and ambitious as Hyperloop, we’re going to need all the luck we can get. ∎
Carson Kahn is a product manager and entrepreneur working to improve a million lives. When his ed tech startup Keystone was acquired, he helped launch Finish and became an Associate Partner at MOSAIC, a growth consultancy for Facebook, Google, Ashoka, the CDC, the WHO, and Coca-Cola. He left to cofound MYTHOS Technologies. In his spare time, he plays racquetball, makes fresh guacamole, hacks, and writes. Follow @carsonkahn on Twitter ➟
