You join a foodtech startup on Monday. There’s funding. A team. Patented
technology. A pilot machine that makes something nobody else can make. There are
no products. There are no customers. What do you do for the first 100 days? My
answer after 20 years of launching new products: try very hard not to launch one.

Days 1–20: Break the machine
First, forget what the pitch deck says the technology does. Use it. Taste everything.
Change the inputs. Push the process too far. Calculate what comes out of the other
end and what it actually costs. Talk to the inventor. Then talk to whoever has to
clean the machine. I want to know what this thing is unusually good at. And where it
sucks. Not its potential. Its capability.