Founder City Field Test Record

Founder City Field Test Record

Test purpose

A city field test should reduce uncertainty about ordinary operating fit before a difficult-to-reverse move. It should not maximize excitement or count memorable conversations.

Precommitment

Before travel, record the decision, comparison location, company jobs, founder and household constraints, hypotheses, evidence that would support each hypothesis, evidence that would weaken it, and any veto condition.

Use the same categories and rough observation window for each serious candidate. A trip built around a conference, holiday, launch, or exceptional introduction must be labeled as an atypical sample.

Test design

The visit should include ordinary workdays, commuting at relevant times, focused work, planned meetings, unplanned public exposure, recurring routines, food and housing logistics, support needs, and recovery time.

Record access quality, scheduling latency, travel time, direct cost, likely recurring cost, work output, energy, follow-up permission, counterevidence, and unresolved questions. Do not record unnecessary personal information about people encountered.

The test should exercise the proposed local resource network, not merely visit famous startup venues. It should also test fallback paths when a preferred person, institution, neighborhood, or travel route is unavailable.

Delayed review

Wait until the novelty of the trip has faded. Then measure which introductions received consensual follow-up, which conversations produced specific learning, which company dependencies became easier, and which claimed advantages disappeared.

A useful outcome may be a move, a smaller recurring presence, scheduled travel, a different city, or no location change. The experiment succeeds when it improves the decision, not when it confirms the founder's favorite answer.

Source boundary

The SBA and Census sources help identify variables and public evidence. The NBER papers provide ecosystem context. The Science weak-ties study concerns job mobility on LinkedIn and does not prove that weak ties, a visit, or a city will help a founder.