The Power of Positive Destruction

Chapter 7 Launching a Company Is Both Art and Science

You have a great idea and you think you’re ready to go to market. Now what? Congrats, you’ve just entered into the most exciting time of the process. This is where real-time problem solving comes into play, and you’ll soon find that there are tricks of the trade that you can effectively call on—and then there are other events you never could have anticipated.

For us, launching with 38 firms was far fewer than the 75 to 100 we had wanted. But we soon discovered there was a positive aspect, as 38 is a very manageable number, and we needed every one of them to count and trade every match they got. We focused on on-boarding each firm and designing a launch program that would give them a positive and uniform experience and maximize our chances for success. We called it the Navigator Program. We sent an expert—a navigator—into each firm to assist with the launch. We trained these navigators (MBA students we hired) on how to use the system and whom to call if there was a problem. We gave each a cell phone with pre-programmed numbers for support so we could reach and coordinate with everyone. Then, we sent them throughout the country, placing one at each firm, to help with the first three days of trading on our new Liquidnet platform. For all the support the Navigator Program was supposed to provide, it was mostly a marketing tool.

The program worked as hoped. At each firm, a navigator sat in the trading room, answered all the traders’ ...