🚀 From Taxi to Orbit: A Flight Metaphor for Building Prototypes
In my last post I asked that you envision yourself as the CEO - Founder of a startup; not any startup, but one that aims to bring an AI-powered product to market. I am using “market” here in a loose sense. It could be a commercial product, but there also important problems that need solutions in the public sphere: can AI be used to empower people and make communities stronger and more vibrant? You have the power to make it happen. Never underestimate your abilities.
🛫The Flight Metaphor for Prototyping
When we set out to build a new product, it’s tempting to imagine the end state first — a polished app, sleek design, happy users, and maybe even investors lining up. But in reality, every product takes shape in stages. Some of those stages are messy, experimental, and even a little wobbly.
To keep ourselves grounded in reality, I will be using a simple metaphor: building a product is like preparing for and executing a flight.
Each stage has its purpose, its risks, and its own kind of success. The important thing is not to confuse where you are on the journey. You don’t want to be promising cruise-level comfort when you’re still taxiing on the runway.
Here’s how the metaphor works:
Taxi → Concept Validation
You’re still on the ground. The goal here isn’t polish — it’s proof. Does the concept make sense? Can the core interaction be demonstrated, even crudely? Taxi is about alignment, not audience. It’s internal.
Lift → First Users
The wheels leave the ground. Now you have a working prototype. It might not be smooth, but it shows the product in action and can be tested with a small group of early users. Lift is proof that the idea has legs.
Climb → Feature Refinement
You’ve cleared the runway and are steadily gaining altitude. Here, you strengthen the core functionality, add guardrails, and polish the experience. It’s about reliability, not just possibility. Climb makes the prototype believable.
Cruise → Investor-Ready
The flight is steady. At this stage, the prototype feels professional, polished, and resilient. You can show it to investors or early adopters without fear of turbulence. Cruise communicates confidence.
Orbit → Scalable, Future-Ready
Few flights go this far, but the metaphor stretches. Orbit is when the product transcends prototype status and becomes scalable, extensible, and ready for broad adoption. It’s no longer just a flight — it’s in space.
Iteration is the engine of this journey. Moving from Taxi to Orbit is itself an iterative process, but each stage also contains its own cycles of trial, error, and refinement. A Taxi prototype may be rebuilt multiple times before it’s ready for Lift, and even in Cruise, iteration continues as feedback sharpens the experience. Progress isn’t linear — it’s layered iteration.
🎯 Why This Matters
Metaphors help us keep expectations in check. They remind us that a Taxi prototype isn’t meant to wow investors any more than a plane taxiing down a runway is meant to carry passengers to Paris.
By naming the stages, we:
- Avoid overpromising too early.
- Celebrate small wins at the right time.
- Build confidence step by step, instead of skipping ahead.
And because iteration runs through everything, this metaphor keeps us honest about progress. Each stage is iterative in itself — we test, refine, and retest until it’s good enough to move forward.
📂 The Artifacts We’ll Need
Metaphors are powerful, but building prototypes also requires tangible scaffolding. To stay aligned, we’ll work with a small set of living documents that evolve as the project advances. Just as important, these documents also serve as part of our context engineering — they provide the shared framework that AI assistants will use as we rely on AI tools to help create the prototypes and software.
1. Product Requirements Document (PRD)
Defines the *what* and the *why* of the project — vision, problem statement, personas, and goals. Keeps us focused on solving the right problem.
2. Technical Context Document
Outlines the *how* — stack choices, APIs, schema, guardrails, and assumptions. Ensures that implementation details are grounded and reproducible.
3. Design Guidelines Document
Captures layout, user flows, interaction patterns, and visual conventions. Prevents design drift and gives us a consistent user experience, even at low fidelity.
4. Project Plan
Breaks work into clear phases, each requiring human sign-off before moving forward. Keeps scope disciplined and makes progress transparent.
These artifacts don’t exist to slow us down — they help us move faster with fewer missteps, especially when iteration is baked into every stage. They’re lightweight, pragmatic, and evolve alongside the prototypes.
✈️ Conclusion
Every flight begins with a taxi, and so does every product. The key is to respect the stage you’re in, iterate deliberately, and use the right scaffolding to keep progress on course.
Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing an examples of the four core documents — the PRD, Technical Context, Design Guidelines, and Project Plan — all tailored to our Healthy Meals AI startup. These will give you a concrete sense of how we turn the metaphor into practice.
And next week, we’ll put it all into action together in our workshop.
👉 Please be sure to RSVP here: [AI Startup Essentials: Build Your First Prototype]