ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the ambiguity around value and addresses how startups, particularly those groomed through an accelerator, cultivate a valuable "product". It shows that product is both shifting and rarely tangible in a conventional sense—and, therefore, must be materialized, made to matter, to attract investors' interest. The chapter draws upon communicative relationality to frame the practices by which startups materialize a valuable product. Startups speculate about what will be technologically possible, marketable, and valuable to funders, just as those funders are engaged in financial speculation in their attraction to startups. A first resource through which startups' claims to value emerged was the qualifications of the team, the set of people working to materialize the ideas and bring the business to life. The chapter demonstrates how "the product" in startup entrepreneur-ship is not at all a simple technological object. Product was shown to be ontologically multiple, materialized by the relational intersections of team, business model, and technological innovation.
