move at the speed of trust

why scaling new technology depends on people more than code

19-Jul-25

When you build something new, the hard part is not the technology. It is the people.

Startups often imagine scale as an engineering problem, but most things collapse because of trust. Trust is the real scaling function. Communities judge the credibility of the next project by the success of the last. Break that chain and you do not just lose one opportunity, you shrink the space of all future ones.

Carbon removal shows this clearly. The physics matters, but what matters more is whether people believe in it enough to live next to it. A project can only grow if the community it sits in thinks it should exist. That is why the lessons from resident-centered deployment look less like lab notes and more like social design: consent as a process, not a checkbox; engagement as co-creation, not a survey; transparency not as a report, but as money flows shown plainly.

If you want a shortcut, it is this. Do not think of communities as monoliths. Think of them as layered systems: local, state, regional, coalitions. Each has its own history, risks, and priorities. The startup instinct is to move fast and impose a model. The better instinct is to slow down and listen until the community defines itself.

The irony is that this slower start makes projects move faster later. A rushed rollout breeds resistance. A deliberate one builds ownership. Ownership means communities design monitoring, set standards, and write agreements in their own language. At that point the project does not need to defend itself, because it belongs to the people living with it.

This is why software analogies help. You would not ship code without tests. Engagement is the test suite for deployment. Every meeting, workshop, or benefit agreement is a line of coverage. Miss enough lines and the system breaks in production.

Trust is harder to measure than carbon, but you can track it. Indicators like transparency, inclusion, co-creation, and shared governance can be scored. Not with perfect precision, but enough to see where the weak spots are. If a local group’s trust score is half that of a regional coalition, that is not just data. It is a red flag that you will pay for later.

The broader lesson is not about climate tech alone. Any new idea needs social license. You earn that license the same way you earn users: by solving real problems for them, by being clear about tradeoffs, and by letting them help shape the thing you are building.

The people who figure this out first will be the ones who make not only the best carbon removal projects, but the best companies. Because in the end, technology scales through trust.