A Network Theory Deep Dive — everything you need for the Laptop Drop and Demo Day.
Every go-to-market strategy is a graph traversal problem. Your course framework maps directly onto the three fundamental GTM questions.
The MBAs feeding nodes into the BackyardOne graph right now are building this layer. Every homeowner, GC, and lender they interview is a node. The edges between them are structural holes waiting to be bridged.
Nashville R1 zoning rules, HELOC rates, permit volumes, lot sizes. This is what the Automated Feasibility Engine runs on. 100 triples. Entities, facts, relationships — the Knowledge Graph from Session 4.
The engine that takes an address as input, traverses the Knowledge Graph, and outputs a feasibility score in under 30 seconds. This is where the Trinity Graph becomes a product, not just a framework.
Graph theory (Euler, 1736) gives you a rigorous language for understanding how customers relate to each other and which individuals hold positions of critical importance in driving network growth.
How many direct connections a node has. The MBA with the most real estate contacts has the highest degree centrality. Target them first for warm intros.
Who sits on the most shortest paths between other nodes. The person who knows homeowners AND contractors AND zoning officials has enormous betweenness centrality. That is your target user.
A gap between two groups with complementary but non-overlapping information. The person who bridges that hole gains information asymmetry and timing advantages. BackyardOne IS that bridge.
Your pod's existing connections are your first-degree edges. The goal of customer discovery is to find which of those edges leads to a structural hole that BackyardOne can fill.
Osterwalder & Pigneur's framework, reinterpreted for a two-sided network marketplace. Each block requires rethinking when network effects are the core mechanism of value creation.
Two sides: Homeowners (supply of lots) + Contractors/Lenders (demand for qualified leads). Treat them as separate segments with different value props.
Homeowners: "Know in 30 seconds if your backyard qualifies." Contractors: "A pre-qualified ADU lead pipeline." Lenders: "HELOC-ready customers, verified."
You are not doing cold outreach. You are doing warm network traversal. Your MBAs ARE your channels right now. That is the GTM thesis.
Classic asymmetric pricing: FREE for homeowners (build supply-side critical mass). Charge contractors and lenders for access to the verified pipeline.
The Automated Feasibility Engine. Nashville zoning data graph. Your pod's warm network. These are defensible moats — not features.
Customer discovery (right now). Zoning data aggregation. Feasibility model validation. Warm network traversal.
Nashville city data APIs. Local credit unions (HELOCs, not big banks). Local GC networks. Title companies (Cranberry Tech connection?).
Data acquisition, API costs, your time. Keep it lean until you hit 850 active homeowners (critical mass).
Self-serve for homeowners. High-touch for contractors and lenders — they are paying customers and need relationship management.
BackyardOne sits at the intersection of 3 disconnected clusters. None of these groups are currently talking to each other efficiently. You are the bridge. That is your competitive moat.
~85,000 Nashville R1 homeowners who have lots but don't understand zoning or feasibility.
Nashville city zoning data that exists but is inaccessible, fragmented, and not machine-readable.
Contractors/lenders starving for pre-qualified ADU leads with verified lot feasibility.
The feasibility engine gives homeowners instant value even with ZERO contractors on the platform. "Your lot qualifies" is a standalone win. No chicken-and-egg problem on this side.
Once you have 50 homeowners who know their lots qualify, contractors have a reason to show up. You have pre-qualified leads for them. Now the other side of the market exists.
Once contractors are converting jobs, lenders see a verified HELOC pipeline. You now have a three-sided network with compounding cross-side value. This is the AI Factory thesis.
"BackyardOne is a structural hole bridge in the Nashville ADU market. There are three disconnected clusters: 85,000 R1 homeowners who don't know if their lot qualifies, fragmented zoning regulations that exist but are inaccessible, and a contractor/lender ecosystem starving for pre-qualified leads. None of these groups have an efficient path to each other right now.
Our product is a Generative Graph that traverses Nashville's zoning data, takes an address as input, and outputs a binary feasibility score in under 30 seconds. The homeowner gets free clarity. The contractor gets a pre-qualified lead pipeline. The lender gets a HELOC-ready customer.
Our GTM is warm network traversal — we are not doing cold outreach. We mapped our pod's existing social graph and found the shortest paths to each cluster. We need 850 qualified homeowners to reach platform liquidity. We are customer discovering our way there right now."
Meme propagation theory maps directly onto viral coefficient. "Your lot qualifies!" is a meme — emotionally loaded, locally relevant, and spreads through neighbor networks. This is why your viral coefficient target is 2.0.
Competitive advantage comes from the DATA PIPELINE, not the algorithm. BackyardOne's moat is the zoning data graph — not the feasibility calculator. The calculator is easy to replicate. The graph is not.
Your Automated Feasibility Engine IS a RAG pipeline. Query = homeowner's address. Retrieval = Knowledge Graph lookup of Nashville zoning data. Generation = the feasibility score output. You are not just studying RAG — you are building it.
The zoning triples (Nashville R1 → requires → 5ft side setback) are the exact entity-relationship-entity structure from the survey. 100 triples for your Knowledge Architecture Doc (due before Session 5).