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Showing and coding: venture pitching and nonmaterial production

ABSTRACT This article explores practices of representation and role stabilization in an emerging innovation ecosystem in Beirut, Lebanon. With little local track record of software startup activity, any overt practices of venture or business process representation were of immediate utility. The two moments explored, a pitch session at a mentorship committee meeting and a startup founding competition, capture parts of the nascent topology of a venture development setting in the making. In both, pitches for software products were at the heart of the productive process, and this paper argues that these moments of performative representation were not surplus to the process of founding a startup, but rather are crucial productive elements in themselves. Early-stage software development consists of a constant oscillation between making and modeling. The interdependence of writing software code, stabilizing social platforms for work and industry development, and finding specialists who could relate these tasks was crucial to the development of this business ecosystem in Lebanon. It was a system in motion, built of code and confidence. The circulation of information crucial to decision making within a single project required distinct practices of publicity, which in turn required articulatory platforms.