Moonshot companies achieve bold goals in 3 parts: leveraging ground-breaking technologies, leveraging them in radically creative solutions, and solving deep, systemic problems in the world. They’re the products of futurism and exigency and failure and uncertainty. They chase abundance, change, and 1,000x returns.
They strive for massive change rather than incremental steps forward.
They celebrate failure and navigate entrepreneurial complexity
Normal creativity is thinking in an original, artistic and combinatorial fashion. Is a mental framework and sub-level of consciousness unlocked by varying levels of passion, constraints, and cognition that drives oneself to create, connect, and continuously update ideas while acting upon them. Regular creativity is about making connections and associations with a linear assumption of the future.
Radical creativity assumes a nonlinear future or one with exponential possibilities instead of one that evolves incrementally. It’s radical because you make new things out of new things in a forward-thinking context.
Founders have a vibrant passion for the issue at hand, but systematically take it one chunk at a time with precise execution and a clear mind. Channel charisma into the work but also being an introspective, reflective leader.
They’re incredible technical and pragmatic while also being weird, unconventional and child-like
They adopt a growth mindset, or the everlasting desire to improve oneself morally, physically, and intellectually
Contrarian - reject popular opinions or assumptions and have the potential to spearhead an exponentially impactful progression of science
‘Dynamic optimism’ - rejects the judgement of whether the world is the best possible one, but rather embodies the motto ‘the world is pretty good, but we will make it better’
Futurists - attempt to explore predictions and possibilities about what’s to come. They dream big in a more pragmatic way. They extrapolate the potential patterns and how we will get there based on elements of reality and how we are progressing as a whole. Thinking about what products, markets, and ecosystems will look like and then trace backward what happens in the process of getting there.
Audacious - diligently and systemically going the extra mile and willingly taking risks that align with the original vision
Avoid the stormtrooper problem = when founding teams recruit multiple people who are pigeonholed within none field and only let those people work in problems solvable with their skillset.
You have a higher chance of succeeding if what you’re building is a natural extension of yourself or your purpose
The best founders are stubborn in the face of failure and are comfortable with uncertainty.
Being passionately dispassionate = balance between knowing when to be enthusiastic enough about a venture and continue through uncertainty and fear while remaining detached enough to know when to stop the flow of effort, capital and time.
The best founders are the ones that are intellectually honest because they don’t fool themselves. They hire really smart people around them and are not afraid to have smarter people that inspire them. They hold themselves accountable - they’re always quick with the bad news instead of constantly spinning positive news
Be positively negative, rationally skeptical, and heroically adaptable because success comes from the physical and intellectual growth rooted in that realisation.
Great founders are not risk-takers, but are rather risk-killers who hate risk and seek to spot it and stamp it out
Most people overlook the value of narrative building. It allows entrepreneurs to impart their vision onto others while maintaining credibility and signalling trustworthiness. This is especially important for all deep-tech founders due to the nature of their startup. Storytelling is the most timeless means of connection with another person