#61- Moonshots 🚀

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

- Les Brown

If you want to make a difference, don’t think about incremental. Think exponential.

Think 10x.

Think 100x.

Nobody cares about the ones settling for 2x.

If you can not shoot for the Moon, or Mars (since that’s a hot cake these days), why would anyone want to buy tickets to your ship? Folks today have private jets if they want to fly from Bombay to Boston. You think they will care about a better car ride from Street 1 to Street 2?

What if Netflix said “we will offer rates that are 25% cheaper than Blockbuster”?

What if Amazon said “we will offer 250 book titles more than Barnes & Noble”?

What if Apple said “we will offer phones that are 20% better than Nokia”?

You have to shoot for the Moon even when your customers do not know what the Moon is! If you can not have larger than life goals, how will you take your customers, team, investors with you?

• Lower prices can be competed away

• Shelf space can be competed away

• Incremental innovation can be competed away

You know what can not be easily competed away? Taking their game and turning it around.

If you can not aim for 10x, do not even bother entering a crowded space. You WILL be competed away.

But if you shoot for the Moon (i.e. your 100x), and still miss, you’ll have propelled so far off the surface of the earth where few can reach (say a 25x). The company of stars in the universe is better than the company of cars along the street.

Even if you shoot for the moon, take baby steps

As founders, you should rarely think small. Especially if you want to raise venture capital. Founders need to be torchbearers, bold and dramatic with their business taking the world with storm. Large scale change requires a maverick at the helm.

But is every founder a maverick? Unless you are a founder with a fantastic track record of venture building and value creation, you will struggle at some stage. It is highly unlikely you will have everything you need to bring the large scale change at all once.

Founders that have a clear vision of what large scale change they need to bring have a level of composure that founders with lack of clarity don’t. Thinking big is not just talking big game. But planning incremental steps to get towards that big goal.

If you are a cricketer wanting to score a century, you will not just go out and start hitting big shots. Theoretically all you need to do is hit a six off every ball you face and on the 17th ball, you’ll reach your century. But is this sustainable?

What if you miscue a shot? What if you get bowled trying hit a big one? What if you hit a big one but you get caught at the boundary?

Logically the shortest, fastest, most exciting way to get big runs is not the safest, sustainable or practical.

So what do you do? You tell yourself, lets break 100 runs down to 10 blocks of 10 each, and take it one ball at a time. Yes, you may not have a swashbuckling run rate of a Chris Gayle or wagon wheel of AB De Villers, but you may eventually get there.

As founders, you cant think, I’ll go out there and hit 20 runs. You are expected to bat for a century every time you pad up. But that does not mean you rush your way into your innings. Rushing can lead to wrong steps, shaky confidence, loss of opportunity and lower team morale.

Just as batsmen take it one ball at a time and get the strike moving, founders need to conduct small, short, frugal experiments to test if they are on the right track. Founders not conducting experiments leads to startups stagnating. But that does not mean you put all your energy behind going for that one six, because god forbid that’s a slow off cutter, all your energy may mean you get caught at deep mid wicket! So much for flamboyance.

Do not put your eggs in one experiment. Continuously keep testing your experiments.

Keep an eye on your score board and the bottom-line. Wasting 5 balls to hit a huge six on the last ball is not better than running 6 singles in 6 balls. Its vanity. Similarly conducting a thousand small experiments that do not tickle your bottom-line is almost like doing nothing.

But that’s not me saying you shouldn’t hit sixes. Wait till the risks are low, bowlers and fielders are tired, and you have enough runs on the board - then go all out. Similarly, sometimes the best thing for you may be to let your competitors tire out, spend their money, or learn from their mistakes. You never know what happens.

My friends, even Sachin started his innings at 0.