Peter Diamandis + Adeo Ressi: How to Fund Radical Startup Ideas

Hi there, everyone. My name is Adeo Ressi. This is Peter Diamandis. We're in the same room, so this is going to be an amazing opportunity to discuss funding really revolutionary ideas face-to-face, able to answer questions in the audience. So I'm the CEO of the Founder Institute. We help companies all around the world get started. We take an aspiring founder with a job and we walk them through the steps necessary to build a business. We're enrolling in over 100 cities right now. Thanks everyone for joining in. And I'm honored to be joined by a dear friend of mine, Peter Diamandis. We just got off an amazing webinar to his audience. He's part of Singularity University and does Abundance 360. And other activities where he really helps people realize that the world is a lot more abundant than they think. And as chairman of the X Prize and many other great— you have Bold Capital. I can go on and on. And we were just talking about funding in a webinar with your audience. A lot of questions came up. So hopefully we'll get your questions. Do you want to add to your agenda, Kyle?

Sure. So you may know my work. I've written a few books, Abundance and Bold. Co-founded Singularity University with Ray Kurzweil and the XPRIZE Foundation, which I'm chairman of. I have a community of entrepreneurs in what's called Abundance Digital. We have about 3,000 entrepreneurs that I mentor on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, and we have a big event every January called Abundance 360. We talk about how exponential technologies are allowing us to really impact billion-person challenges, right? One of the things that we were just talking about is that the world's biggest problems are the world's biggest business opportunities, and the corollary to that, if you want to become a billionaire, help a billion people. And let's talk about that because the desire to do that is critically the first step. Coming up with a great idea and a team are the next steps, but capitalizing that big, bold, crazy idea is a difficult challenge.

Well, I mean, the XPRIZE essentially is a funding vehicle for bold ideas, right? The whole thesis isn't the prize money is how you fund it. It's that if you set a big enough prize, people can get funded in the attempt to win it. So there's the exponential funding factor.

So let's—

thus the X.

Let's put this in context. Here right now in 2019, We are in a period of capital abundance, right? If you look at the numbers, which I track on a regular basis, 2017 in the US, in Europe, in Asia, hit all-time highs in venture capital, angel funding, sovereign wealth fund. 2018, all-time highs again, and we're on track in 2019. So there's more capital flowing than ever before. It's a matter of how do you as the entrepreneur, as the founder, really create the vision, the case, the team, the story to attract that capital. Because ultimately capital, as we discussed, is a conveyance of trust and energy, those two things. So someone has to trust you and your idea and want to support you and your idea. And it's both of those things. It's you as the entrepreneur and you as the implementer of that idea. Because no one wants to back a great idea with a shitty entrepreneur as the leader. It's like, I don't want to, you know, you really want to care about that individual and what they want to do in the world.

Well, and so, and align with their vision and values. So your investor, you know, there's a lot of people in the world, so you may have an idea that's kind of strange by conventional standards, But it might find someone who has a symbiotic relationship with that idea or what you're trying to do. I mean, to be honest, when we were doing the first X Prize, Bert Rutan is a kooky guy. He lives in a pyramid because he thinks the aliens are coming. And Paul Allen funded him because of the prize. That's not the first funding you would ever expect, right? Paul Allen, Bert Rutan. Now, what ended up happening is the kooky nature of Bert happened to align with the kooky nature of Paul, and they had this kind of symbiosis.

Let's tell some funding stories along the way, I think, that give models for all of you to hear this. I'll just tell the X Prize. X Prize is 25 years old this year. It's hard to believe. 1994, you know, it's an idea. I read Spirit of St. Louis, come up with this idea of creating a prize, $10 million prize. I don't have $10 million at the time. And so I, you know, the first funding was out of my pocket, right?

By the way, I just want to— what you just said is so important that we need to just hark on this for a moment. You launched a $10 million prize without $10 million. Now that sounds like, really? But first of all, we did eventually give away the $10 million. But he didn't have the money.

Well, I'll step up to that. So in the beginning, it was me funding my own stuff out of my own pocket. And then I started getting checks for $50, $100 from friends, from family. And then at some point, the realization was that this is going to be real. We need to raise additional capital. And we ended up creating a level. For a nonprofit. And this is also true for for-profits, but again, it's transfer of energy and trust. And we ended up creating something called the New Spirit of St. Louis organization. These would be individuals who would contribute $25,000 at the time, which was the amount of money that Lindbergh raised to build his airplane. And we got a bunch of crazy-ass people, including this man who was one of my first New Spirit of St. Louis—

I still have the medallion.

$25K donors. And we ended up raising about $500,000 at $25K at a time. And that was our sort of like our early, early angel investors, so to speak, in the nonprofit world. But we stalled at raising money and we did something kind of ballsy, which was we decided to use the $500,000 we had raised to announce the prize under the arch in St. Louis without having the $10 million. Because I was absolutely, positively sure that someone would want to pay the $10 million after it's won. And let me pass an interesting idea of how you announce your big, bold, crazy idea. Because I think it's important for anybody who wants to do something significant in life. So we decided we're going to announce the XPRIZE, and it needed to be in a way that people believed it was possible. So in all of our minds, we have this line of credibility. And if you announce an idea below the line of credibility, in other words, it's announced in a way that's not credible in people's minds, people dismiss it out of hand. And if you launch it above the line of credibility, they're going to wait and watch and see, is this happening or not happening? We also have in our minds a line of super credibility. And when you hear about an idea above the line of super credibility, you go, wow, how can I be part of that?

And so I love that credibility and super credibility. And uncredible as well.

And then, yeah, you know, bouncing off the ground. So on May 18th, 1996, we're going to spend the half million dollars we raised announcing the competition. So we set up this amazing dais under the arch in St. Louis, and on stage we had 20 astronauts. We had the head of NASA, the head of the FAA, the Lindbergh family, We announced this prize with hundreds of TV cameras around the world. No one asked, "Do you have the money?" which we did not. "Do you have the teams registered?" which we did not. It was ballsy, but I'd committed my life to doing that. Long story short, it took another 5 years to find the Ansari family, Anoushe Ansari, who ended up funding the prize. I won't go into more details right now. It's a long story. There's a great biography on this called How to Make a Spaceship. Adeo, you and I spent so many— I mean, we pitched hundreds of CEOs. I pitched Richard Branson twice. I mean, it was crazy.

The super credibility is a very interesting point.

It's an important idea. So when you have a big, bold idea, how you announce it— And how you make it look credible. You make it look credible by who's by your side, your board, your advisors. Where you announce it, what elements, what partnerships you announce, how you convey your message, how you even look when you're announcing it. All these things.

The logo, the right—

The logo, and all of these things add to people's credibility, 'cause people, like it or not, are judgy instantly. They make an instant judgment, and it's hard to regain that if you've lost it.

Right, yeah, it's really like it's how you dress or whatever. I was coming in today, I know, no offense, I normally don't wear a jacket, like, you know, I'm usually pretty laid back, especially in LA. But I'm like, okay, I'm on a webinar, I'm gonna see a lot of my friends I haven't seen, I'm gonna wear a jacket, I'm gonna dress a little nicer.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

But like, it's first impressions are lasting impressions. And especially in the startup and the crazy idea world, if your idea is crazily enough. You don't need to add to the craziness by making it seem less credible.

If you have a traditional idea but you're an edgy individual, maybe it's your edginess that makes people believe you can do that traditional idea better.

Right. But it's the exact opposite when you have a crazy idea. You need to look the part of being a serious player, otherwise it's going to be almost impossible. to raise money from donors or anything.

And by the way, one of the things that— to use the X Prize as an example again— is by virtue of getting 20 astronauts on the stage and the head of NASA, the head of the FAA, there was a lot of work that went into that. It wasn't like I just called and said, "Hey, Dan, would you show up, please?" And I knew the head of NASA, I knew the head of FAA, I knew these astronauts, but convincing them to lend me their credibility, their trust, their energy, meant that people could depend on that to give validity to me and that idea. So all of this works together.

There's some good questions coming in.

Yeah, let's—

so I try to weave them in so we'll get some questions related to credibility.

So that's the fun part.

Caitlin was asking, do you— what do you think the role of social media is as part of building these credibility? And then Victoria's got a good one next.

Yeah, so I mean, social media is There's the milieu of what the world is saying about something. You know, if the world, meaning your social following, is bending negative towards an idea, you're going to spend a lot of your time trying to dig out of that hole. Yeah. Versus if it's trending positive and people are complimentary and they're retweeting you and so forth. So understanding how you play into the social media and Back when we launched the X Prize, there was no social media. We were playing to the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

So social, I think that's an interesting way to look at it. It's more like an early barometer if you got it right or wrong. And if it is leaning negative, I think you should refactor before you try to push something further. Yeah, agreed. And then this one was great from Victoria. Do you know the Fyre Festival story?

I do. I do.

So like, the super credibility, how does that Well, because there's— The flyer looks super credible.

I mean, there's also the whole Theranos story, right? I mean, so listen, there are— there's no question that for every super credible, you know, 10 super credible ideas, there are going to be a few that are scams or start off super credibly and fool people and then are, you know, digging a hole. And it just is. Hopefully, we're not gonna—

I don't know where Theranos falls in this. I mean, it definitely was not real, but then, you know, you can argue every single thing, you know, every startup. Every startup's real.

Yeah, that's right.

Right, so, but I think there was a point where like, you know, you gotta be honest. Okay, it's not real yet. And they never had that come to Jesus moment. They just kind of perpetuated it.

Well, you ended up with a CEO who kept on hiding things and kept on, you know— Exactly.

And that real, like being real is, a light just fell by the way.

So I'm like, whoa, but we're still alive.

So yeah, I mean, and there's a fake it till you make it component. And you know, but so let's not go down too deep that past that state. And it kind of goes to what does a serious player look like, which is the next thing. And this is where the danger of gaming it comes in. You know, you mentioned this before, and if you want to just recap them, you know, you get on stage, what do you look like if you're serious? Your language, your branding, the people around you.

I mean, so I have spent a lot of time in my life starting what I'll call bold companies. In fact, my second book, Bold, was how to, how to, how to go big, create wealth and impact the world. And it's the story of how you do that at scale. And then the XPRIZE is all about how do we do big, bold things. And I think, first of all, it's valuable to make sure that your company, your project falls within the laws of physics. Right?

It's not total— yeah. We're going to transmute matter from A to B.

And, you know, our mutual friend Elon talks about this in terms of first principle thinking, that it's great to look at what you're doing from a first principles point of view. That it makes sense from that perspective. And then the question is, do you, your team, your investors, your advisors as a group have the wherewithal to implement what you're doing? And ultimately, can you stage it? So another one of my early companies and successes was I created something called the International Space University. It's my first university. I went from there to create Singularity University. And all of these things were staged. And so You know, at Singularity University, for example, we had a founding conference, and I borrowed NASA. Pete Worden, a friend of mine, was heading Moffett Field, the Ames research facility there. We borrowed that facility because it was a super credible location, and I had, you know, 100 CEOs from the Valley, including Larry Page, there, and we had people speak, and we created a founding event. Which was just a day. But enough of the right people were at the event saying enough of the right things that we raised the money to run the first GSP program. And then we ran executive programs and it grew and it grew and it grew. But it was staged and we were able to accomplish the very first stage within the means that we had as a team, capital, board. And then based on its success, people saw us succeed and said, okay, I'm gonna back the next thing. So You know, we're talking about the mind and the heart. Your heart wants the big vision. Your mind wants to go 0 to 1.

Or even less, maybe 0 to 0.1.

And so staging your ideas and staging the capital required but having the long vision as part of that is an important part of the equation. That's a lot of what I teach.

We have so many questions, but I want to just drill into this one. one second, right? Because, right, you just brought it up beautifully. Like, your heart wants to go big, your mind wants to go small. And oftentimes I've found that entrepreneurs actually think too small. I know you definitely have people who think too big, but I would say more— because now there are many more entrepreneurs than ever before in history— I see a lot of people thinking too small.

You, you need both, and, and you need to have what I call— so in my abundance digital entrepreneurial community, I have something we talk about a lot, which is your— what's your massively transformative purpose? What's your MTP? What is the thing that in life you want to do more than anything else? What keeps you going at night? What wakes you up in the morning? At the end of your life— and I'm a big believer in longevity, so that's many, you know, a couple centuries from now— but what do you want to What is it that gives you purpose and meaning? Not on a small scale, on a massive scale. And then within that MTP, I think of the MTPs as your canvas. Within that MTP, what are your moonshots? And the moonshot is relative to where you are in life. A moonshot can be— I'll give an example. My first massively transformative purpose was space, opening up space and making multi-planetary species. My first moonshot was I wanted to create a zero-G company, right, to allow— which we did, and we have flown together a number of times on it. And it was hard to create a— you know, get FAA permission to do an airplane that goes like this, and you're waitlisted for 30 seconds. The next moonshot was X Prize, which we did together. And so— but those were relatively two different orders of magnitude, but they came in different stages in life. So, but your MTP needs to light you up and it can't be a small thing. It needs to be a big thing and then within that canvas you can pick stage things.

Right. Well, do you want to, speaking of which, for the community, do you want to paste in the chat, we're doing a discounted link for everyone to join and I would encourage everyone to consider joining the community.

So Abundance Digital is my community. We, I do 4 webinars a month and we have an amazing app that I'm active in daily and weekly. And then we do a 3-day summit every year in January called Abundance 360, which digital members have access to. And for the founders, the Founder Institute members and those of you here, we have a 50% off for that. It's normally $1,500 a year. It's 50% off for that. And we'll, the code is founder. and we'll chat the, uh, put in the chat the, uh, my team.

And we're in, we're in LA at the XPRIZE Foundation, and then we have teams here, teams. It's pretty awesome. I love that. I love that. And a great audience. We have so many audience questions too. So let's go back, guys. We're going to try and get to everyone's questions. So I like to, you know, there's a question about the board. Let's go to speaking publicly about an idea because this is interesting. Like, when do you want to go public with your idea? And that's from Leon.

So Leon, that's a really important question because going public gives you instant feedback and you have to do your homework and feel strong enough about your idea to share it publicly. So I think one of the most important critical attributes of a founder, of an entrepreneur, is your storytelling skills, your ability to convey with passion and conviction what you want to create in the world. And you can tell it as a multi-stage story, like this is the first step, the second step, but ultimately this is where we're going. And so I think that's something you do early on. You don't bullshit. You don't try and overdo, but you can be clear about— it's like talking about your feelings. You can be clear about what your goal is, what your vision is, and I'm looking for people to support me on this.

This is where we are.

And we're, you know, if you're staging your idea, like we're putting together a conference to study this idea, you can talk with conviction about the conference, which you can do, and then say, we're going to— this is our second step and our third step. But what do you—

what do you Yeah, so I, you know, and there are other questions on this. So let me tell you, by the way, yes. And so belief to me is the new currency of success. And but belief, it's not like blah, blah, blah, and everyone believes. You have almost like a growing network of believers. So at first, you, you need to believe in the idea and what you're saying, right? So you're the first believer that you need to convert. But then you're going to have team members, co-founders, and other people. So I look at the way you tell the story almost like circles of belief. So the first people that you need to get to believe in your idea are the team members and co-founders. Then maybe you want to get some investors to believe in the idea. Then maybe you want to get some customers to believe in the idea. Then you might want to get like more of the public to believe in the idea. And so to some extent, I look at who you talk to as a concentric ring of circles that expand over time, and you're getting people to believe, to your point, what you're trying to say. And one of the other— and at what point in the startup journey do you recommend entrepreneur pitches for funding?

So listen, you're pitching yourself for funding at the very beginning, right? If you're putting your time and energy on nights and weekends into your idea, that is ultimately a pitch for funding. But I think, you know, people— you have to be careful about whether people are telling you something that you want to hear or they're telling you the truth. I remember I was on stage at a Goldman Sachs event with Elon and I was interviewing him and he said something which was really powerful. He said, you know, my friends tell me how great things are, my best friends tell me how shitty things are.

Ah, that might be me. I might be good.

But no, but the point being that, you know, for someone to really tell you what's wrong with something is valuable.

So I just had this— I had a discussion with a friend of mine about this very point. A lot of people don't want it. A lot of people who raise and like, you're so great, Peter, everything's amazing. And like, if they don't hear that, they're like, oh, And like, but it's okay. Don't take it personally.

My point is that when you ask someone for capital, it's a truth barometer, meaning people can give you lots of compliments. When it comes time to giving you money, they have to actually believe in you and your idea. So you want, you know, raising capital in the beginning when you're ready, not taking money before you're ready, before you're sure that you're committed to the idea. You don't want to get committed to the idea because someone gave you money and you feel guilty. You want to be committed to the idea because it's where you want to passionately create a difference in the world and commit your time and your life. And if you've done that, if you've convinced yourself, and then— and you're willing to put your own money in, by the way, alongside investors, even if it's $100 or $1,000 or $100,000, whatever you're capable of— then it's time for you to ask other folks to see what they truly feel.

And yeah, I agree 100%. So like you commit first, but there's some benchmarks of progress that, you know, I would say if you're looking for outsiders to give you money, you're essentially doing this belief test. Money is the measurement, right? Trust. So it would be good if you can get other people, advisors, team members to believe first as a litmus test for that. Tons of questions coming in, and keep them coming. We'll do our best to answer them all. Babacar, I hope I'm pronouncing your name right, was asking about how to convince good people to join you. And then, you know, because we were just talking about this, like, before you get money, it's good to get people. How do you convince the best people? So for anyone who doesn't know, whatever you want to say about Peter Diamandis, I can tell you one thing is true. You have some of the brightest minds of humanity. Thank you.

Thank you. I feel grateful. Like this guy.

I don't know about that, but I can tell you he's done a fabulous job.

So how do you do it? I think it is, you have to first and foremost, line 1, page 1, is you have to believe yourself. You can't be bullshitting anything. If you don't have full conviction, because when I speak about what I'm doing, it is from the heart. And I am so convicted that— that's not the right— so convicted, whatever. Convicted.

Yeah, you are. You're convicted to your convictions.

It has to come across with absolute authenticity from your heart and mind. That's the first and most important thing. And then you have to be a good storyteller. You have to be able to convey your idea and what you want to create in a way that is that we talk through story to each other.

Well, so let's talk about you for a minute because I was convinced by you many times and I believe you, but sometimes the stories are kind of crazy because if I go tell people what I'm doing and let's say I'm funding the X Prize, I'm like, I'm funding the X Prize. What is that? We're going to launch people privately to space. They're like, pfft, like really? They're like, you must be really stupid. And I bought into your, you know, you commit. So I think you're exactly right. First and foremost, it's like, this guy is gonna do it because he is so passionate. And then you take me through the, let me just tell you the two things. And then you sort of take me through, you're like, here's how we're gonna do it. And it is a crazy destination. And the plan might even be a little bit crazy. But once I have the conviction, and a crazy but realistic plan, those two together create credibility.

They absolutely do. And I did my research, right? I understood the details, every prize before. I also was clear that—

Yeah, you knew what you were talking about.

I knew what I was talking about. I knew cold what I was talking about. I also was clear that I was willing to commit my life to this, right? And we talked about this a little bit earlier.

And you knew the risks.

Yes. Companies end when an entrepreneur gives up, and there are reasons that an entrepreneur should give up on the idea. There are rational reasons there, but when— there are times in my companies where it is through the, you know, the trough of despair, and I'm the one not giving up and pulling the organization through, or me and my co-founders are, Ultimately, those difficult ideas, you need to be convinced that you're going to see them through. I jokingly say a lot of these have been overnight successes after 11 years of hard work.

That's the new saying in entrepreneurship. If you're not, I was an overnight success, just 9 years old. Memphis Meats, I was like, "Oh, what a great success story. It came out of nowhere." It's like, no, the company's like, 10 years old or something like that. And you hear this all the time, like, wow, Slack, it's so big. It's like, when? So you sort of think something came out when you first read about it or sometimes when you first use it, but a lot of times it's been around for years and years ruminating or in some back office somewhere. But it's a tough journey. Let's go on to, when you talk to investors, Chloe's asking, Should you tell them about your moonshot? Is it worth to include these sort of bigger— and I think what Chloe's getting to, which I see a lot, is people will have a very big idea over here, like on screen over here, but they'll sort of tell you about their small idea over here. And I get a little— I always say don't do A to do B, but I'd love your here thoughts.

Yeah, listen, I think that investors like investing in in entrepreneurs, first of all, who they like and they want to back. And, you know, rather than investing in someone who's got a dream of a photo sharing app, if someone wants to capture carbon out of the atmosphere, that's a big, you know, but I also want to invest in someone who knows that that's a big crazy moonshot, but has a plan for the first step to generate revenue. So I think it's both telling the heart and the mind, so here's my moonshot, here's our big vision, this is why this marketplace is so important, and this is the first thing we're doing where we're going to generate revenue and build a revenue-generating company. It's tough if you have to raise $1 billion before you earn your first dollar. And that— Yeah, and that—

Frederick is asking somewhat related— there's so many related questions. Thank you guys for the questions. Keep them coming in. We'll try and get to as many as possible. How do you convince funders about the creation of a new market? So you're saying like, okay, like they've got a, they like the moonshot, they like this, but sometimes they're like, I don't know if it's real or not. I like you. I want to capture carbon, but can you actually make money capturing carbon?

Yeah, so it's, I think you've got to connect and say this is the big long-term market and here's first principle thinking as to why this is going to be important, right? But, uh, this is where we can generate revenue today. And in generating revenue—

your example, carbon capture, is kind of a great one. Like, I, I don't even know. I mean, there's some carbon trading. I mean, there's—

listen, carbon right now is $300 a ton, uh, to capture, and the market is paying at $30 a ton. So you need to reduce it down to below $30 a ton. And if you can use technology to do that, then there's a great marketplace for it because the globe wants it, needs it, and so forth. So how do you paint the long-term picture and the near-term reality? And that's where being a good entrepreneur innovator comes in.

Right, because that's a tricky one right there. This could also be a source of the prize, but like the market price is up here for doing, getting it captured. The cost to pay for it is down here.

But we can use the example of solar energy, right? So it was, you know, solar Power today is coming in amazingly at under 2 pennies per kilowatt hour down in mostly South and Central America, and it used to be 200 times that. But someone could say from a first principles thinking, "Look, the Earth is bathed in 6,000 times more energy from the sun than we consume as a species. Earth's consumption of energy is growing exponentially as people become more and more abundant." And if we can bring the price of solar down sufficiently, it will outdo petroleum and coal and everything else. And it's true, and that is playing out. And so it's really—

Well, that was in the '90s, like people were talking about that in the '90s, now it's 2019, so call it, that's a 20 to 25-year vision.

It is, but could people have identified solar markets that were unique and where even the high price of solar was useful, sure. And it's been— oh, space is one for sure. And there's been unique locations. So it's a matter of how do you stage it? How do you become the world's expert? And by the way, there's also the danger, just to be clear, of being 10 or 20 years ahead of your time.

Too early, right?

There's a great talk.

But I think solar is a great analogy because if you maybe 5 or 10 years ago with the vision you just outlined, you'd be right time to if you could find some steps. So I think you're exactly right. Some of these markets, back to the question, are pretty tricky. Do your best at painting that step picture to answer Frederick's question and see where you go. I also like, you know, there are a lot of questions about where to find the funders, right? There were some earlier, some coming up again, like where do you find the angels? There's another one, where do you find the VCs, you know?

First of all, you need to be a great networker. It really is, and you and I talked about this earlier. It is time as the CEO, as the founder. CEO stands for the cash extraction officer, and it's your job to meet as many people as you can. It's going to conferences, going to events. It's doing your research, and it's, you know, there Obviously, and the Founder Institute knows this well, there are lots of angel investing organizations, there's venture capital. Again, there's a lot of capital looking for investments. Your job as a founder, as a CEO, is to know your stuff well enough and to have your story clear enough and to have built your team enough where you become an attractive place where people who want to put money You're not trying to go and convince someone to become an investor. You're finding people who are ready angel investors, venture investors, and who've got money they need to put to work, right? And your job is to become the most attractive place for them to put that money to work.

Right, and let's dive into that because that's the subject here of the webinar, and there's another set of questions relating to the idea side, but let's stay on the funding side. So We're talking about moonshot ideas in many cases, big, big ideas. And we're talking about things that have longer time horizons. And there's a time horizon problem we have in the investing world. And that's compounded with some of these moonshot ideas.

Yes.

Right. Just for those who don't know, right now, 10 years is what it's taking companies to start matriculating real value. You see some faster, but let's say that's where it's happening. And most funds only have a 10-year life cycle. Life. So there we're running into like fund construction problems where the model of venture funding doesn't work for the modern-day company. But this is compounded when you're working on a moonshot, which might be 15 or 20 years. And I'd love to hear your thoughts about that dilemma.

So I think what you need to do, again, it's you can have your moonshot, but what do you, what is your first business? I mean, I love And what I teach my entrepreneurs is, can you start companies that are cash flow positive from the beginning? And that's a difficult job if you're also doing a moonshot because the two don't overlap. And so part of it, a moonshot can be a directional area. Again, you've got a canvas, right, of your massively transformative purpose. A moonshot can be on that canvas and can you create something that allows you to start building a team and expertise and customers. So for example, you know, a great example here is what Jeff Bezos did with Amazon, right? When Amazon was built selling books, it was a brilliant first product. You know, there's an old tale that he connected a bell to a server that every time a book was sold, the bell would go off. And it was like ding, ding, and eventually ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and it was like, you know, went crazy. But You can, in the early days, generate revenue or generate increasing sales or show virality. All of those things that show positive movement are valuable towards an exit eventually. You don't have to be profitable. You can just be virally growing to get there. Profitability is— Exit.

You brought up exits. Should we go into exiting a moonshot? I don't even know what that is. Is like, do you want to exit something that's making the world?

Like, all right, I mean, getting liquidity for you, for your investors, for your employees, and so forth. So why don't you— I mean, Elon didn't want to take Tesla public, and he hasn't taken SpaceX public.

I don't know.

But Bezos has benefited amazingly from taking Amazon public, right? All of these things are different, but let's be clear that taking on a moonshot is really difficult. Having— creating a successful business is really difficult, right? And now the question is, what do you want to become an expert in, in doing that? And what I advise my entrepreneurs is become an expert in the problem space, not the solution technology, because this is kind of— solution technology is always changing. If you know the problem space, you know, I do a lot of stuff. I