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One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots. I don't know of any other organization that is nearly as supportive of id

One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots. I don't know of any other organization that is nearly as supportive of ideas that would literally be called crazy other places. 3.5 years ago my cofounder were working on what was actually becoming an okay telecom referral business at the YC Fellowship, but my cofounder and I weren't happy. Pretty much every partner there enthusiastically told us that we should definitely consider doing our totally insane idea to try and bring modernized commercial agriculture to smallholder farmers in subsaharan Africa. We started our moonshot and it's still growing. I think the only people who really believed in us were us and my parents and a couple YC partners, and a couple people at Accion Venture Labs. That was all we needed though. By the way, I still think our company is a moonshot. Starting a moonshot company is stressful, it's foolish, it's a thousand mistakes to crawl out of, and by far the most rewarding professional decision I've ever made. Any moonshot worth taking will have a real shot at changing the course of human history, and I'm much happier to have a 0.5% chance of ending hunger then to have a 30% chance of a medium amount of wealth.

bredren 8y ago
I’ve raised for and run two moonshot concepts that failed. Now I work on an enterprise saa. Much happier with the saas, but maybe it is a life stage thing.
- probe 8y ago
  Really fascinating - can you talk a little bit more about your experiences? You always hear about trying moonshots but I’ve never heard someone who went reverse and was happier!
  - Judgmentality 8y ago
    I can't speak for the person you're responding to, but as someone who also started (and failed) a moonshot company I can chime in. To grossly oversimplify, failure (especially when you put everything into something) can make people jaded. The breaking point for everyone is different, but eventually you just don't want to try the pie-in-the-sky idea because you remember how painful the failure is, how many years of your life you lost, how many relationships damaged or ruined, personal debts accrued, etcetera. At some point you want to minimize stress and just take an easy job that pays a shitload of money and you value your free time more than your career.
    - JimboOmega 8y ago
      But I've been wondering, why not make the shitload of money first, and once you've got many years saved, then go off and do a moonshot? The usual explanation is something about lifestyle and mortgages and children and so on, but whether you earn the money in your 20s and do a moonshot in your 30s, or do the moonshot in your 20s and earn money in your 30s, don't you wind up at the same place either way?
      - maehwasu 8y ago
        The answer is that you’re right. I did the money first, and since then working on moonshot stuff has been a lot more enjoyable that what I typically see here. The challenge and stress of the moonshot never goes away, but the stress is more “intense trek through the mountains” and less “my family is going to starve and my friends hate me. “
        Smirnoff 8y ago
        "Intense trek through the mountains" is more like a vacation when you go through real stress while building your company.
      - badestrand 8y ago
        > why not make the shitload of money first Because it is very very hard to get to "fuck you"-money and passive income often isn't quite as passive as it seems.
      - estsauver 8y ago
        I think the darker take on it is that as you get older you realize that things are harder and you're not as dumb. Mortgages and children are a polite way of saying "I know how stupidly hard that is, I like spending time with my wife and kids and family and I'm going to actively choose a quality life over an impactful life." I tell people to only start a startup, and definitely only start a moonshot startup if you can't help but let your ambition destroy your happiness. Things at Apollo are going really well, and it has been ~5x more stressful than when I was working at a really fast paced and successful US company. It's probably ~15x more stressful than when I was working at a laid back US tech company. You do it because you have to see what you're building in the world.
  - earthshot 8y ago
    I went the other way. I did a moonshot, made great connections, had a few years of fun, learned tons, but also had horrible years and had no financial security after a decade of unceasing work. I managed to get a mid level leadership role for a huge tech company. I no longer think about mortgages or tuition, I’m a million times less stressed out, and I enjoy my life. It’s common but it’s not “sexy” to say fuck it, I want a sure thing for a while.
- estsauver 8y ago
  Totally, I can't imagine having started this business and moving to Nairobi with a couple kids and a mortgage. I think moonshot businesses are in many ways the privilege of the young and at least modestly financially stable.
billydbones 8y ago
Earl I’m so so glad you did, and it’s been such a fun ride to witness. +1 to your experience of the role YC plays, and +1 to what y’all are doing at Apollo
- estsauver 8y ago
  Thanks!
onetimemanytime 8y ago
>>One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots. On the other hand, it's not like they're betting the farm on a moonshot. They've funded over 1400 companies so they can afford to take chances, $150K for 7%. Who knows...after all they make their money of very few companies.
IshKebab 8y ago
I'm not sure I'd call that a moonshot. Difficult and maybe crazy, but modern agriculture clearly already exists and works, unlike driverless cars for example.
- estsauver 8y ago
  I mean... we're trying to end human hunger for a few hundred million people. Thank you for believing in us? No one has ever told me that it sounds more plausible than driverless cars. I'm torn between puffing up my chest and taking the compliment.
  - FBT 8y ago
    It is true: right at this very moment, billions of people have enough food do eat. It is a worthy task to try to extend that to the hundreds of millions who are not there yet, but it's hardly something that has never been done before, unlike driverless cars. That doesn't mean it will be any easier (or harder), but it does mean that it is less of a "moonshot".
    - estsauver 8y ago
      Yah, it might also be different connotations on moonshot. If you believe a moonshot has to be something new + unlikely/hard then it's definitely not a moonshot. If you think a moonshot is something that's just incredibly unlikely but potentially super valuable, it definitely is. Empirically, at least two investors who had put money into successful early-stage driverless cars and one who put money early into Planet Labs thought what we were doing was going to be harder. For some VCs, Africa might as well be the moon.
      - Firadeoclus 8y ago
        To me one implication of a moonshot is that you're aiming to hit a small target, and a miss is a miss no matter how close you get. You made "end[ing] human hunger for a few hundred million people" your goal, but it isn't the case that anything short of that equals complete failure. Even if you only got a fraction of the way that'd be a massive success in my view.
Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
They're VCs. They have to bet on moonshots, because they bet on a lot of companies, most of which fail. If they don't bet on crazy ideas, it means the few that succeed, will only succeed like a "regular" company would succeed - with some nice just above positive cashflow, growing in the next 20 years to somewhat sustainable business - nice and slow. This will not fuel financing other 100s of companies that have failed. What they need in every company they fund is at least a potential of astronomical exponential fast growth, if it succeeds. That's why many of these can be called "moonshots". If the upside in a company is only to be "mildly successful" - they are not for VCs. The upside has to be explosive (even if there is a low chance of it).
- estsauver 8y ago
  Yah, but I don't know if it's really fair to lump all VC businesses into the same bucket. Weebly and Boom don't same like the same kind of risk.
  - tim333 8y ago
    Also YC seems to have changed in that regard under Sam Altman compared to PG. The old YC did very well with web startups like Airbnb and Reddit but they didn't have the nuclear fusion and supersonic aircraft. It remains to be seem if YC succeeds with the latter stuff but well done to them for trying.
giarc 8y ago
>One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots. I have never seen YC as a company investing in moonshots. Most of the companies that get accepted seem to be building products for developers or similar saas businesses. Some of their recent biotech investments are a bit more cutting edge, but full of moonshots, YC is not.
- tim333 8y ago
  It's hard to keep up with all the companies they have funded but looking briefly here are a few along those lines: Momentus - space propulsion, handy I guess for shooting towards the moon Cruise and Embark - self driving cars and trucks Helion and UPower - nuclear fusion and fission Boom - supersonic aircraft Ginko and Atomwise - custom designed organisms and drugs Rigetti - quantum computing Nectome - mind uploading and I'm sure there are quite a few more

bredren 8y ago

I’ve raised for and run two moonshot concepts that failed. Now I work on an enterprise saa. Much happier with the saas, but maybe it is a life stage thing.

probe 8y ago
Really fascinating - can you talk a little bit more about your experiences? You always hear about trying moonshots but I’ve never heard someone who went reverse and was happier!
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  I can't speak for the person you're responding to, but as someone who also started (and failed) a moonshot company I can chime in. To grossly oversimplify, failure (especially when you put everything into something) can make people jaded. The breaking point for everyone is different, but eventually you just don't want to try the pie-in-the-sky idea because you remember how painful the failure is, how many years of your life you lost, how many relationships damaged or ruined, personal debts accrued, etcetera. At some point you want to minimize stress and just take an easy job that pays a shitload of money and you value your free time more than your career.
  - JimboOmega 8y ago
    But I've been wondering, why not make the shitload of money first, and once you've got many years saved, then go off and do a moonshot? The usual explanation is something about lifestyle and mortgages and children and so on, but whether you earn the money in your 20s and do a moonshot in your 30s, or do the moonshot in your 20s and earn money in your 30s, don't you wind up at the same place either way?
    - maehwasu 8y ago
      The answer is that you’re right. I did the money first, and since then working on moonshot stuff has been a lot more enjoyable that what I typically see here. The challenge and stress of the moonshot never goes away, but the stress is more “intense trek through the mountains” and less “my family is going to starve and my friends hate me. “
      - Smirnoff 8y ago
        "Intense trek through the mountains" is more like a vacation when you go through real stress while building your company.
    - badestrand 8y ago
      > why not make the shitload of money first Because it is very very hard to get to "fuck you"-money and passive income often isn't quite as passive as it seems.
    - estsauver 8y ago
      I think the darker take on it is that as you get older you realize that things are harder and you're not as dumb. Mortgages and children are a polite way of saying "I know how stupidly hard that is, I like spending time with my wife and kids and family and I'm going to actively choose a quality life over an impactful life." I tell people to only start a startup, and definitely only start a moonshot startup if you can't help but let your ambition destroy your happiness. Things at Apollo are going really well, and it has been ~5x more stressful than when I was working at a really fast paced and successful US company. It's probably ~15x more stressful than when I was working at a laid back US tech company. You do it because you have to see what you're building in the world.
- earthshot 8y ago
  I went the other way. I did a moonshot, made great connections, had a few years of fun, learned tons, but also had horrible years and had no financial security after a decade of unceasing work. I managed to get a mid level leadership role for a huge tech company. I no longer think about mortgages or tuition, I’m a million times less stressed out, and I enjoy my life. It’s common but it’s not “sexy” to say fuck it, I want a sure thing for a while.
estsauver 8y ago
Totally, I can't imagine having started this business and moving to Nairobi with a couple kids and a mortgage. I think moonshot businesses are in many ways the privilege of the young and at least modestly financially stable.

billydbones 8y ago

Earl I’m so so glad you did, and it’s been such a fun ride to witness. +1 to your experience of the role YC plays, and +1 to what y’all are doing at Apollo

estsauver 8y ago
Thanks!

onetimemanytime 8y ago

>>One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots. On the other hand, it's not like they're betting the farm on a moonshot. They've funded over 1400 companies so they can afford to take chances, $150K for 7%. Who knows...after all they make their money of very few companies.

IshKebab 8y ago

I'm not sure I'd call that a moonshot. Difficult and maybe crazy, but modern agriculture clearly already exists and works, unlike driverless cars for example.

estsauver 8y ago
I mean... we're trying to end human hunger for a few hundred million people. Thank you for believing in us? No one has ever told me that it sounds more plausible than driverless cars. I'm torn between puffing up my chest and taking the compliment.
- FBT 8y ago
  It is true: right at this very moment, billions of people have enough food do eat. It is a worthy task to try to extend that to the hundreds of millions who are not there yet, but it's hardly something that has never been done before, unlike driverless cars. That doesn't mean it will be any easier (or harder), but it does mean that it is less of a "moonshot".
  - estsauver 8y ago
    Yah, it might also be different connotations on moonshot. If you believe a moonshot has to be something new + unlikely/hard then it's definitely not a moonshot. If you think a moonshot is something that's just incredibly unlikely but potentially super valuable, it definitely is. Empirically, at least two investors who had put money into successful early-stage driverless cars and one who put money early into Planet Labs thought what we were doing was going to be harder. For some VCs, Africa might as well be the moon.
    - Firadeoclus 8y ago
      To me one implication of a moonshot is that you're aiming to hit a small target, and a miss is a miss no matter how close you get. You made "end[ing] human hunger for a few hundred million people" your goal, but it isn't the case that anything short of that equals complete failure. Even if you only got a fraction of the way that'd be a massive success in my view.

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago

They're VCs. They have to bet on moonshots, because they bet on a lot of companies, most of which fail. If they don't bet on crazy ideas, it means the few that succeed, will only succeed like a "regular" company would succeed - with some nice just above positive cashflow, growing in the next 20 years to somewhat sustainable business - nice and slow. This will not fuel financing other 100s of companies that have failed. What they need in every company they fund is at least a potential of astronomical exponential fast growth, if it succeeds. That's why many of these can be called "moonshots". If the upside in a company is only to be "mildly successful" - they are not for VCs. The upside has to be explosive (even if there is a low chance of it).

estsauver 8y ago
Yah, but I don't know if it's really fair to lump all VC businesses into the same bucket. Weebly and Boom don't same like the same kind of risk.
- tim333 8y ago
  Also YC seems to have changed in that regard under Sam Altman compared to PG. The old YC did very well with web startups like Airbnb and Reddit but they didn't have the nuclear fusion and supersonic aircraft. It remains to be seem if YC succeeds with the latter stuff but well done to them for trying.

giarc 8y ago

>One of the excellent things about YC is how they are completely unphased by moonshots. I have never seen YC as a company investing in moonshots. Most of the companies that get accepted seem to be building products for developers or similar saas businesses. Some of their recent biotech investments are a bit more cutting edge, but full of moonshots, YC is not.

tim333 8y ago
It's hard to keep up with all the companies they have funded but looking briefly here are a few along those lines: Momentus - space propulsion, handy I guess for shooting towards the moon Cruise and Embark - self driving cars and trucks Helion and UPower - nuclear fusion and fission Boom - supersonic aircraft Ginko and Atomwise - custom designed organisms and drugs Rigetti - quantum computing Nectome - mind uploading and I'm sure there are quite a few more