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The mountain climbing is also amusing since, in my experience, running moonshots needs someone who is inherently lazy. Driven, yes, but also lazy. You don't wan

The mountain climbing is also amusing since, in my experience, running moonshots needs someone who is inherently lazy. Driven, yes, but also lazy. You don't want someone who climbs mountains as a hobby. You want someone who figures out how to get a helicopter to take them to the top of the mountain. You need to de-risk every single thing possible, even if others say you can't do that, by taking the laziest and least risky approach. Then concentrate on the areas you can't de-risk. Then once you get it running you iterate and optimize the lazy bits. edit: Actually de-risk and not simply lie about de-risking. Eventually you need to publicly test the prototype and the lies will fall apart.

davidrm 2y ago
(I'm going to assume you're serious). Only in the tech bubble could a hobby which is challenging and probably gruesome at certain points, be held against you. In any normal conversation a person who climbs literal mountains would be looked at in a positive light. Not saying it's the one defining quality you'd need to successfully run a company, but you somehow managed to place it at the completely wrong side of the proverbial scale. Of course, it's probably completely insignificant and uncorrelated, but I wouldn't be surprised to read that someone who plays a piano is also incompetent to run a company because ...I don't know, I guess I'll have to wait to read that one here soon.
- marcinzm 2y ago
  Something can be good for X overall but be bad for subsets of X. The fact that you find it so offensive for me to even make that statement says more about the mono culture you view the world through than the one I view the world through. edit: Of course Google, the king of the tech bubble, saw this as a positive so your statement about this being a tech bubble thing is also really amusing. If anything the tech bubble would likely agree with you so you're part of the tech bubble mindset on this one.
- ben_w 2y ago
  I think it depends what exactly you're doing. Me, I think "moonshot" is a very buzzy buzzword, not a concrete thing, despite what it's named after. I've listened to both Chris Hadfield's "An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth" and Richard Wiseman's "Shoot for the Moon", and it was extremely clear how little there was in common between the perspective of the professional psychologist and the guy who actually went into space.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > Only in the tech bubble could a hobby which is challenging and probably gruesome at certain points, be held against you. Did you mean to say something completely different? What if your hobby is making crush videos? https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Man-heads-to-prison-for-making-crush-videos-eos-9171252.php https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Man-heads-t...
- pavlov 2y ago
  > “In any normal conversation a person who climbs literal mountains would be looked at in a positive light.” It’s irrelevant to most conversations. Someone who regularly brings up their mountain climbing unprompted doesn’t necessarily appear in a positive light.
- tsunamifury 2y ago
  The point he’s making is one person cares about doing the task as efficiently as possible in a new way and the other cares about performative behavior done in a performative way. He has a point. The point is inventors don’t care about repeating performative tasks like climbing a mountain everyone has already climbed before in the same way everyone else has. They care about doing new things in better ways. It’s a subtle but important distinction.
RandomLensman 2y ago
Unless you mean by "lazy" someone against all ways of exerting effort (why build something then anyway), then someone can be "lazy" as well as climb mountains. No contradiction there: Hate that something takes so much effort and find a "lazy" way to solve that while enjoying mountaineering is fully compatible.
rjsw 2y ago
Laziness has been valued before [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Classification_of_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...
andsoitis 2y ago
> in my experience, running moonshots needs someone who is inherently lazy What is your experience with moonshots?
dgacmu 2y ago
I'm afraid that means you don't understand climbing very well. For almost all climbers, climbing and mountaineering entails a lot of managing risk. It's a constant partner in anything you do, and one thing you learn from climbing is to put in place processes to manage risk, and then trust in them in situations that are scary.
- marcinzm 2y ago
  That's how you run a large corporation. Not a successful startup or moonshot project. It is perfectly valid to ignore a risk and then assume you'll figure something out if it comes to pass. Few things happen quickly so you'll have time to talk to other founders and investors and so on. Or maybe you'll fail and then start a new venture in six month. Trying to plan for mitigations ahead of time will mean you spend all your time on mitigating risk versus growing the business. A climber that does that is a corpse.
  - dgacmu 2y ago
    Sure. I'm not trying to say they're the same thing. But the vast majority of climbers have a _conscious_ approach to risk. Some risks are worth taking. Some aren't. The key is that you have to be aware of them and be proactive about them, even though some times, the decision is, "yeah, the weather forecast is uncertain, but this is our best window for trying to summit, let's go." Being conscious about your risks _is_ very compatible with running a startup or moonshot. Astro's "kill it early" philosophy is a good example of this. There's a lot of risk in running for a long time with an idea that doesn't actually have legs. The "process" you use to mitigate it is to try to kill it as fast as possible. That's not process in the sense of filling out a lot of forms, but it's a process nonetheless, and a healthy one in a startup environment.
coliveira 2y ago
Completely agree. The thing about running marathons and climbing mountains is part of the myth in Wall Street and SV that the person needs to be a super human and work 24 hours a day to be really successful. It is 100% BS, but people will cultivate this kind of fallacy to get ahead.

davidrm 2y ago

(I'm going to assume you're serious). Only in the tech bubble could a hobby which is challenging and probably gruesome at certain points, be held against you. In any normal conversation a person who climbs literal mountains would be looked at in a positive light. Not saying it's the one defining quality you'd need to successfully run a company, but you somehow managed to place it at the completely wrong side of the proverbial scale. Of course, it's probably completely insignificant and uncorrelated, but I wouldn't be surprised to read that someone who plays a piano is also incompetent to run a company because ...I don't know, I guess I'll have to wait to read that one here soon.

marcinzm 2y ago
Something can be good for X overall but be bad for subsets of X. The fact that you find it so offensive for me to even make that statement says more about the mono culture you view the world through than the one I view the world through. edit: Of course Google, the king of the tech bubble, saw this as a positive so your statement about this being a tech bubble thing is also really amusing. If anything the tech bubble would likely agree with you so you're part of the tech bubble mindset on this one.
ben_w 2y ago
I think it depends what exactly you're doing. Me, I think "moonshot" is a very buzzy buzzword, not a concrete thing, despite what it's named after. I've listened to both Chris Hadfield's "An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth" and Richard Wiseman's "Shoot for the Moon", and it was extremely clear how little there was in common between the perspective of the professional psychologist and the guy who actually went into space.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> Only in the tech bubble could a hobby which is challenging and probably gruesome at certain points, be held against you. Did you mean to say something completely different? What if your hobby is making crush videos? https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Man-heads-to-prison-for-making-crush-videos-eos-9171252.php https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Man-heads-t...
pavlov 2y ago
> “In any normal conversation a person who climbs literal mountains would be looked at in a positive light.” It’s irrelevant to most conversations. Someone who regularly brings up their mountain climbing unprompted doesn’t necessarily appear in a positive light.
tsunamifury 2y ago
The point he’s making is one person cares about doing the task as efficiently as possible in a new way and the other cares about performative behavior done in a performative way. He has a point. The point is inventors don’t care about repeating performative tasks like climbing a mountain everyone has already climbed before in the same way everyone else has. They care about doing new things in better ways. It’s a subtle but important distinction.

RandomLensman 2y ago

Unless you mean by "lazy" someone against all ways of exerting effort (why build something then anyway), then someone can be "lazy" as well as climb mountains. No contradiction there: Hate that something takes so much effort and find a "lazy" way to solve that while enjoying mountaineering is fully compatible.

rjsw 2y ago

Laziness has been valued before [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Classification_of_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...

andsoitis 2y ago

> in my experience, running moonshots needs someone who is inherently lazy What is your experience with moonshots?

dgacmu 2y ago

I'm afraid that means you don't understand climbing very well. For almost all climbers, climbing and mountaineering entails a lot of managing risk. It's a constant partner in anything you do, and one thing you learn from climbing is to put in place processes to manage risk, and then trust in them in situations that are scary.

marcinzm 2y ago
That's how you run a large corporation. Not a successful startup or moonshot project. It is perfectly valid to ignore a risk and then assume you'll figure something out if it comes to pass. Few things happen quickly so you'll have time to talk to other founders and investors and so on. Or maybe you'll fail and then start a new venture in six month. Trying to plan for mitigations ahead of time will mean you spend all your time on mitigating risk versus growing the business. A climber that does that is a corpse.
- dgacmu 2y ago
  Sure. I'm not trying to say they're the same thing. But the vast majority of climbers have a _conscious_ approach to risk. Some risks are worth taking. Some aren't. The key is that you have to be aware of them and be proactive about them, even though some times, the decision is, "yeah, the weather forecast is uncertain, but this is our best window for trying to summit, let's go." Being conscious about your risks _is_ very compatible with running a startup or moonshot. Astro's "kill it early" philosophy is a good example of this. There's a lot of risk in running for a long time with an idea that doesn't actually have legs. The "process" you use to mitigate it is to try to kill it as fast as possible. That's not process in the sense of filling out a lot of forms, but it's a process nonetheless, and a healthy one in a startup environment.

coliveira 2y ago

Completely agree. The thing about running marathons and climbing mountains is part of the myth in Wall Street and SV that the person needs to be a super human and work 24 hours a day to be really successful. It is 100% BS, but people will cultivate this kind of fallacy to get ahead.