TKS Session 30: Moonshot 1 (Kickoff) + Velocity Session 19
Today we were talking about going all in during our velocity session. We looked at what our boats in life were, meaning, what are the things that we can use to fall back on when things don’t work out, the things that may be holding us back from unlocking our true potential. It’s hard to identify your boats, but they can be both big and small things. For example, a big boat for you may be school because you want to start your company, so you choose to drop out. But, a small boat may be snacking because you want to get in shape, so you choose to limit your snacking or even stop. Sometimes, burning the boats, as they call it, can be good for you because it forces you to go all in on something, which makes you more likely to succeed. But, burning those boats also gives you no other option. While that does force you to go 100% on whatever your focus is, it can backfire and also limit your options for what may happen if your new company or goal doesn’t work out. You need to find the balance between burning the right ships and keeping the other ones afloat. So, this week, we are looking at what small ships we can burn to get us closer to achieving our goals.
Velocity was mainly to be thought-provoking for that session, and that’s what we talked about for most of the time. But, we then wrapped up and got into session by looking at the MotW, 10X thinking.
Moonshots launch this week, so we started by looking at what the goals of moonshots are. Moonshots try to improve the world by 10 times, not 10%. If you’re trying to improve the world by 10%, you may have some impact, but it won’t be anything compared to how much impact you will have if you aim to make it ten times better. For moonshots, you need to think that big, and that’s the kind of mindset we need to have for anything we do, especially during this project, moonshots.
For the actual session today, we got into what moonshots are, what is going to be required of us for moonshots, and tried to develop our own moonshot idea to pitch at the end of the session.
First, we got into what a moonshot actually is. A moonshot is based on the company concept X, The Moonshot Factory, from Google. It’s a company where teams who have crazy ideas, out-of-this-world ideas that can make the world a better place, go to build their project and test it out. At X, they create an environment where failure is celebrated, because it shows that you took the risk to try and create your product or company and that you didn’t hold back, which is how things should be, we should be encouraging people to take risks because that’s when the inspiring things happen.
There is a game that shows how moonshots are built and what it takes to create a moonshot. In the game, you are given a problem card and three breakthrough technology cards to choose from. Once you have your pair of cards, you start brainstorming to create an amazing idea from what you have. For a moonshot, you need three things:
A big problem that affects many people
A radical and even impossible-sounding solution
A breakthrough technology that makes the solution possible in the next 5 years
These three building blocks create an awesome moonshot project, and that’s how real change happens. Getting people to think outside the box and not be restricted by fear and safety is what makes the most progress in solving those big challenges that seem unthinkable to solve.
For our moonshot project, we are essentially creating our own company, and we will create a pitch deck that we will present to judges based on our idea. Our company needs to have these things as deliverables for the end of moonshots:
3 minute presentation + deck
Website
Master plan article
1-pager
3-minute Loom video presenting your deck
Having all these things allows us to create a solid moonshot idea and put as much effort as we can in the next month.
The activity today was to use the game I linked earlier to create our own moonshot idea and create a pitch deck on it. For our problem card, we got car crashes. For our breakthrough technology card, we chose artificial organs and implants. Since we were thinking of using this project, we came up with today as our actual moonshot idea, I won’t share anything yet. But, what we did was a bit of brainstorming, and then we put together some slides and shared them with our cohort in session.
We saw a lot of creative and interesting, and ultimately really fun ideas that really embody what moonshots are all about. This session did such a good job at getting me excited for moonshots and getting to work on a cool project and build our own company, essentially, for the next four weeks. Can’t wait to get started!
