It turns out it is possible to compete by playing a different game than the incumbents, but you need to have a huge amount of capital and tolerate the risk of losing all of it. If you read the early history of SpaceX, they came within a hair's width of bankruptcy.
This seems to be a general feature of startup founder stories. Founding a startup has been so romanticized that some people would still try even if there's only a 1% chance of success. So even though it requires individuals to go against the energy-gradient, we nevertheless see people try to innovate. And a few even succeed. And this is good... (read more)
Re: Rocket Companies
It turns out it is possible to compete by playing a different game than the incumbents, but you need to have a huge amount of capital and tolerate the risk of losing all of it. If you read the early history of SpaceX, they came within a hair's width of bankruptcy.
This seems to be a general feature of startup founder stories. Founding a startup has been so romanticized that some people would still try even if there's only a 1% chance of success. So even though it requires individuals to go against the energy-gradient, we nevertheless see people try to innovate. And a few even succeed. And this is good... (read more)