you only get 1-2 moonshots, so make it count
“I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
I was chatting with my friend who joined South Park Commons (SPC).
He said, "at my age (37-38), you only get 1-2 moonshots at building something meaningful."
I was surprised. Because, I always assumed, you get as many shots as you want, 10, 20 or more.
When he joined SPC, he was building an AI startup because it was a hot space and was on the edge of raising money.
Then, he changed his view on what to build and made a hard pivot into building something he found was important to him.
He is now solving heavy engineering problems at the intersection of energy and data centers.
You only get a few shots, so you have to make it count. And, you should envision yourself working on the idea for the next 5, 10 or 20 years.
Imagine how your days are going to be, what type of people you are going to work with, what type of meetings you are taking. The routine of day in and day out. Would you enjoy that?
A lot of smart founders work on ideas they don't deeply care about. They spend a decade building a good company, when they could have built a great company.
They raise funds and get stuck with an idea and no way to exit.
Exploration is highly underrated in entrepreneurship. Especially when you feel like a space is hot and you want to get in early. You might end up with a problem you're not passionate about.
Take the time to play around with different ideas in different industries, with different people.
Entrepreneurship is anyway a journey of self-discovery. So, when you land on a problem or a space you deeply care about - you can take a moonshot and make it count.