Rocketships and Slingshots
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Rocketships and Slingshots
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Re: Rocketships and Slingshots
#2It would have been cool to read stories about a few more examples of slingshots, as the author calls them.
Re: Rocketships and Slingshots
#3I think that bootstrapped startups are more likely to be slingshots than rockets. Given lower fundings, but more skin in the game for the founder(s)
Re: Rocketships and Slingshots
#4I think that bootstrapped startups are more likely to be slingshots than rockets. Given lower fundings, but more skin in the game for the founder(s)
either way, I like the term, definitely going to start using that, with the emoji too of course
Re: Rocketships and Slingshots
#5It would have been cool to read stories about a few more examples of slingshots, as the author calls them.
Fair enough. I definitely should have added nvidia to the list.
Re: Rocketships and Slingshots
#6It would have been cool to read stories about a few more examples of slingshots, as the author calls them.
Right. Just at the point I expected to find the list, there's only a "Subscribe" button to ignore.
Hm. Examples:
- Amazon? Long road to profitability, but there was fast early growth.
- Space-X, which took a long time to get to a successful launch.
- Someone already mentioned Nvidia.
- Waymo, which took about 15 years from start to real service, and now is doubling in size more than once a year.
- ASML, founded in 1984 and took a long time to become the dominant player in photolithograpy.
- Roblox, tiny for over a decade, then gradually found the right market and really grew.
Who else.
Re: Rocketships and Slingshots
#7No examples included of "hard earned technical moats". I'm a bit skeptical that these really exist, other than in a few extreme cases. A true technical moat requires secrecy and control of the talent pool. SpaceX comes to mind, Nvidia might be another example.
I don't even think the current AI companies really have technical moats. It seems like the differentiator is just how much money they have to throw at compute.
Most moats are actually regulatory, ranging from copyright and patents, to anti-competitive regulation, to explicit wealth transfers from taxpayers to the company.
Re: Rocketships and Slingshots
#8I like to hope we're a slingshot company.
While, everyone is trying to bast off, we're creating a new category and changing the way people think about sleep.
I don't expect to be able to change the world in a day. This is a movement, and it is going to take time.
I compare it to sunglasses, which existed for centuries as medical aids but didn't become part of everyday life and fashion until they were made "cool" by pilots in WWII.
Throwing rocketfuel might help, but we can build momentum market after market as we go from this somewhat strange activity, monitoring your brain during sleep, and directly increasing slow-wave activity through micro-pulsed auditory stimulation.
The industry is still obsessed with measuring sleep time, we're directly influencing what your brain is doing during that time.
The early momentum of a slingshot takes a bit to get up to speed. Building a comfortable EEG headband for consumers is a challenge, realtime analysis and stimulation take time do develop, among other things.
The momentum begets more momentum. At some point the momentum of the slingshot provides enough force to launch the projectile.
BUT, slingshots don't work forever. Once the projectile is out of the slingshot, it's downward trajectory has already begun.
So I'd prefer an analogy which takes that into account.
If you're curious about our work, check out https://affectablesleep.com
Re: Rocketships and Slingshots
#9No examples included of "hard earned technical moats". I'm a bit skeptical that these really exist, other than in a few extreme cases. A true technical moat requires secrecy and control of the talent pool. SpaceX comes to mind, Nvidia might be another example. I don't even think the current AI companies really have technical moats. It seems like the differentiator is just how much money they have to throw at compute.…
My list wasn't meant to exhaustive. Honestly not much of a list, just a few examples. SpaceX and Nvidia are both examples of deep technical moats, as are some of the others mentioned by commenters.
I agree with you that many moats are regulatory, but disagree that most moats are. Networks are powerful moats, customer lockin can work well, brand is a strong moat (at least for a time), speed and culture can function as moats.
Fwiw, I don't think any moat is ultimately perfect. Moats themselves are not meant to permanently stop an attacker - they are delaying tactics at best. Companies that stay ahead continuously re-invent and rebuild their differentiation and defenses.
Re: Rocketships and Slingshots
#10It would have been cool to read stories about a few more examples of slingshots, as the author calls them.
Right. Just at the point I expected to find the list, there's only a "Subscribe" button to ignore. Hm. Examples: - Amazon? Long road to profitability, but there was fast early growth. - Space-X, which took a long time to get to a successful launch. - Someone already mentioned Nvidia. - Waymo, which took about 15 years from start to real service, and now is doubling in size more than once a year. - ASML, founded in 19…
These are great.
I particularly like Waymo because of aggressively most of the media/talking heads wrote them off as "never going to beat Tesla" because google.
In the end, they took a fundamentally different approach at all levels of the product and won.