“Anything that gets me closer to an Iron Man suit.”
My first thesis at Boost VC was, “Anything that get’s us closer to an Iron Man suit.” Now if you are not familiar with Iron Man, he is a comic book hero (no extraordinary abilities) who builds exoskeletons that fly and helps other super heroes take down villains. There was a movie, where Iron man was played by Robert Downey Junior, and it led to mass awareness of the beloved character. And yes, all of this is integral to my point.
What was great about my initial thesis was that everyone immediately understood — “I want to invest in impossible technology.” As we have helped build out ecosystems of early technologies, we have seen differences pop up between what is necessary for what we define as “SciFi Tech” teams and general startups. And yes there are technical hurdles, like “does it fly or not?” Or “Does it change the DNA sequence or not?” But those problems are similar to every other startups, “do we have something, or not?” questions.
The largest difference between a startup, and a SciFi startup is the cost of education. And it’s education like hearing “We have a new energy source pulled from grass, that is cheaper and lucrative.” And not sending that idea off as a crack pot concept.
When Martin Eberhard (Founder of Tesla) went around raising capital for the Tesla, he quickly understood that there was an invisible ceiling around everyone when it came to electric cars. They all believes “electric” meant “less than” in the minds of investors and people. So what he would do is ask Venture Capitalists to drive in the car in order to break through the mental ceiling that was artificially around everyones minds. Once people feel something, see something or experience something that breaks down the mental barriers around them — that is what I call magic.
When I went around telling people that Bitcoin was going to be the future of money, people were all skeptical… my grandfather, who loves me because he has to, told me, “This is not going to be a thing, and I don’t want you to end up in jail.” But as the price drove up, and people started taking sides and expressing opinions, that friction leads to true adoption, education and innovation. You want people to care about your product and have a fear about it.
Humans have a hard time believing that the way things are, are not the way things will be.
The difference between vision and delusion is that ‘vision’ is shared by other people.
I feel that I have spent my career as a translator. I am constantly communicating between startups doing something insane, and rationalizing it to investors and the world at large:
“Yes, Jetpacks have a business model, the same way that Nascar helps support the sales of cars, we will have a league that supports the sales of Jetpacks.” — Seems rational.
The most surprising thing that we have identified for education of a market… YOU WANT HATERS. Haters love hating. They want to yell it from the roof tops, and that leads other groups of people to defend it and begin their belief in the other side. You want to build something that has a polarizing opinion around what is possible. When I bring an idea to the table at Boost VC, and me team or other people say “I don’t think people will do it because_______” I get hyped. I have this feeling like, I FOUND ANOTHER UNCOMMON BELIEF!
The most expensive cost that SciFi tech startups will incur will be breaking down mental walls (note that it is not technical barriers), because the rational part of the brain will say “no that doesn’t exist yet, or at least not on the scale to make a business.” It is very expensive to go door to door saying “Hey, electric cars are as good as non-electric cars… actually better! Want to drive one?”
So my advice to any of those with an uncommon/impossible belief out there: figure out your way to translate it rationally to the world, with the knowledge that you want haters. You want people to care. You want incumbents to fear. You want someone to defend. This is your burden and impossible feat. If you wish to win, you must first get people to care and understand the impossible. So design an education mechanism that helps break down barriers and pay attention to what you are doing.
