Xoogler.co: Making Moonshots at X with Emily Ma
Emily’s background
On November 5th, 2020, Emily Ma discussed her journey with X, The Moonshot Factory with the Xoogler community. After graduating from Stanford, Emily spent multiple years as a mechanical engineer and a product designer at IDEO, where she learned the importance of being user-centered. Then, she taught at the Stanford d.school before moving to X, The Moonshot Factory. There, she spent the last seven years in roles such as Head of Global Operations for Glass, Head of Special Products, and now Lead of Food Systems. Emily’s talk was joined by John Ferneborg, the lead of X’s University Program team.
About X, the moonshot factory
Emily introduced X with its mission: “To invent and launch breakthrough technologies that we hope could someday make the world a radically better place.” To do this, X employs a diverse range of inventors and entrepreneurs to build these technologies. Some of their projects include Waymo (a self-driving car project launched in 2009 looking to reduce road deaths caused by human error), Mineral (which uses AI to find ways to grow more food in a way that is better for the planet), and Loon (which looks to create greater accessibility to the internet through a network of balloons). Emily described how X decides on committing to an idea by defining a “moonshot.” She said a moonshot is the intersection of a huge problem, a radical solution, and breakthrough technology. In Loon, the problems are that two-thirds of the world is not connected to the internet, most of the world’s geography is uncovered, and there is no disaster internet recovery. Loon uses breakthrough technology to allow the balloons to communicate, navigate, and stay afloat for extended periods of time. The radical solution is a network of stratospheric balloons beaming internet.
Since all of the projects at X involve radical ideas, Alphabet’s investments in projects at X are not a safe bet; they must put in money without the expectation of success. As Emily put it, “The expectation is to fail. The exception is to succeed.” Emily broke the moonshot investments down into three stages in a rocket ship analogy: Rapid Eval, Early Pipeline, and Moonshot. In Rapid Eval, teams look to understand if the project can “achieve escape velocity” with a potential for breakthrough technologies. In this initial phase, Emily explained how projects are looking to fail fast. She described how it is a “great” time to fail early on due to the limited failure cost. At this point, X has not put significant time nor resources into the project. X looks to assess if there is a breakthrough opportunity, a market, an adequate team, potential for execution, and a moonshine narrative. John described how they can answer most of this through a “version .0 crap” product which they can quickly get out to the market and understand if it is going to fail fast. If the project does not fail fast and has potential, it enters the early pipeline stage where they assess the capacity and resources required to reach the moon. If the project continues to succeed, it becomes a full X project headed towards the Moon.
Lessons Learned
When asked about what she learned in her experience at X, Emily described the emotional journey of creating. When creating something new, there are so many challenges that you have likely never faced before. Emily explained the ability to consistently overcome these challenges ultimately comes down to the people around you.
Since X launches so many radical projects, many are bound to fail. Emily described how this taught her the importance of letting go. In fact, obituaries are written for projects at X to celebrate the life and breakthroughs of each project. Emily described how this is important for not only your career but also to get the most out of your personal life. As Covid-19 has shown, the world changes faster than you expect, so it is best to productively let go of the past.
When asked about her biggest surprise while working at X, Emily revealed that multiple companies will look to solve the same world problem, yet they are too competitive to work together. She stressed that while it is important to do what is best for yourself, it is just as important to do what is best for others.
In the final slide, Emily quoted X CEO Astro Teller’s three principles to be: “responsibly irresponsible, patiently impatient, and passionately dispassionate.” Making breakthroughs may require us to break rules responsibly. Breakthroughs may also be urgent, which requires you to be patiently impatient. She described how a software engineer can recompile code many times in an hour, while a farmer can only get thirty seasons in his lifetime to farm thriving crops. We must be patient with the process, but impatient due to the urgency of the problem. Being passionately dispassionate relates to the ability to let go. We must be passionate about the problem, dispassionate about the solution, and willing to move to a better solution.
Thank you!
All in all, X, The Moonshot Factory is about being courageous enough to tackle huge problems by being open to failure, willing to let go, and surrounded by the right support. Thank you Emily and John for taking the time to speak with the Xoogler community! Everybody was able to learn something new from the incredible discussion. The Xoogler community is very excited to support Emily as she continues to better the world’s food information in order to reduce food waste and increase food security around the world!
