🚀 Moonshots by Naveen Jain

May 3, 2020

Sidenote: It's been a while since I wrote something. Me and my business partner, completed part 1 of Fast AI and we're already going through Part 2. The reason I haven't written anything is: time. We've been studying and working and nothing much else. We've decided that we are going to jointly launch a new business that will take all these learning and focus them into a single effort. We're currently working on the website for this. This will act as the group company for all our startups, but the key difference is we are pivoting away from any idea to purely AI ideas. More info on the exact strategy will follow.

Right, back to what you clicked on this link for, the summary and notes from Naveen Jains book Moonshots. This book is fantastic with many gems.

The following is rough notes, quotes and my own interpretation. So expect grammar mistakes

Focus on improving lives over making money.
We have to change our entire thought process. Like farming, we need to replace the bad soil for good before we can grow anything.
It’s a plain fact, we will run out of resources so we must find out how to do 10x with less.
Most of the tech is already here, just needs entrepreneurs to go create the change.
“What if…” & why is more important than how. Siri was created in 2003 before all the advances in DL and NLP had been created.
Mental programming is a limit for both the market AND the entrepreneur. We must re-write our entire mental code and educate the market at the same time.
Lateral thinking - move paradigms from one discipline to another e.g Unets in medical imaging was tried out in deep learning
You will never reach escape velocity without working on moonshots.
Mindset of ABUNDANCE is the most important factor, nothing but abundance. Scarcity is the killer of dreams.
If we bring abundance mindset we can invent nearly anything. Entire new infrastructure and platforms to build economies upon.
Don’t worry about incumbents if you are working on real moonshots.
Do not limit the industry, you are capable of innovating in any area. That’s your super power. What is circle of competence in business does not completely apply to innovation.
What is your life calling - what would you do if you had 10s of billions, you should do that now.
What would you die for?
Building something significant for the world is more important that you being successful.
Create the future from the future, go forward 100 years and think back from there. Your brain will struggle going the other way.
Want a billion dollar company - fix a 10 billion dollar problem.
Moonshots are about imagining the world as you want it, not how it is. It will never work from thinking from now forward.
Based on polls the countries/continents that believe the future will be better for their children than them are ordered as follows: China, America, Europe. That should tell you our real issue. Apparently America was only 6%. If we change this mindset, the future will be brighter, but with scarcity mindset we are certainly guaranteeing our mutual destruction.
Think exponentially not linearly.
People continuously live mentally within their current limits vs living within what they are capable of. Break your glass ceiling everyday.
You should always embrace change, constantly ask yourself “What if?”
If you only out for a quick result, you’ve never achieve anything meaningful.
GRIT.
Youth and talent are the most over rated factors of entrepreneurs.
Life is not too short. Life is long enough but we waste so much of it on BS.
You need to unlearn nearly everything.
There are those who build and those who tear down. Stick around builders.
It’s always the people with the least amount of money who buy lottery tickets.
The reticular activation system finds patterns in what it’s told about, tell it about important ideas over BS. Where you point it, it follows.
Self talk is the biggest issue. Set challenging buy achievable goals, focus on breathing techniques
What’s measured is improved. Live a measured life. Measure everything.
Big 4 of Mental Toughness & Resilience (from SF forces), google them: Breath Control Exercise’s, Focused Visualisation Techniques, No Thrown Rounds, Set goals aligned with your purpose
Top killers: Heart Decease, Cancer and Alzheimer's - If it were possible to eradicate these completely, how exactly would we do it?
90% of serotonin is created in the GUT. Think about it. 90%. If you’re dealing with mental health issues don’t always assume it’s just an issue with your brain chemistry or your life, it could simply be your diet.
Vagus nerve, google it.
You’re not in control of your body, the bacteria in your gut is.
Your micro biome is the source of optimum health and living a long life.
30% of people are over-weight or obese. It’s hard to quantify the cost of this to the state and world. If it were possible to eradicate this complete, how exactly would we do it?
If Google has 99.99% of web search and unbeatable due to network effects, then Viome is the same for the micro-biome. Growing it’s data exponentially. Soon no-one will be able to beat them.
If you didn’t know (you should), the entire education system was designed the in the industrial revolution to create factory workers. Schedule, bells, strict rules, many processes. Indoctrination. Many of your mental models (from parents, society and school) are for factory workers not entrepreneurs or creatives.
Education system is not broken, it’s actually working really well - to create factory drones.
Disruption in education is worth 100s of billions but no-one is really moving the needle. The Education system has incentives to preserve itself, it’s deeply intrenched in government, that’s why class rooms still look the same as post-industrial revolution. In order to disrupt, we most create an entirely new model.
MOOCs - massive online courses - great but not what’s needed. Khan Academy and such are growing exponentially and helping poor countries, but it’s not enough.
Increasing natural curiosity - like children is one of the most important factors to embed into people.
Adapting education to how people learn is better than adapting people to the way the education system teaches. For example, I learn best from listening to audio and writing, vs reading.
Basic facts do not need to be taught by schools, critical thinking, problem solving and curiosity matters more. Anyone with a smart phone can google a fact if they need it.
Gamification is the future of Education. Games spike you into “the flow” and perfect symphony of chemicals.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them - Einstein
Focus on creating better children for our country.
MBAs make the worst entrepreneurs.
Listen to your GUT.
There is no book or recipe for real innovation.
Meditate - take care of your soul.
If you don’t know the ups and downs are coming it’s a rollercoaster of panic and arrogance. If you know ahead of time, it’s just another day. Stay calm, stay curious and keep going.
If your vision is really a moonshot, it’s likely you’ll need to start somewhere and can’t actually create the vision at the beginning. Good example is Tesla, terrible roadster that barely worked, Model S premium product, Model 3 mid price massive adoption.
Take a page out of Jeff Bezos book, he executed well on books, then expanded scope.
Freely share your ideas. Execution is the protection not keeping things secret.
How do you protect yourself from competition? Work on actual moonshots, innovate at speed and build network effects.
Timing is hard to understand, it’s best to be the last over the first. Google was not the first search engine, but was the last.
Collect assets en route to the vision over making a quick return.
It’s hard to know if your idea is really a dead-end. If, it’s a complete waste. Only option is to experiment more, give it a deadline and trust your GUT. It’s important WHAT you work on vs how WELL you work on it….
…Or as Buffett has said “the pond you choose is far more important than how well you swim”
In humility there no place for self-pity.
The act of losing can be a great learning, just don’t make it a habit. Always ask yourself the hard questions as if you were helping your best friend/family member who’s gone through the same thing. Speak to yourself rather than be in your head.
No one will care about your failures. They will only remember what you contributed / succeeded at.
Paying it forward: Government aid usually ends up in dictators Swiss bank accounts, private aid is what creates the largest change.
Paying it forward: it’s better to help create an economy of abundance instead of just giving money. Philanthropism should be about fixing problems not giving money. You’re temporarily helping with cash but perpetuating pain/suffering for future generations.
Approach global challenges like entrepreneurs instead of “AID”. Focus on the underlying causes. Success should not be money raised, but change delta and sustainability gain.
Give yourself away rather than money.
You cannot pay it back, you can only pay it forward.
Success is defined by life improved instead of money made.
Life a life of significance instead of success.
Ask what the world could be rather than what it is.
Knowledge is also a constraint to innovation.
Open your mind to radical possibilities.

🍻 Here's to Moonshots 🚀 and not limiting yourself ever again.