Last night, I had a great dinner with a commercial pilot friend whom I know since I was a child. Our conversation came across Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City, and we talked about his journey of "start-up".
Space exploration has been part of my childhood dream too. I build rubber band airplane, popsicle stick motor boat and soda rocket launcher with things I can find in my apartment in Hong Kong. I still remember I spend many hours building my popsicle stick boat and attached an electric motor which I got the electronic parts from another R/C toy. I invited my best friend to come see my creation. We were very excited, we installed a set of fresh battery, and tested out the motor. My friend put the boat on the water, I fired up the motor, before he let go his finger from the boat, he asked "Did you test the boat if it can float on water?"
The motor was spinning really fast, with lots of noise and water was splashing everywhere. I was 9, my little head started to say "Oh no... I didn't test if it can float on water..." but I answered my friend with a lie "yeah of course!" My friend smiles, his face expression told me he knew I was lying. He let go from the boat, in an instant, all the noise disappeared! The boat sink to the bottom of the tub, water was rushing into the motor and it stopped spinning. I remember everything was in slow motion, seeing my creation fail so badly, I was embarrassed and sad. However my friend laughed so hard, I started to join and laughed with him. It was such a great moment, I still remember almost every detail 20+ years later. My friend and I didn't stop building our dream boat, we learn from mistake and used a big piece of foam to build our second prototype. We had a clear vision, and we want the boat float and run around inside the bathtub. Although while we did our test run, the water splash upward and ruined the motor, the boat ran like 2 minutes inside the bathtub... it was our best 2 minutes success.
I started From Innovation since 2009, before this, I had two other start up business, I wasn't willing to take the risk in both business, our mission statement wasn't very clear. I left both business with good and bad experience. Looking back, I didn't take the risk because both business didn't have a clear "vision" and none of the partners were believing in the concept.
I am not rich like Elon Musk, I am not bold enough to set my vision as "visiting Mars", but I believe Elon was willing to take risk because he believes in his vision. Although he faced bankruptcy multiple times, his confident and believes are like "jet fuel" for problem solving. He designed his own rocket ship by learning rocket science through reading books. He faced multiple criticism for slow electric charging time by thinking outside of the box. Many people might go home and start developing a faster charge battery, however he solved the problem by designing a system which can swap electric car's battery in under 90 seconds (you only need to pay $20 for this service). I am inspired by his success story and I look forward to see his next vision and creation.
