Insane and Pragmatic

Great founders are insane and pragmatic.

Yes, both. 

The greatest founders build truly unique companies. The ones that go in history books. They create capabilities humanity has never seen before. What no one else has built, attempted, or even believed was possible. 

These are the types of founders who gave us the light bulbs, the model-T, and desktop computers. The next will give us flying cars, abundant food, and 150-year lifespans. 

I want to see all of these things. I want to live through the next Industrial Revolution. Don’t you? WHO THE HELL WOULDN’T!? Can you imagine living through something like electrification? Or the moon landing? 

The miracles of the past surround us every day. 

And we will see more miracles built before our eyes. 

Weather control. 

Infinite fresh water. 

A thousand Hawaiis. 

A floating city. 

A flying city. 

A city on Mars. 

We must get this right. We will see these miracles. 

To achieve this, we must find and support these insane, pragmatic founders. 

These founders start with nothing but their idea, and scream over and over again to an impassive world “YES! THIS WILL BE DONE!”

They have a vision no one else can see. 

People who truly believe in things no one else can see… are diagnosed as insane. They are ridiculed or pitied… and then medicated.

These poor, crazy founders don’t just see their vision. They act to make it real. They sentence themselves to toil endlessly on huge visions and high hopes with impossible expectations of themselves. 

They believe the future will be an insane departure from everyone else’s expectations. To everyone else, they look truly lost. Misguided, even. These poor, lonely, relentless founders give themselves to a hallucination… until it becomes reality. 

It starts with insanity. But they change reality by being… pragmatic. 

Boring, simple pragmatism. 

To achieve insane visions founders must be correct, quickly and often. They must know who can deliver, how soon, and at what cost. They must squash bullshit, drama, excuses, and distractions. They must hire all-stars, and fire the duds. They must dazzle customers and dodge the scenesters. 

They must work hard and fast. At a sprint. For years.

They must take concrete steps forward every. single. damn. day. along a journey that will take 10, 20, or 50 years to complete. 

Knowing what to do THIS WEEK, TODAY, RIGHT NOW to transform an industry over the next 1,040 weeks (20 years) – and doing it – requires intense pragmatism.

I am never deterred by the scale of a founder’s insane vision. 

We can turn deserts into gardens of paradise. 

We can turn asteroids into starships and space stations. 

We can spread a trillion humans over a hundred planets. 

We can learn the secrets of the universe. 

If we are sufficiently pragmatic, anything is possible.