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Fortune Put Him On Their List of "The World's 50 Greatest Leaders" and He

Peter Diamandis is a successful entrepreneur and founder of several organizations, including the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University. The document discusses how Diamandis met the author in 1999 when the author wrote an article about the XPRIZE, which offered $10 million for the first reusable spacecraft. At the time, NASA and aerospace experts said winning the XPRIZE was impossible due to the enormous cost and resources required. However, less than a decade later, Burt Rutan won the XPRIZE by launching a reusable spacecraft into orbit with only 30 engineers for $25 million, proving the impossible was possible. The document attributes this success to Diamandis' relentless work and big vision to open up space exploration.

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117 views2 pages

Fortune Put Him On Their List of "The World's 50 Greatest Leaders" and He

Peter Diamandis is a successful entrepreneur and founder of several organizations, including the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University. The document discusses how Diamandis met the author in 1999 when the author wrote an article about the XPRIZE, which offered $10 million for the first reusable spacecraft. At the time, NASA and aerospace experts said winning the XPRIZE was impossible due to the enormous cost and resources required. However, less than a decade later, Burt Rutan won the XPRIZE by launching a reusable spacecraft into orbit with only 30 engineers for $25 million, proving the impossible was possible. The document attributes this success to Diamandis' relentless work and big vision to open up space exploration.

Uploaded by

natasa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Peter Diamandis is busy.

1 My good friend and frequent writing partner


(Abundance, Bold, and The Future Is Faster Than You Think) is the founder
of the XPRIZE Foundation, the cofounder of Singularity University, and the
entrepreneurial force behind twenty-two different companies. In 2014,
Fortune put him on their list of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” and he
remains the only person I know who has ever appeared on a stamp. Yet, at
the time we got to know each other, all of this was still to come.
Peter and I met in 1999, in the early days of our careers. We met
because I wrote one of the first major articles on the XPRIZE, which was
both Peter’s mad attempt to open the space frontier and a $10 million purse
for the first person to build and fly a spaceship into low-earth orbit twice in
two weeks.
A reusable spaceship was the very thing NASA couldn’t build, but it
remained a tantalizing possibility. If we didn’t burn up our rockets every
time we left the planet, then the cost of getting off-world would plummet. It
was, Peter felt, the necessary first step to opening the space frontier.
I spent six months reporting the story, interviewing dozens of experts
along the way. Everybody agreed: Peter was out of his mind. A reusable
spaceship was never gonna happen. NASA said it would cost billions of
dollars and require tens of thousands of engineers. All of the major
aerospace manufacturers reiterated NASA’s point, only in far more colorful
language. Winning the XPRIZE, according to all of the world’s leading
experts, was absolutely impossible.
Not for long.
Less than a decade later, maverick aerospace designer Burt Rutan
launched SpaceShipOne into low-earth orbit. Two weeks later, he did it
again. Did he have ten thousand engineers aiding his cause? Nope. He had
around thirty. Did it cost billions of dollars? Nah. Twenty-five million
dollars was the actual price tag. The impossible had become possible and
because Peter and I had become good friends along the way, I got to watch
the feat, up close and in person.
So what does impossible really look like?
It looks familiar.
Here’s how Peter helped unlock the space frontier: He woke up, typed at
his computer for a while, then had breakfast. Then he went someplace and
had a conversation, then he went someplace else and had another
conversation, then he opened up his computer and punched the keys again.
Eventually, he had lunch. After lunch he went somewhere else and had
another conversation, then he talked on the phone a while, then he
punched
more keys on the computer. There were airplane rides and trips to the gym.
Every now and again, he grabbed a shower, got some sleep, or went to the
bathroom. And repeat. And repeat.
This is what pulling off the impossible looks like up close. But not just
for Peter—for just about everyone.
E􀁛cellence always has a cost. On a daily basis, if your goal is greatness,
then you’re going to put just about every available hour toward that goal.
From this perspective, it takes the same amount of time and energy to be
the
very best dry cleaner in Cleveland, Ohio, as it does to unlock the space
frontier. Of course it does. Excellence, no matter what level, will always
take everything we’ve got.
So what really sets impossible stalkers apart?
As far as I can tell, three core characteristics. The first is the size of the
original vision. It’s hard to achieve the amazing by accident. You have to
dream big. Peter wanted to go into space. He wanted other people to come
along for the ride. His dream was unreasonable and irrational, but, as Peter
loves to say, “The day before something’s truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy
idea.”
And here, we’ve already taken care of business. If you’ve turned
curiosity into passion and passion into purpose and used that information to
sculpt a massively transformative purpose, you’re already dangerous.

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