What Rocket Launches and Startups Have in Common (Besides Shooting For the Stars)

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade...not because (it is) easy, but because (it is) hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win..."

? - John F. Kennedy, Rice University, Sept. 12, 1962

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a fascination with space and rocket launches. And, it’s safe to say, that childhood interest has continued today. All the conference rooms at Gladly are named  after some of NASA’s most legendary figures, people like Katherine Johnson, Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride. And when Gladly was in stealth mode, we called ourselves Sagan, after astronomer Carl Sagan (who incidentally wrote the book Contact...so Contact...contact center...get it?)

Now, while being an astronaut wasn’t in the cards for me, I do see a number of parallels between building a startup, and launching a rocket into space.

A leap of faith

When President John F. Kennedy announced his (at the time) ambitious goal of sending an American to the Moon, he did it without knowing for certain if this was actually a real possibility. While there was some groundwork there in the technology, there was a lot that still needed to be figured out and invented before it could really be considered viable.

And that’s how a lot of startups - including Gladly - begin. With this big, audacious goal, that doesn’t necessarily have a solution yet, or any form of a blueprint. Instead, it involves this simple leap of faith that if you think big and put in the work, you’ll get to where you want to be.

Stage I - Lift off

The first stage of the Saturn V launch to the Moon required five of the most powerful engines on the rocket (the F-1 engines), and burned through a staggering 4,700,000 pounds of propellant. Yet for all that power and effort that went into those first 2.5 minutes, the rocket was propelled just 42 miles off the ground.

And I feel like that’s comparable to the first few years of building your startup. That’s when you’re doing the heavy-lifting of creating the foundation of your product, and building up the team that will help you realize that vision. It’s here that you’ll work through the many iterations of what your product is going to look like, and how it’s going to function.  For me, those first few years are the toughest, and you don’t typically see much in terms of a financial payoff.

But at the end of the day, those hard-fought 42 miles are some of the most pivotal in your journey, because it’s those miles that first get you lifted off the ground.

Stage II - Onward and upward

The second stage of the launch built upon the momentum of the first. So instead of the massively powered F-1 engines, this stage required five of the lesser-powered J-2 engines, taking the Saturn V up close to the Earth’s orbit.

I’d compare this stage to that juncture of your startup journey where you finally have a product to show. At this point, all the grueling work you and your team put in at the first stage is paying off, so it’s a little bit easier (though definitely still challenging). Now you’re working to put the final polish on your product, and trying to get that buy-in from your first few customers to get them to believe in your people, your team, and most importantly, your vision. A vision that’s so different from what’s out there in the market that it’s a little scary for them to contemplate at first, but you slowly get them there.

And as you do, you start to build that momentum you need for that final leg of the journey towards your ultimate goal.

Stage IV* - Shooting for the Moon

By the third, and final stage, just one J-2 engine was needed to get the Saturn V into the Earth’s orbit, and up to 208 miles. That one lone engine was then shut off, and the rocket traveled the rest of the way by the sheer gravitational pull of the Moon. But that didn’t mean all the hard work was over. While this stage didn’t require the brute force of Stage I, it required a far more delicate - and arguably more complex - maneuvering to finally dock the lunar module on the surface of the Moon.   

Now, I’m not saying that at this stage you should be taking your foot off the pedal and hoping sheer momentum gets you to your goal.  But by now you’d have built up a solid team to drive some of the work that once fell solely on your shoulders. And you’ve also attracted a steady base of customers, who in turn help attract new customers to your product - so the customer buy-in gets easier. Instead, while the challenges you face require less physical effort, they begin to focus more towards the execution.

And then one day, because success tends to build on success, you’ll find that you’ve reached that initial goal you set for yourself; which just means it’s time to set yourself a higher one.

One small step for (a) man (or woman)

When you’re starting a company, you’re basically starting with a blank sheet of paper, and it falls on you and your team to build something real and substantial from what’s essentially nothing.

For me, it always starts with that big, audacious, seemingly enormous goal that you set for yourself at the very start. By aiming high from the start , you’ve made a goal that’s worth the tremendous effort that you and your team will be putting in -- a goal that, at the start, you may even think is too ambitious to achieve. Because, to paraphrase the late President John F. Kennedy, those are the kinds of goals worth fighting for.

*In the actual Saturn V launch, NASA skips straight from Stage II to Stage IV, seemingly ignoring the next logical stage (i.e. Stage III). This wasn’t a case of bad math. The Saturn V was initially envisioned as a 5-stage process, with the various stages being built out of turn, and undergoing various iterations. During those many iterations, the decision was made to drop the Stage III and Stage V components.