The prototyping mindset

I recently saw a great documentation on Netflix about Elon Musk and his journey flying to space. It took his team four attempts to shoot a rocket successfully into space. Three times the rocket exploded. After each try, they had to spend a lot of time and money to build new one and try again. In the documentation there is a very interesting scene where Elon gets interviewed about these failed attempts. And he said something very interesting. Hey said something like this:

“I knew we had to fail a couple of times to figure all out. I had money to build four rockets. I just hoped we can make it within these four tries”.

This is pretty amazing. Failing and learning is deeply rooted in his thinking. In his mindset. In his DNA. It’s almost that he knew beforehand that his rockets had to explode three times to make the learnings they needed, in order to be successful on the fourth try. There is no shortcut. For him, that’s just how the world works.

This way of thinking is what I call the “prototyping mindset”. To build something and fail, take the learnings and try again. Most people don’t have that mindset. They try exactly one time. And when they fail, they stop, because they think that their idea doesn’t work.

Build, try and fail. Very early and very often.

Start prototyping. Now!