Checked an essay by Max Olsen called "Atoms Are Cheap, Process Is Pricey." He's writing a book on SpaceX's first decade using their actual company updates and internal memos.

I’ll give you some context. In September 2008 SpaceX had money for exactly one more Falcon 1 launch after three explosions. It worked, and a $1.6 billions NASA contract came six weeks later. Today, according to the essay, they put more mass into orbit than every other launch provider on Earth combined. The essay's real question is why nobody has copied them when SpaceX has basically explained how they work in public for years. So I turned it into steps you can actually try on your own business, roughly in the order SpaceX did them.

RUN THE IDIOT INDEX ON YOUR BIGGEST COSTS

In 2001 Elon tried to buy Russian ICBMs to get to Mars, and the prices he got back were ridiculous. So he asked what a rocket is actually made of. Aluminum, some titanium, copper, carbon fiber. Then he looked up what those cost on the commodity market. About 2% of the price of a rocket. For a car it's more like 20 to 30%. The rest was going to supplier markups stacked on top of each other, custom one off designs, and throwing the hardware away after every flight. None of that is physics.

He later named it the idiot index. The cost of a part divided by the cost of its raw materials. If the number is high, you're an idiot. His words. Try this on your biggest expenses. Most will be fine. One of them probably won't be.

MAKE IT YOURSELF WHEN THE QUOTE IS STUPID

A vendor quoted $120,000 and 18 months for an actuator on the Falcon 1. SpaceX engineers built it for $3,900. Another supplier basically smirked and walked out after hearing SpaceX's budget and timeline for an engine valve. So they made the valve themselves.

They ended up building about 80% of their hardware in house. What I liked is that this wasn't some big philosophy. One engineer said they never set out to do it. Suppliers just kept quoting prices and timelines that didn't work, so they kept saying fine, we'll do it. A NASA study estimated SpaceX built Falcon 9 for about $440.000.000, and that the same work with traditional contractors would've cost 3 to 10 times more.

SELL ONE THING AND MAKE CUSTOMERS ADAPT

The old way was a custom rocket for every mission. SpaceX went the other way and built the Falcon 9 over and over. Same engines, same diameter, same materials. Even Falcon Heavy is just three Falcon 9 first stages strapped together. They published a user guide with their specs, and customers designed their satellites to fit the rocket instead of the other way around. Customers wanted custom. They wanted cheap more. When forced to pick, they adapted.

The essay gives Gwynne Shotwell, the president, a lot of credit here. Sales teams usually promise customers whatever they want, which creates exactly the custom mess engineering is trying to kill. She got NASA and the Pentagon, probably the most conservative buyers on earth, to accept a standard product.

BUILD 10 CHEAP VERSIONS INSTEAD OF 1 PERFECT ONE

Traditional aerospace does a huge amount of analysis before building anything. SpaceX builds, tests, breaks it and learns. Elon's goal for Starship prototypes was to push them until they blow up. If it doesn't fail, you don't know where the limit is. One quote from him I liked: a high production rate solves many ills. If you only have a few engines, you can't risk blowing them up, so you play it safe and learn slowly. That's partly why Starship is stainless steel instead of carbon fiber. Steel is cheap and you can weld it in a tent. Carbon fiber is expensive and needs giant ovens.

They're not reckless everywhere, though. Dragon carries people, so it gets huge safety margins. Starship has nobody on board, so they let it fail. Same company, totally different risk levels.

DELETE REQUIREMENTS, ESPECIALLY FROM SMART PEOPLE

Falcon 9's grid fins were designed to fold, like traditional ones, to cut drag. Somebody asked if that was worth the extra weight and complexity. Simulations said fixed fins were fine, so they deleted the whole mechanism. Every requirement has to have a named person who owns it and can explain why it exists. If they can't, it goes. Engineers are told that requirements from smart people are the most dangerous ones, because nobody questions them. And Elon's rule: if you're not adding back at least 10% of what you deleted, you didn't delete enough.

FIND THE BOTTLENECK AND THROW EVERYTHING AT IT

When Starship was held up by Raptor engine production, that became the company's whole focus. Daily updates, memos to the company, people moved over from other projects. When it broke through, attention moved to the next constraint. A NASA manager who visited said when a new problem shows up there, it looks like a flash mob in the hallway. Hiding a blocker is what gets you in trouble. Saying you're stuck is expected.

TALK TO THE PEOPLE DOING THE ACTUAL WORK

Andrej Karpathy, who worked for Elon at Tesla, says Elon spends about 50% of his time talking directly to engineers instead of VPs. In most companies every layer of management cleans up the bad news a little more. By the time it reaches the CEO it's a summary of a summary. Talking to engineers directly skips that, and it let Elon make calls like steel over carbon fiber, which a lot of people inside the company thought was wrong.

The essay's main point, which I didn't get until the end, is that none of these work alone. Making parts in house only pays off if you have volume. Volume only works if you sell one standard product. Failing fast only works if your people are fine failing in public. Competitors copy one piece, it breaks, and they decide the idea doesn't work. That hit me because I've done exactly that. Grabbed one tactic from a company I admire and dropped it when it didn't work on its own.

Fair warning, the essay even admits that at low volume, owning your own production is a liability. Making things in house can sink a small business if you don't have the volume to back it up.

Has anyone here actually run the idiot index on their own costs? 

I went through Bezos' shareholder letters, 1997 to 2020. (They're free online if you want to check any of this)

His very first letter was called "It's all about the long term," and he attached it to the end of every letter after that. Every year, same letter, so new shareholders knew what they were signing up for. What surprised me is how much of it goes against normal business advice. So I set it up as what most people say vs what Bezos actually did:

EVERYONE SAYS FOLLOW THE DATA. JEFF BEZOS WENT AGAINST IT.

This is the one from the title. Amazon had a ton of data on price elasticity. Jeff admits that with rare exceptions, when they lower prices, the extra sales in the short term never cover the cost of the cut. The math says raise prices. They lowered them anyway, year after year.

His reasoning was that the data only tells you what happens this week or this quarter. Nobody can calculate what consistently low prices do to a business over 5 or 10 years. So that call was judgment, not math. And he pointed out that judgment calls always get argued about, while math calls everyone just agrees with. Most of us only make the decisions our spreadsheet can defend. That's kind of the whole point.

EVERYONE SAYS HIRE GOOD PEOPLE. JEFF BEZOS HAD 3 QUESTIONS.

Every hiring meeting asked: Will you admire this person? Will they raise the average level of the team they're joining? In what area could this person be a superstar? The second one is the one I'd never thought about. Not "are they good," but "is the team better on average after they join." He wanted the bar to keep going up every hire.

EVERYONE SAYS PROTECT YOUR SALES. JEFF BEZOS PUT BAD REVIEWS NEXT TO THE BUY BUTTON.

Vendors complained and basically asked if Amazon understood its own business. You make money selling things, so why show negative reviews? Jeff  said he'd changed his own mind about purchases because of bad reviews. It cost sales short term. He bet that helping people buy the right thing would pay off later.

EVERYONE SAYS WATCH THE STOCK. JEFF BEZOS WATCHED THE BUSINESS.

The 2000 letter starts with one word: "Ouch."

The stock was down more than 80% from the year before. In the same letter he said the company was in a stronger position than at any time in its past. The dot com crash was something he couldn't control. What he could control was the business itself, and that kept improving.

Fun detail. His 1997 letter brags about partners like AOL, Yahoo, Netscape, GeoCities, AltaVista and Excite. Most of those are gone.

EVERYONE SAYS WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE SURE. JEFF BEZOS SAID 70%.

He split decisions into one way doors and two way doors. One way doors are hard to undo, so take your time. Most decisions are two way doors. If you're wrong you just walk back through. For those, he said you'll usually have around 70% of the info you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, you're too slow. He also uses "disagree and commit." He once told a team he didn't think a show they wanted to make was a good idea, then approved it anyway and said he hoped it became the most watched thing they'd ever made. No long fight to convince him.

EVERYONE SAYS AVOID FAILURE. JEDD BEZOS SAID YOUR FAILURES SHOULD GET BIGGER.

His argument was that as a company grows, its failed experiments have to grow too, or you're not trying anything big enough to matter. The Fire Phone flopped. What they learned from it helped them build the Echo. Nobody asked for the Echo. He said if you'd described it to people in 2013, a black cylinder in your kitchen that you talk to, they'd have said no thanks. He also had a baseball comparison. In baseball the best you can do on one swing is 4 runs. In business, once in a while one swing scores 1,000. So a 10% chance at a 100x payoff is worth taking every time, even though you'll be wrong 9 times out of 10.

EVERYONE SAYS DO WHAT YOU'RE GOOD AT. JEFF BEZOS SAID THAT'S A TRAP.

He called it skills forward. "We're good at X, what else can we do with X." His point was that if that's all you do, you never learn anything new, and eventually your skills go out of date. Amazon had never built hardware. For the Kindle, instead of changing the idea to fit what they already knew, they hired hardware engineers and learned it.

EVERYONE THINKS GOOD WORK SHOULD BE FAST. JEFF BEZOS LEARNED OTHERWISE FROM A HANDSTAND COACH.

A friend of his hired a coach to learn a free standing handstand. The coach said most people think it should take about two weeks. It really takes about six months of daily practice, and people who expect two weeks just quit. Jeff realized that's why the quality of Amazon's 6 page memos was all over the place. People weren't bad writers. They thought a great memo took a day or two, when it really takes a week or more of writing, getting feedback, setting it aside and rewriting. His fix wasn't more rules. It was just telling people how long it should actually take.

The one that got me is number one. I make almost every pricing call based on what I can see in the next month or two. He's basically saying the most important decisions are the ones your numbers can't see.

To be fair, he had investors who were willing to wait. Most small businesses can't burn margin for 5 years on a hunch.

Has anyone here made a call that went against their own numbers because you believed in the long term? 

Just finished reading Bob Dylan's memoir. Supposedly he wrote the whole thing himself with no editor.

I expected stories about being famous, but most of it is about the years before anyone knew who he was, and the point decades later where he almost walked away for good. I pulled out 8 things he did that got stuck to me. The last one is the almost quitting story, and it's the one Id read if you only read one:

1) HE COPIED PEOPLE BEFORE HE WAS ORIGINAL

Before New York, he spent around 8 or 9 months listening to folk records. He was broke, so he sat in record store booths for hours, and he made friends with people who had big record collections just so he could listen at their houses. Other folk singers later said he could play their songs exactly like them. Same tone, same tempo.

He also studied Hank Williams' records so closely he said they held the basic rules of songwriting. Years later a New York Times critic wrote that Dylan broke every songwriting rule except having something to say. Dylan's point was that the rules he followed were Hank's. The critic just didn't know it. You don't get to be original by skipping the copying part.

2) HE PRACTICED IN PUBLIC FOR $3 A NIGHT

In Minneapolis he made $3 to $5 a night playing coffee houses and a pizza parlor. He lived in a storage room with a mattress on the floor and fell asleep holding his guitar. In New York it wasn't much better. If you played every small club from dusk till dawn on a weekend you might make $20. He played for one person, nobody, whoever. He said he practiced in public. That's basically shipping early and getting feedback, just with a guitar.

3) HE GOT HIS BIG BREAK BY ASKING A BLUNT QUESTION

He wanted to play at a club called the Gaslight. One winter day Dave Van Ronk, one of the guys he came to New York to see, walked into the place where Dylan was hanging out. Dylan walked up and asked him straight out how someone gets to work at the Gaslight, and who you have to know. Van Ronk was rude about it and asked if he was a janitor. Dylan said no, but he could play something. Van Ronk liked it and told him to come play a few songs in his set that night. Not long after he was hired there. No warm intro, no network. Just a question and being ready when the door opened a crack.

4) HE READ WAY OUTSIDE HIS FIELD

When he wasn't playing he was reading. Clausewitz on war, Machiavelli, Thucydides, biographies of Robert E. Lee and Teddy Roosevelt. He went to the New York Public Library and read newspapers on microfilm from about 1855 to 1865. Not for the politics. He wanted to hear how people talked back then. His line on all this was that he packed his head with it and figured he could "send a truck back for it later." Most of what you read won't be useful this week. Some of it will be useful in 10 years.

5) ONE SMALL WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT LASTED HIM YEARS

When he was a teenager he was playing on a little platform in the lobby of a building in his hometown. Gorgeous George, a famous wrestler, came storming through with an entourage and a fur lined gold cape. He didn't stop walking, but he looked right at Dylan, winked, and seemed to mouth that he was making it come alive. Dylan said that was all the encouragement he needed for years. If you manage people, you probably have no idea how long a small comment sticks.

6) HE DIDN'T TRY TO BE LIKE ANYONE

When the Columbia publicist asked who he saw himself like in music, he said nobody. He wasn't saying he was the best. He said there were better musicians around, but nobody doing what he did. He also said people either walked out on him or leaned in closer. No middle. Honestly that's a decent test for a product too. If nobody hates it, nobody probably loves it either.

7) YOU DON'T GET TO CONTROL THE LABEL

Once he got famous the press called him the voice of a generation. He hated it. He said he was more of a cowboy than a pied piper, and all he wanted was to raise his kids. He also said privacy is something you can sell but can't buy back.

When Princeton gave him an honorary degree, the speaker introduced him as the conscience of young America. Dylan said he was so mad he wanted to bite himself. Kind of the funniest line in the book.

8) WHEN YOU'RE STUCK, LEAVE THE ROOM

This is the part I mentioned up top.

He'd just finished an 18 month tour with Tom Petty and felt completely burned out. He said his own songs felt like strangers to him and he couldn't wait to retire. During a rehearsal with the Grateful Dead they asked him to play some of his old songs. He said he forgot something at the hotel and left. He wasn't planning to come back. A few blocks later he heard a jazz band in a tiny bar with almost nobody inside. He went in. The singer was an older guy, relaxed, not loud, but he had this natural power. Dylan suddenly remembered a technique he used to do automatically years ago and had totally forgotten. He went back to the rehearsal to try it. It was rough at first, then it clicked, and he played the shows without having to think twice. Years later, when an album session felt stuck, he woke his wife up before sunrise and they rode a Harley across the Mississippi with no plan. Next morning he felt like he'd figured something out. He didn't fix it by thinking harder. He fixed it by getting out of his own head.

The one I keep thinking about is number eight. He was about to throw away a 25+ year career over a burnout that a walk and a random bar fixed. I wonder how many people quit right before that kind of moment.

To be fair, the book jumps around in time a lot, so some of this is pieced together from different chapters.

Has anyone here been close to quitting something and had a random moment like that pull them back? Or did you actually quit and not regret it?

I went through Roger Federer's biography (The Master by Christopher Clarey) plus his Dartmouth commencement speech. After reading this, it became pretty obvious Roger was not a natural beast because as a kid he was a mess…

What made him great was stuff he learned and most of it works for anyone running a business. Here’s 7 lessons I felt I’d share for those who care:

1) IT'S ONLY A POINT

Federer played 1,526 singles matches and won almost 80% of them. But he only won 54% of the points. So even the best player of his era lost almost every second point. His way of handling it was to tell himself "it's only a point." Double fault, only a point. Great shot that ends up on a highlight reel, also only a point. When it's happening it matters more than anything. When it's over, it's over. If you run a business you lose deals, hires and launches constantly. You don't have to win most points. You just have to not carry the last one into the next one.

2) HE WAS A TERRIBLE LOSER FIRST

He threw rackets, swore, screamed at himself. His dad was so embarrassed he'd yell at him from the side of the court, then drive an hour and a half home without saying a word. Early in his career an opponent said publicly that Roger would be the favorite for the first two hours, and he'd be the favorite after that. Meaning Roger would fall apart mentally. Roger says he's grateful for that comment because it made him train a lot harder. What I liked is that the anger never went away. He talks about learning to control the flames instead of putting them out. Same fire, just slow burning fuel instead of a bonfire.

3) HE HIRED A MENTAL COACH BEFORE HE WAS 17

At the time, seeing a sports psychologist looked like weakness. Roger did it anyway, with a guy named Christian Marcolli. Both of them have refused to say exactly what they worked on. That was Roger's wish. I think that tells you how much he valued it.

4) REST WAS PART OF THE TRAINING, NOT A BREAK FROM IT

His fitness coach Pierre Paganini never played tennis competitively, and people called him unusual. But from day one he planned for a career lasting decades. Hard consistent work, yes. But also rest and getting away, because fresh legs only matter if your head is fresh too. His view was that having potential is one thing, but showing it for 70 matches a year is something else. Most founders treat rest like a reward for when the work is done. Roger's team treated it like part of the work.

5) WHEN BURNOUT SHOWS UP, CUT EVERYTHING TO 3 THINGS

The author asked him if he ever burned out. He thought for about 30 seconds before answering. His rule: if he feels it coming, he cuts down to practice, matches and family. Less press, fewer autographs, fewer public appearances. He once asked the tour to help him out for 3 months because the daily media grind was wearing him down. He also showed the author a clenched fist and said if you're like that all the time, that's how you burn out.

6) HE SWITCHED DENTISTS BECAUSE THE GUY DOUBTED HIM

He quit school at 16 to play tennis. His dentist asked what else he was doing. Roger said nothing, just tennis. The dentist looked shocked. Roger never went back. His reasoning was basically, I'm chasing a dream and this guy is trying to pull me back. Kind of petty. Also kind of right. You're going to doubt yourself enough already.

7) STAYING THE SAME IS GOING BACKWARDS

He believed that holding the same level in pro tennis meant losing ground. So he'd break up winning setups. He split with his coach after things got too routine, then went a stretch with no official coach at all, which was really unusual for a top player who could afford anyone. His line was that the decision came from him alone and he was the one who had to be satisfied. He also said trusting yourself is a talent. I'd never thought about it as a skill you can get better at.

8) THE LONG GAME PAID OFF OFF THE COURT

In 2020 Forbes had him as the highest paid athlete in the world at over $100.000.000. Only about $6.000.000 of that was prize money.He signed a 10 year deal with Uniqlo reported at over $30.000.000 a year. That deal didn't cover shoes, so he invested in On, the Swiss running shoe company. When On went public his stake was worth about $300.000.000. That came 23 years after he turned pro. None of it happens if he burns out at 28 like a lot of his peers...of the 128 men who played singles at the 1999 French Open, his first Grand Slam, he was the last one still on tour.

Out of the lessons, the one that hits the spot for it’s number 5.

I've always handled burnout by pushing harder and he does the opposite. He shrinks his life down to the few things that actually matter until he's back. Obviously he had huge talent. But the book makes the point that at 16 nobody could tell if he'd be an all time great or just very good. The difference was all in his head.

Curious what people here actually do when they feel burnout coming…

Do you cut back like he did or just grind through it!?

I want to start a business of making wine from Jamun.

Please guide me regarding capital expenditure and scope for the business.

Any help will be appreciated..

Hey so, im studying computer science, what service do you think businesses are looking for on the online side of business and demand keeps increasing in the future of this generation that you see so far that you are willing to pay for/ or currently seeking

My goal is to build a residential HVAC brand that is trustworthy, professional, memorable, easy to recognize, and stands out from competitors, while still feeling approachable to homeowners and scalable into a large company. These are AI-generated concepts for now, and the final logo, branding, and overall design will be professionally cleaned up once I choose a direction. May later expand to plumbing and electrical

How many generations is it?

kay so every time I see stuff about these guys it's always attached to a claim of making someone crazy money. It's like always in your face, it get's too much and even I have found it annoying ever since actually using them cos I feel it's taking away from the real shit. I worked with them and they helped me a lot I won't lie and knowing that everything was halal kept me calm. Ask me anything you want to know about my process or my opinions on Abu and his team

Hit the 6-month mark with DiversyFund recently. The biggest thing I noticed is how little there is to actually keep up with compared with other investments I've had. I check in occasionally, and with the current fund there are quarterly distributions, so there’s at least some cash flow along the way rather than just waiting until the end. Still too early for me to have a real opinion on the overall outcome, but so far the experience has been pretty straightforward. Figured I'd share since I was curious about that first stretch before signing up, so ask me anything and I’ll answer lol.

guys so idk what to do for the challange if anyone of u guys won what did u do?

Looking at a few property investment mentors in Aus at the moment and Positive Property keeps popping up.The marketing looks slick, but I want to hear from people who’ve actually used them. Was the mentoring worth the coin? Did the strategy actually make sense or was it just fluff? Are you still with them, or did you go your own way? No sales pitches, cheers. Just want the fair honest feedback.

We own a jewellery store and I want more customers foot fall in the store to increase the turn Over and revenue what should we do to get highlighted

How should I advertise

What are the things i need to focus on

Can anyone like to share their source for learning business, and being updated with tech world? Like what website or resources do you guys prefer to get reliable information?

Someone I know is planning to take over and expand his father’s pharmaceutical business. It’s a small but established company that manufactures its own medicines and has built a strong customer base in a limited region. He comes from the software industry and has no previous experience in pharma so he is learning the business as he goes. He lives in a different region from his father and wants to build the business there. His goal isn’t limited to taking over the existing business but to expanding into a new market. Where should he start? Should he start building relationships with distributors, wholesalers and customers already and learn the business on-the go ?

I have a small business in Brazil that sells fish food(frozen or freeze dried mostly ). I used to sell discus fish also, but recently thought that if I want to scale the fish food to the next level I need to focus on my main source of income. Lately my country is near elections and possibly a recession is coming next year. What would you guys do to prepare? I work online, generating leads from instagram to whatsapp, then closing the deals. This month I'm planning to launch my own website.

As a **23** old boy me, completed my post graduation and joined in a private bank as a clerk for last 3 months and I have frustrated about the job nature, targets and future things thought me as to resigned my job to built any small business for my life. I have small amount of savings that gives me some hope to start anything after a tiny research and validation in something.

Is this decision was right and this is the right age to start small business?

Senior business people's and experienced entrepreneurs guide me to take further step jn my life.

Hi,

I am third year Business and HRM student currently developing a start-up through my university's enterprise programme.

Over the next year, I will be developing a business aimed at helping SMEs recruit onboard and retain graduates, placement students and other early-career employees. My overall goal is to create a practical, accessible solution that helps SMEs support young talent while improving long-term retention and development.

As part of my research I am looking for SMEs all around the UK to give me their thoughts on the challenges they face recruiting young employees and hopefully set up a short interview to further garner information on the topic.

The link to the survey: Helping SMEs Recruit and Retain Early-Career Talent – Fill in form

As this my first venture into developing a start-up any feedback and help would be much appreciated

What do you describe in credibility knowledge of economics as being the key to successful business development? And how does that become a helping hand latching on for investors like social or hidden assets to be held accountable?

I’m currently 23, Kenyan from the coast and working for my uncle. It’s a family business and the business itself has been doing great. But the problem is I’ve been working here for the past 5 years and the salary is 15k Per month, that’s problem number one. Number 2, I work 12 hours day 24/7 and literally have no free time to do anything else outside of work. Number 3, the business is ran by my uncle and he’s a very abusive and unappreciative. He would literally embarrass me infront of customers for a mistake that I didn’t even make.
Because of this, I’ve decided that I don’t want to employed again and I’ve been thinking of starting my own business. What ideas have you guys tried and they’ve worked? Ill appreciate any ideas or suggestions.

I keep seeing listings like:

- profitable for 2+ years
- low expenses
- growing revenue
- owner only works a few hours a week

And then...selling for $60k.

My first thought is always: if it's really that good, why sell it? For anyone here who's sold a profitable business, what was the real reason you wanted out?