
Apollo – Funding for Moonshots - janvdberg
https://apolloprojects.com/
======
caidan
No disrespect intended, but what is the point of using terminology like
“moonshot” coupled with tiny amounts of funding like $3m. If moonshot is taken
to be a loose reference to the Apollo program - which I imagine it is
otherwise the name is poorly chosen - then the funding amounts are off by
several orders of magnitude. In 1960 the US government got its feet wet with a
900 million (in 2020 dollars) spend on the Apollo program and ramped up to a
high of 40,000 million a year by 1964. The total spent on the Apollo program
between 1960 and 1973 was 283,000 million or almost one hundred thousand times
as much as the 3 million investment under the moonshots fund.

Sure the 3 million is a seed round but the US spent 300 times as much on its
exploratory “seed” round in 1960.

It is unlikely until he extreme that any real “moonshot” will achieve
significant impact without the combined talents of a large percentage of the
world greatest talents driven by goals of the highest social priority funded
by limitless pockets and organized by the very best managers and leaders that
society can produce.

3m will achieve none of that.

~~~
d_silin
For once, I disagree. When spent wisely, $3M can make a huge difference in a
development of promising technology.

And I am not talking just about software - an aerospace, material science,
fusion or biotech startup can work with that.

~~~
hanniabu
> can work with that

I think the more apt wording is it's enough to get to the next round of
funding

~~~
d_silin
Well, true!

------
three_seagrass
I'm probably ignorant in this, but this program feels like normal venture
capital with different branding.

Moonshots are very exciting but also have an incredibly low success rate.
Investing in only five companies makes me believe that they're either setting
themselves up for failure (unlikely bc these people are smart) or they're
trying to fish for startup pitches with a different branding approach.

------
FiatLuxDave
To all the voices in the thread who are commenting on how only $3m is no
Apollo project: my fusion startup in the 1990s was financed with less than
that (even including the inflation adjustment). Sure, we didn't make self-
sustaining fusion, but it wasn't lack of money that stopped us. This level of
funding may not give you an Apollo program, but it could easily give you a
Robert Goddard.

The section on "Why don't more people start them" was interesting to me. One
hugely important thing I don't see mentioned as a possible cause is the
failure path (i.e. what happens when you fail, which is the most likely
outcome). This is drastically different in 'moonshot' fields than in software
startups. In many fields, a failed startup causes permanent career damage, so
that's a big reason why people don't start them.

Because of this, I think the founder equity exchange program is a great idea.
I would have happily diversified 10% of my stock with other founders, and it
would not have de-incentivized us at all.

~~~
missedthecue
"Sure, we didn't make self-sustaining fusion, but it wasn't lack of money that
stopped us. "

What was it?

~~~
heyoo
Guessing a lack of good results :)

------
justin66
> A network of moonshot companies could be the modern-day version of the great
> research efforts of the past.

It would be super interesting to know what led YC to abandon HARC, which
actually had a membership comparable to the great research efforts of the past
[1], in favor of doing things this way. I don't believe they have ever said
much about that, it just seemed to vanish.

[1] [https://harc.ycr.org/member/](https://harc.ycr.org/member/)

------
whatshisface
> _As an initial experiment, we will fund about 5 companies._

This is the most telling line in the whole thing. Why? Well, for n=5 to be a
useful experiment, the success rate would have to be... way higher than 1 in
100 or even 1 in 10! They're practically asking for people who want to open
fast food franchise locations.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Or maybe they use these 5 to experiment and iterate on the program, and then
fund another 15-20 in 6 months from now, and by then they'll have a nice batch
of 20-25 companies, hoping that one of these will become a decacorn or more.

------
meagher
> There will be an optional founder equity exchange with other companies in
> the program, which will somewhat reduce the risk for founders and hopefully
> encourage a lot of collaboration.

This is super cool. I wonder where this idea came from.

~~~
chegra
I had a similar idea back in 2010. See here
:[https://web.archive.org/web/20101218084431/http://chestergra...](https://web.archive.org/web/20101218084431/http://chestergrant.posterous.com/startup-
insurance)

"

October 12, 2010

Startup Insurance

This post is another theoretical post. Humans by nature are very risk averse.
Start-up in itself is very risky with a high probability of failure. Failure
in the start up world means lost time, lost opportunity, lost capital, lost
confidence and so much more. For some of us we handle these risk pretty well
and can perform excellent under these conditions, but for most of us, we would
rather have these risk mitigated if we could .

One of the questions I have often pondered was how to succeed at this start up
game in one go? How do I mitigate my risk to the point that failure is almost
impossible?

Consider VC or even Y-combinator, the way they mitigate their risk is to
acquire small equity in a lot of companies. The companies that make a killing
pay for those that didn’t make one. Let suppose you had 10million to invest
and you are investing 20k into each business for 10% equity and the
probability of making 100million is 10%[These numbers were chosen for ease of
calculation and only here to illustrate a point] . The probability that you
don’t make back your 10million is 1 x 10^-23 reflecting a very minute risk.

In the case above, only the VCs are actually reducing their risk; the startup
themselves are still faced with 90% chance of failure. I think startups should
basically use the same strategies as VCs to mitigate their risk. Each startup
donates 5% equity to what would be the equivalence of an insurance scheme, if
somehow your start goes bust, no need to worry cause at the end of period you
would be given profits from all the rest companies that participated which
should be enough to get you back on your feet."

~~~
reitzensteinm
This isn't a new idea. There was such a founder equity swap program that
Google was nearly a part of, but the other founders thought the valuation
Sergey and Larry were demanding was too high.

This is from memory, and I tried to search for a source, but the keywords are
practically ungoogleable. Maybe someone else knows more.

------
owenversteeg
So what other VCs are out there funding moonshots? I'm curious, cause I'm
working on a moonshot of my own.

It's still fairly early-stage (self funding, saving money by doing a lot
myself + hiring Russian aerospace engineers) so if there's anyone here on HN
with a spare 20k/100k/1MM they want to spend on awesome futuristic technology,
my email's in my profile :)

I'm keeping the specifics of my company under wraps (to everyone but potential
investors), but the idea is radically improved long distance transportation
here on Earth with a near-zero carbon footprint as one benefit.

I've considered various US gov't funding options, which can be really nice
(they don't take any equity & some are pretty lax with how you spend the
money) but those take a while to get, and you generally need someone who's got
experience writing proposals if you want to have a good chance.

~~~
d_silin
Someone said "Russian aerospace engineers"? Can you share a bit about your
idea? My email is contact@exodusorbitals.com

~~~
owenversteeg
Sure! Sent you an email :)

Hiring Russian aerospace engineers worked out great for me so far, but I'm not
sure I'd recommend the process to most startups. The biggest thing is that the
geniuses that speak English well have all left Russia for various reasons.
That leaves you with either non-geniuses, or geniuses with poor English.
Usually, they've tried to learn English themselves and didn't get as far as
they'd like, so "just hire a language coach" isn't a simple solution here. If
you just want a lot of average engineer bodies, though, you can get that for
cheap. I imagine it'd be ideal for something like building a tunnel or a
bridge, with a lot of routine calculations and established design procedures.

The other big thing is the hiring itself. I got extremely lucky - I'm good
friends with a great Russian technical recruiter living in Moscow, who was
able to actually find people for me. But even with that huge advantage, it was
tough.

If anyone has questions about the process, ask away - the idea of hiring
expert engineers/programmers from cheaper countries has always fascinated me,
and surprised me with how difficult it is.

~~~
thanatropism
Anecdote 1: I have a translation of a Russian book of high school physics
problems, most of which I can't solve.

Anecdote 2: Michael Spivak's "Calculus on Manifolds" is famous as the hardest
math textbook an engineer will have to tackle. Well, there are major theorems
in that book that are "easy" exercises in Vladimir Arnold's Mathematical
Methods of Classical Mechanics.

~~~
mindentropy
> I have a translation of a Russian book of high school physics problems, most
> of which I can't solve.

Irodov by any chance?

------
kens
As a historical note, the actual Apollo project to the moon cost $25.4 billion
dollars, which corresponds to over $150 billion in current dollars. So this
funding is about 4 orders of magnitude short of the real moonshot. (This is
not meant as a criticism of Apollo Projects, but just to put things in scale.)

~~~
mritchie712
To be fair, they're not expecting you to put someone on the moon with $3M

> We expect you to have a big vision and a “Tesla Roadster”—a concrete first
> step, ideally something you can accomplish in a year or two

Seems the $3M is to get to that first step vs. achieve the vision.

------
KoftaBob
I'm all for supporting moonshot ventures!

I did find it amusing though that "affordable housing" is listed as an example
of a moonshot venture, considering the core reason behind high housing costs
(in the US at least) is overly restrictive zoning.

Though I guess one could say it would take a venture of that scale to defeat
the entrenched and gatekeeping NIMBYs and enable much more housing to be
built.

~~~
Synaesthesia
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to make affordable housing. It’s
not like the US can’t afford it. It’s a wealthy country, look how much they
have for the military.

It’s just not a problem capitalism is gonna solve. There isn’t huge profit to
be made. Government could solve it.

~~~
bigyikes
Maybe I’m naive, but isn’t this exactly the type of thing capitalism is good
at doing (lowering prices)? My understanding is that greedy capitalists would
love to build more, denser housing here in the Bay, but are unable to due to
zoning restrictions as the parent comment suggested. Why isn’t this a problem
capitalism can solve?

~~~
jonny_eh
But local residents block new developments, using zoning and other methods,
since new developments (affordable or not) lower their own property values.

------
echelon
How far along with your company / MVP do you have to be? I imagine they want
to see a compelling demo, not just a plan or idea.

I'm still a little too early with my project to meet the July 11th deadline,
and I'd feel ashamed to pitch too early. It's a very ambitious moonshot
project, though.

20% for 3M sounds generous for some, but perhaps risky for those that are
further along. What do comparable investment offerings look like?

------
newbie789
Sorry if this sounds dumb, but what is a "charter country"? Are there examples
of startups doing this?

~~~
jonny_eh
Sounds like “seasteading”.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading)

~~~
newbie789
It doesn't look like that's had a great track record in terms of actual
country building. If they meant seasteading I suppose I can see why they'd
avoid using that phrase but then I'm doubly confused as to why they'd point it
out as a category for investment.

I'm curious as to how historically "charter countries" are significantly
different from a model like imperialism, and if I'm entirely off base here
what _startups_ would qualify as a success in this category (that I've
obviously clearly failed to understand.)

~~~
abdullahkhalids
Because starting a country is really hard. Technical issues aside, you have to
convince at least one, and ideally several, countries to accept the passport
you issue and engage with you diplomatically.

Besides, there is no real history of country creation without violence to
assert borders, and a charter country would assert a monopoly on violence
within its geographic borders, which can displease a lot of other countries.

> significantly different from a model like imperialism

You can imagine a direct democracy anarchist commune charter country. Which is
pretty opposite to imperialism.

------
d_silin
We'll apply, for sure.

P.S. Our moonshot:
[https://www.exodusorbitals.com](https://www.exodusorbitals.com)

~~~
KingFelix
What's your moonshot?

~~~
d_silin
Beating Elon Musk in his game, for starts.

We are working on making space more accessible for everyone, through
"satellite-as-a-service" model. We will allow software developers to upload
their code to our satellite, creating an application development platform in
space.

You can read more about us at our website in parent comment.

~~~
sargun
What is your approach to time sharing, and packaging? Do I send you an ELF
binary, source, a Docker container?

I read:
[https://www.exodusorbitals.com/files/nova_mission.pdf](https://www.exodusorbitals.com/files/nova_mission.pdf)

Will there only be one instance of the "user segment" per Satellite, or will
there be one supervisor / bus, with lots of simultaneously running user
segments?

~~~
d_silin
The short answer: you send us the source, we build, test and deploy the
application package (binary+configuration files) to the satellite user
segment.

The answer to "one or many user segments" will depend on what we will learn
from that ESA mission ourselves. Some satellite instruments can be shared
simultaneously, some require exclusive access and have to be accessed in
sequential order.

------
deepnotderp
This is awesome! It will be interesting to see if a new trend of moonshot
project startups emerge, and if their returns can be comparable to software
startups.

~~~
rl3
> _... and if their returns can be comparable to software startups._

Strictly speaking, there's nothing that says moonshot startups can't be pure
software plays.

------
thephyber
I want to see an incredibly accurate physics/chemistry simulator in
distributed software.

This is the same first step needed to support automated testing materials
science at a massive scale, which will unlock innovations in battery energy
density, photovoltaic energy capture efficiency, construction materials,
manufacturing efficiencies, etc.

AI/ML require some way to verify proposed designs, similar to OpenAI's Gym. A
physics/chemistry simulator would save massive time by allowing software
automation to allow software to run simulations in massive parallel.

I see this as a "human genome" sized project that unlocks massive amounts of
basic science.

~~~
montereynack
So, my research is focused around exactly this topic (high performance
computing is one of the words you’re looking for, I believe) and unfortunately
I think I’m obligated to tel you from an engineering perspective it’s
basically a non-starter. There are a few reasons why:

1) Very high-fidelity codes which you’re describing, accurate at the molecular
(atomic?) scale are typically never usable in any meaningful sense for
macroscopic scenarios. This is usually because they’re either too
computationally expensive, taking too long to run even on huge supercomputers,
or because we actually don’t know how to bridge the gap between the small and
large-scale physics behavior.

2) It’s unclear what you mean by “incredibly accurate”. Different fields have
different definitions of what accurate means (as well as different kinds of
physics they’re trying to take into account) so your ultra-accurate simulator
in one domain might be very off in another. From reading your comments it
seems you’re most interested in materials science. That’s not my direct field
of expertise but if they’re anything like every other field of
science/engineering, there is a very strong division in the field with regards
to what kinds of simulations are used where.

3) This is something people usually don’t think about, but stuff like
materials research is protected not just by proprietary laws but actual
government export control laws. So not only will such a distributed system be
looked at with raised eyebrows by corporations, but the US government might
move in to shut it down if there’s suspicion that the distributed information
is getting to nodes managed by foreign nationals.

In short, there are a plethora of issues related to the scope and objective of
what you’re proposing. It would require a Herculean amount of effort for an
unclear payoff, unfortunately.

~~~
fuzzfactor
>It would require a Herculean amount of effort for an unclear payoff,
unfortunately.

Yup, almost like a virtual moonshot or something . . .

~~~
montereynack
That’s fair, the term is usually abused out of context. Let me give a bit more
context: the amount of effort required would probably be up to a trillion
dollars, just to be generous. You’re talking about making a generalized
physics solver at-scale after all, a lot of domains we don’t even have a good
model for how things work. It’s dangerous to assume that the scientists
working on these projects/simulations don’t use generalized physics solvers
just because they’re not ambitious. It’s almost universally because reality is
messy and difficult to model in full, so approximations and compromises have
to be made otherwise you’ll never get anything done. I find that
mathematicians and theoretical physics peeps tend to fetishize universal
solvers in this way, but the long and the short of it is those guys only
fetishize it because they live in a perfect physics world where inconvenient
factors are abstracted out to a coefficient and they just say “that’s an
implementation problem”. Making simulators which can actually be trusted is
difficult, time consuming, and sometimes completely counter-intuitive. So I
wouldn’t call what this person is suggesting a “moonshot” per se, I’d more
call it “attempting to create God”.

------
memexy
> Sam, Max, and Jack Altman (Max is going to run the program, and Sam and Jack
> will be available to advise the companies)

Is there a list of advisors we can see as well?

------
capableweb
Based on the name and it not being mentioned at all, I guess this is US only?
In general, websites seems to always mention the countries where you can apply
from, except US websites that simply assumes everyone is in the US or
otherwise knows it's restricted to the US.

------
ajsharp
Cheers to this. Startups and the ecosystem in general (funding) seem
increasingly drawn to incrementalism -- largely unimaginative solutions to
low-stakes problems but with a high perceived exit probability.

We need way more things like this.

------
divbzero
> _WHAT IS A MOONSHOT COMPANY?_

> _A company 1) focused on a significant technological development or complex
> coordination and 2) that could have a transformative impact on the world._

> _EXAMPLES:_

> _Rapid response vaccines, non-carbon energy, solar geoengineering, VR /AR,
> biological manufacturing, new education formats, new medicines, affordable
> housing, and charter countries._

What are some examples of current or past startups that could have qualified
for Apollo?

~~~
divbzero
Some examples that come to my mind:

– Boom

– Genentech

– Pixar

– SpaceX

One challenge is that there’s an implicit third requirement for moonshots: _3)
transformative potential must be recognizable at the start_. Thus, a company
that sells BASIC interpreters for the Altair might be missed.

~~~
jecel
"BASIC interpreters for the Altair" doesn't sound impressive, but "a computer
on every desk, Microsoft software in every computer" was Bill's actual pitch
and is a bit better.

------
aaron695
EXAMPLES:

> Rapid response vaccines, non-carbon energy, solar geoengineering, VR/AR,
> biological manufacturing, new education formats, new medicines, affordable
> housing, and charter countries.

I think none of these are moonshots except "new education formats"

I think this is a problem.

Moonshot doesn't have to be, we wish this existed.

It should be, this field hasn't had much work and no one has gone down this
path, it's about exploring a new world.

VR/AR are done to death for instance and will continue to be done. Someone
will just loophole this with a interesting X (that's done to death) and add
the word VR to make it sound like a moonshot.

Moonshoot idea - setup a framework that allows people to accurately identify
moonshots.

------
NewEntryHN
"Moonshot" and "Apollo" as in "vast spending of money for a show of that isn't
actually transformative but is cool"?

