Changing the world for the better requires a cult of talented people, working relentlessly on ambitious goals, with organization-level capital. That’s pretty much the recipe. The greatest changes in the status quo of living have originated from ambitions on the order of decades. The people who lead these revolutions sacrifice a lot, pour their blood, sweat, and tears; are focused on the mission, disciplined, have thought through all the ways of how it might fail, and continuously push the boundaries of what’s thought to be possible. How can it be otherwise? That’s the way religions and revolutions were started, and that’s how startups that push civilization to the next arc of evolution operate.

In fact, in my opinion, many parallels can be drawn between revolutions and startups working on the zero-to-one arc.

The people who lead these kinds of revolutions end up building a compressed and conspiratorial vision (at that time) of how things really work, finding evidence to support it, and executing fearlessly. You can read a hundred books to understand what they’re doing and aiming for, or you can talk to one of the founders to explain in simple terms what truly is happening and what the future will look like.

The founders themselves keep discovering over time a better abstraction to explain the phenomenon they created as they reflect on their impact, and are able to find ways to connect the dots that others don’t see at that time.

These people are often misunderstood at the time, but later on, when the public starts to catch up, they start looking for their small written notes on the wall, on a mirror, and listen to what they’ve said to take inspiration and lecture the rising generations about what their new world looks like.

These are the people that history writes about, that their quotes are perpetuated through generations, the people that have museum sections for, and that humanity keeps learning from their wisdom to shape our future.

Pursue missions on the order of decades!