Motivational Clips for Entrepreneurs: “We Did It. Just Three Words: We Did It.”

by Scott Edward Walker on July 19th, 2015

Welcome to our weekly series “Motivational Clips for Entrepreneurs.”  Each week, we share a favorite video clip to inspire and motivate entrepreneurs.  Why?  Because we know how tough it is being an entrepreneur; and whether you’re launching your venture, trying to iterate on your business model or raising funds, you need a little juice to help you push the ball forward.

This week, we share the amazing story of the New Horizons spacecraft’s flight to Pluto, which began with its launch in 2006 and covered three billion miles.  Simply put, it’s a story of extraordinary endurance – a quality that every great entrepreneur possesses.  Indeed, as Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, wrote in his blog post, “By endurance we conquer”:

Everyone knows that you need a great team, great execution, and a great idea.  Less obvious is that you have to have great endurance.  It’s very tough to keep going when everyone tells you your idea sucks and it will never work (especially when things are plainly not working).  It’s tough to keep going when everything goes wrong, which it almost certainly will. And it’s tough to keep working when you’re really tired…

Alan Stern, the scientist in charge of the mission, first proposed a trip to Pluto to NASA back in 1989.  What followed was 11 years of false starts and frustration.  As discussed in yesterday’s edition of The New York Times:

The story of New Horizons, the little spacecraft that could, and did, visit a small planet that is now considered too small to be a planet, started 15 years ago when NASA called it quits on Pluto.

For a decade, concepts for sending a mission there had been studied but never done. In 2000, the price tag for the latest incarnation, called Pluto-Kuiper Express, appeared to be getting out of control.

“When it was canceled,” Dr. Stern said, “the associate administrator at the time, Ed Weiler, held a press conference and said: ‘We’re out of the Pluto business. It’s over. It’s dead. It’s dead. It’s dead.’ He repeated himself three times.”

But then NASA decided to have an open competition, and Dr. Stern’s team was selected in 2001.

That started a four-year, two-month sprint to design, build and test the spacecraft and get it to the launching pad — but almost immediately there was an obstacle. “Two months later, the Bush administration canceled it,” Dr. Stern said, laughing.

Then more frustration – and finally, on January 19, 2006, New Horizons launched on top of an Atlas 5 rocketship making the fastest-ever trip out of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Fast forward to last Tuesday and… mission accomplished!  As Dr. Stern so aptly put it in yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal: “We did it. Just three words: we did it.”

Cheers,

Scott