3 Lessons That Startups Can Learn From SpaceX

If there is one thing that’s remained inspiring for literally everyone over the past century, it’s space exploration. While 100 years ago, it was a subject confined to theory and sci-fi, by the 1950s and 1960s, it was fast becoming a reality.

In recent years, popular interest in space exploration has been reignited in the public imagination, particularly by the private company SpaceX. Let’s take a look at three inspiring lessons that startups can learn from SpaceX.

Think Big

Perhaps the biggest lesson that startups can learn from SpaceX is the importance of thinking big. While it might have seemed crazy to a lot of people, even ten years ago, to suggest that one day, a private company would team up with NASA to send astronauts into space, and then offer everyday people the opportunity to travel up there as well, Elon Musk stuck to his guns and made it happen anyway.

SpaceX has shown us that there is no goal too big. The only way that you will find out if something is possible or not is by trying to achieve it, no matter the obstacles that come up along the way.

Think outside the box

While not even the sky’s the limit for Musk, you don’t just have to think big in terms of scale to be innovative, you can also think creatively. An example of a startup that grasped a hold of this ideology is Mercator, a London-based design studio. They took inspiration from SpaceX and decided that everyone should be able to have a symbol of that creativity and boldness in their lives.

Their answer to that challenge was the NOMINAL pen. The name itself, NOMINAL, refers to the term used during spaceship launches to show that everything is going well and to plan. The lid features four, Falcon-9 style retractable legs, so when it’s not in use, it can sit like a spaceship on the brink of launching.

Stick with it

While some of the media like to focus on the failures associated with SpaceX, such as unsuccessful launches and the like, what we should really be looking at are the successes that happened despite these failures. SpaceX should be a universal lesson that no matter what, you should continue to pursue your vision.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t adapt to the lessons learned through failure, quite the opposite. It simply means that you should always keep that end goal, that original vision in mind, and find a way to reach it no matter what.

Things will go wrong, and while it might be disheartening to come up against barriers and experience failure, the worst thing that failure can do to you is persuade you to quit. Keep going, keep your spirits high, and remember what you want to achieve with your startup.