Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

Every morning I read my York IE Fuel funding alerts and see the vast amount of money many companies are raising. This can be an overwhelming feeling for any entrepreneur who hasn’t secured that type of financial backing.

And yet, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

I was reminded of that this week while listening to the Acquired podcast episode on SpaceX. Elon Musk has put $100 million of his own money into the company. That may seem like a lot, until you realize Jeff Bezos pours about $1 billion into Blue Origin every year.

And yet SpaceX’s impact on the race to own space is magnitudes greater than Blue Origin’s. Part of that can be attributed to SpaceX’s relative lack of resources. As host David Rosenthal said:

They have so many fewer resources, but I think in many ways it is precisely because of that resource constraint and having to build a profitable business that they figured out how to disrupt the industry and accomplish so much.

Limits create innovation to surpass them. They can force you to think faster, smarter, better. They force you to build a real business.

And that should serve as a source of inspiration for any founder struggling to raise exorbitant amounts of capital. Is this a weakness or an opportunity for your business? If SpaceX can use its restraints to tame space, the final frontier, then no doubt you can do the same in your industry.