What You Can Learn From XPRIZE (Elon Donated Over $100M+ To This Org)

0:00All right. So we're going to talk about what you can learn from the XPRIZen. Foundation. This is where Elon donated over$100 million to this organization. Funny enough, the founder of Lululemon, I think his name's Chip something. It's not Chip Kelly. Chip Kelly's the coach, but Chip something. He donated$101 million just because he wanted to beat Elon. And so Neil, are you familiar with the XPRIZE Foundation? I am. Do you want to describe what you think it is? Wait, isn't Sonny part of XPRIZE? Exactly. Yes. Yes. So it's just like a global movement that is just leveraging their power and platform and creating tons of competition to do amazing stuff in the world.

0:42Okay. So I'm going to share a story. And I went to an XPRIZE thing yesterday and it was our mutual friend, Sunny, invited. And it was nearby in LA. So I went, it was like a 10 minute drive from you. So I'm like, okay, why not go? So the high level for the XPRIZE Foundation is It's a nonprofit organization that designs and hosts public competitions intended to encourage technological development to benefit humanity. Their board of trustees includes James Cameron, Larry Page, Ariana Huffington, and some other people here. So it was founded in 1996, and it was first started. They awarded a$10 million prize, blah, blah, blah.

1:14Now, yesterday I went for - And they try to do good stuff. I don't know all of them, but I'm making it up. But like things like how to reduce how many forest fires there are or things that will improve green tech or less pollution or whatever it may be. Let me share my story, damn it. So yesterday, I walked in and who did I see? The first person I saw is Meta World Peace, the artist formerly known as Ron Artest, the basketball player, right? I saw Seth Green, who's an entourage. And so I saw some celebrities there, basically. But I was more interested in hearing what Peter had to say. And he thanked everyone for being there.

1:52And to your point, Neil, the wildfire ones is a big one because the story here is, I don't know how much I can share, but let's just put it this way. When you want to stop a wildfire, Neil, what's the best time to stop a wildfire? Before it starts. Or right when it starts, right? Before it starts is ideal, but right when it starts. So now there's technologies being created where drones will spot when a wildfire is starting and all the drones will fly there and they'll stop it, right? And so there's an X prize out there for that. And so to Neil's point, what they do is they create prizes for things that are important in society.

2:25So for solving, you know, carbon emissions or wildfires or solving education or hunger, these types of things, right? And Neil, you know what I didn't realize? What do you think happens? Let's say you created a prize for a million dollars. What do you think happens? Like what is required to go win that$1 million? I don't know. I'm assuming you create rules on how people can win the million bucks. Sorry, I didn't phrase that question. Well, what I mean by this is, let's say Neil and I, we wanted to give away a marketing price. Maybe in the future, we'll freaking do this, right? So we want to give away a million dollar marketing price.

2:59What ends up happening inevitably is that it starts to create a lot of fanfare and a lot of activity around that price because everyone starts to go for it. And so if you give away like a hundred million dollar price, for example, to solve like, you know, space travel or whatever, right? then you might create$600 million in activity around it. And so it's actually worth it to create these prizes. I didn't think about that. I was like, I'm just going to make all these prizes and what's going to happen. I was very short-sighted, right? But it's like, no, if it's actually big problems and it's creating a lot of activity around it, that's actually a good way to move humanity forward.

3:33But from a marketing and business standpoint, it's like, yeah, if you're going to create a prize and it's a problem that's important to you and you want to get fanfare around it, it might be a way to go about doing things. Yep. Look, if you have money to donate, leverage your XPRIZE. There's some of the smartest minds in the world that participate in those competitions. I'm not smart enough to participate, but many of you guys may be. Or worst case, if you have cash, you get a lot of smart people in this world to help you solve your problems. And you know, I actually asked afterwards, I was like, hey, so we talked to someone that worked there.

4:02And so basically, if you actually end up investing in these prizes or putting money into it, you have first dibs to invest in these companies. And a lot of these are going to be world-changing companies. So for example, they did an XPRIZE for the first private team to fly a reusable spacecraft into space within two weeks. That's one. They had a Google Lunar XPRIZE, first team to land a robot on the moon and travel 500 meters. And they had an oil cleanup one. So a lot of cool things. And my point of saying this too is like, maybe you don't need to give away a million dollars or a hundred million dollars.

4:32Maybe you can just do something for 25 grand or 50 grand or so to a cause that's important to you. And you can rally fanfare around it and it's going to rally attention around it. And it might just work. It just depends on the business that you're in. I just think it's important to look at how things are done differently in different settings, different businesses, and then try to mold it to fit into whatever it is your goals are. And it might be good. It might not. But that's why we run experiments at the end of the day. Anything else, Neil? Nope. That's it. Make sure you review this podcast.

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