Christmas Book Review 2 and Mars One
A book review and an ambitious plan to colonize Mars?
Christmas Book
While I was at home for Christmas in 2024, my brother recommended that I read 2 books that he got from his work. He knew I was interested in building a business and investing in real estate and believed these book would help me with both of those goals.
The second book is called Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success. This book was written by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown. There are many well know companies that once started very small, before becoming muti-billion dollar companies that command respect. Some of these companies are Amazon, Airbnb, Pinterest and Facebook. The reason, as stated by the authors, is because they are masters of growth hacking. Just like how the lean start-up method helped companies with product development, growth hacking helps companies with the marketing side of business, with a focus on obtaining and retaining customers. So, how exactly is growth hacking accomplished? There are 4 key steps to it.
Cross-Functional Growth Team: Growing a company is a complex collaboration between the product, the product engineers, the data concerning the market, and marketing/sales strategies. It is important to have regular meetups with all of the personal that are in charge of each of these aspects so that new ideas can emerge and so that product changes can be discussed and tested.
Identify the Growth Levers: A growth lever is when a company finds the single most important metrics for determining how successful they are. For example, a company that owns an apartment complex might care about vacancy and rent income as the growth levers. Facebook or other social media companies might care about daily users and Amazon might care about products sold in a month. These levers can be grouped into 4 stages that help sell a product:
Acquisition - getting customers to find out about your company
Activation - getting customers to buy your product of service
Retention - getting customers to repeatedly buy your products
Monetization - turn retained customers into higher paying customers that are willing to pay a premium
Conduct Rapid Experiments: Brainstorm new ideas, whether this is a new product or service. Prioritize the idea based on previous feed back. Test using data from customer feedback. Analyze the results and repeat the process. Scale what works and discard what doesn’t work.
Optimize User Experience: Growth hacking teams must be able to become obsessed over increasing the customer base and improving the customer experience by maximizing engagement. One example that I have personally seen company with a car parking lot outside of an airport that not only rewards the customer for referring them to friends and family but also has a rewards program that allows for free days once your points accumulate.
The book goes over multiple case studies from a bunch of different companies to show that the method really works. The book also included a dictionary in the back to help the reader learn terms that would be applicable to growth hacking. Just like with most business, you have to adapt to survive.
If you are looking to invest into real estate or learn more about me, check out my website and Youtube channel:
ReaganClo.com
https://www.youtube.com/@RocketsandRealEstate
Mars One
When you hear that an eccentric man who wants to colonize Mars, you would most likely think of Elon Musk. However, the man that I am thinking of is Bas Lansdorp. Who is Bas. Well, he is a Dutch entrepreneur who had a world changing, visionary idea of how to colonize Mars. His idea was to create a reality tv series about the astronauts that would be chosen. Bas believed that the media attention that would come from this mission would be internationally massive and generate more than enough funds for the mission. He was right in the first regards. The Mars One mission was an international news story that was hotly debated and discussed in the science and engineering world. Most people criticized it, calling it a suicide mission. The biggest problem was a lack of funding and little technical know how. Mars One said they could go to Mars with only $6 Billion. NASA had estimated that it would take $100 Billion to go to Mars. This was before SpaceX had their reusable rockets in full swing, so going to Mars would have cost this much.
The first mission was supposed to be a robotic lander that would be built by Lockheed Martin and be based on the NASA insight rover. The scheduled launch was for 2020, which was then pushed to 2022. Lockheed Martin confirmed that the initial contract had been to create a conceptual design of the rover with no more funding being sent.
The Mars One rover concept, complete with a rollable solar panel, credit Mars One
To kickstart the mission financially, a campaign on IndieGoGo was launched around December of 2013. This is a website that acts similar to Kickstarter in that people from around the world can contribute any amount of money they want. I gave a whopping $5. I was sure that this money would be well spent and be the foundation for a future Mars colony.
Mars One base camp, credit: Mars One
Astronaut applications were also created with a whopping 2,761 people signing up. This group was whittled down to 40. Due to even more money issues, science experiment slots were up for sale to the highest bidder. This did not help as the robotic mission that was scheduled to happen in 2020 was now going to take place in 2026 and the crew portion was now going to be in 2032.
Mars One base camp, credit: Mars One
The Mars One group I have mentioned was the Non-Profit portion of the plan. The for-profit section was a company called Mars One Ventures. This was the part that would handle the merchandise and media rights aspect of the mission. Despite the odds, Mars One was able to launch their rover, followed by 10 crew missions. There are now people living in Mars now, is something I wish I could say, but unfortunately the company was declared bankruptcy and had all of their assets liquidated in 2019. The only pros I can think of are that people began to discus long term Mars colonization in the public square. I sometimes wonder if this was a scam or just a too ambitious plan from a space enthusiast. As the old saying goes, “the only difference between a scam artist and an entrepreneur is whether or not they believe in their mission”.
The Mars One book I received for Christmas was interesting though…
If you are looking to invest into real estate or learn more about me, check out my website and Youtube channel:
ReaganClo.com
https://www.youtube.com/@RocketsandRealEstate
resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One
https://news.mit.edu/2014/technical-feasibility-mars-one-1014