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It was about Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic in 1927. It inspired Peter Diamandis to create the X Prize for spaceflight.
And I was given a book by a dear friend, Greg Maranac, The Spirit of St. Louis.
— Episode: Incentivizing the Future with Peter Diam...
Episode: Incentivizing the Future with Peter Diamandis
It was about Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic in 1927. It inspired Peter Diamandis to create the X Prize for spaceflight.
And I was given a book by a dear friend, Greg Maranac, The Spirit of St. Louis.
He gave it to me to encourage me to finish my pilot's license.
So if you think about it, we are genetically bred to compete. We do it finding our spouse. So we drive... Society thrives on it. Thrives on it. And we evolved as humans to compete for food and everything. So can we in fact use what's called an incentive competition, very different from the Nobel Prize or the Pulitzer Prize, which rewards someone for work they did 10, 20, 30 years ago? Right? So it's like a cherry on top prize.
And I had just read this book and I'll mention a little bit more about in a second, about that Lindbergh in 1927 flew New York to Paris non-stop to win this $25,000 Orteg Prize. This guy, this Frenchman Raymond Orteg is born...
And he's talking about how much money the teams are all spending. This team is spending $100,000. This is spending $50,000. He spent $25,000. And Orteg doesn't pay any of the losers. And I think three of the nine teams died trying to make the flight.
So the Orteg Prize opened up aviation and really you can draw an inflection point for everything. And so as I'm reading this book, The Spirit of St. Louis, I am like, I have to do a prize like this for space flight because I'm not going to get a chance to be becoming a government astronaut or slim. And I don't get a chance to fly every time I want to fly.
And so there's a very long story, but over the course of the next five years, I ended up raising the $10 million prize.
And in the back of The Spirit of St. Louis that I'm reading that my friend Greg gave me to finish my pilot's license, which I did eventually do, at the end I wrote the words X Prize.
Episode: X-Prize (Part 1)
It was mentioned as an autobiography that inspired Peter Diamandis to create the XPrize, after he learned that Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic to win a $25,000 prize.
I had just read a book called The Spirit of St. Louis.
It was his autobiography and I had no idea that Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic to win a $25,000 prize.
Episode: X-Prize (Part 1)
It was mentioned as an autobiography that motivated Peter Diamandis to finish his pilot's license, and it detailed Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight for a $25,000 prize.
I had just read a book called The Spirit of St. Louis.
It was his autobiography and I had no idea that Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic to win a $25,000 prize.
