X Prize

Innovation prizes pull in more capital than they pay out

Shaan explains the X Prize mechanic: a $20M Lunar prize drew ~20 teams who each spent ~$4M, so $80M of innovation got funded to chase a $20M reward, a cheap way to stimulate breakthroughs.

“so what ended up happening was you had, you ended up with 20 times $4 million. So you ended up with $80 million got invested to win a $20 million prize. So it was this cool way of like stimulating innovation.”

Steal thisUse a prize to crowdsource innovation: the field collectively invests far more than the purse.