> you’ll never start a rocket company > you’ll never build your own engines > you’ll never be able to use off-the-shelf parts > you’ll never survive three launch failures > you’ll never reach orbit > you’ll never win NASA’s trust > you’ll never launch cargo to the ISS > you’ll never compete with Boeing > you’ll never compete with Lockheed > you’ll never make rockets reusable > you’ll never land a rocket vertically > you’ll never land one on a drone ship > you’ll never reuse a booster > you’ll never fly the same booster 10 times > you’ll never fly the same booster 20 times > you’ll never fly the same booster 30 times > you’ll never recover and reuse the fairing > you’ll never lower launch costs > you’ll never launch every month > you’ll never launch every week > you’ll never launch multiple times a week > you’ll never carry astronauts > you’ll never replace Roscosmos > you’ll never fly civilians to orbit > you’ll never manufacture satellites at scale > you’ll never build the biggest constellation ever > you’ll never make satellite internet work > you’ll never make satellite internet fast > you’ll never make satellite internet affordable > you’ll never serve rural customers > you’ll never serve aircraft and ships > you’ll never build a methane rocket engine > you’ll never make full-flow staged combustion work > you’ll never build the most powerful rocket ever > you’ll never build a rocket bigger than Saturn V > you’ll never build it out of stainless steel > you’ll never launch Starship > you’ll never separate Super Heavy and Starship > you’ll never relight Raptor in space > you’ll never bring Super Heavy back > you’ll never catch a booster with Mechazilla tower arms > you’ll never launch 85% of mass to orbit worldwide > you’ll never change the economics of space > you’ll never force the entire industry to copy you > you’ll never win > you’ll never IPO   Congratulations to @elonmusk and the SpaceX team. You did what countless people said was impossible, and you did it time and time again.   Today is your day. You deserve this. May it be a glorious one.

KKR's Pete Stavros believes operational change is the true source of alpha "Operational improvement, on the other hand, it takes an army to do it. It takes really experienced investors to do it. It's a ton of work, takes years of hard work.”

10 Lessons From Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx 1. Not trying guarantees failure: Fred Smith spent his childhood in leg braces. Doctors said he’d never walk normally. Through thousands of hours of excruciating therapy, he didn’t just walk; he became a varsity athlete. “Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something,” he’d later say. When everyone said overnight delivery was impossible, he remembered the doctors who said he’d never play sports. 2. The power of incentives: The Memphis hub was a nightly disaster. Planes had to land, unload, sort, and reload in hours. Nothing worked until someone noticed the obvious: they paid workers by the hour. The longer it took, the more they earned. FedEx switched to paying by the shift. Same pay, go home when you’re done. The sort suddenly ran like clockwork. Charlie Munger loved this story: “Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.” 3. Loyalty is earned in the trenches: In Vietnam, Smith learned soldiers don’t fight for politicians; they fight for the person next to them. Years later, when FedEx ran out of money, employees worked without pay. Pilots used personal credit cards for fuel. Not because they had to. Because of the loyalty that was earned in the trenches. 4. Become a learning machine: Fred Smith read four hours a day. Every day. “People who supposedly have vision spend a lot of time reading and gathering information, then synthesize it until they come up with an idea,” he explained. All that reading showed him something nobody else saw: people would soon care more about tracking their package than getting it fast. 5. Take care of your people and they will take care of you. In 1974, investors moved to fire Smith. Every senior officer signed the same letter: fire him, and we all walk. One was even offered the presidency as a bribe. (He refused.) This was People-Service-Profit in action. The order of those words is important. People first, then service, then profit. Not the other way around. Most companies put this stuff on motivational posters. At FedEx, people bet their careers on it. 6. Reliability is rare. Speed without predictability is useless. FedEx guaranteed overnight delivery or your money back, a feat that seemed impossible at the time. The guarantee created trust with customers and accountability internally. There were no excuses. 7. All in or all out. FedEx had $5,000 left. The planes needed $24,000 to fly on Monday. So Smith took the five grand to Vegas and turned it into $27,000 at blackjack. When investors heard this story, they didn't see a gambling problem. They saw a founder who'd already bet his inheritance, his house, everything, and was still fighting. Two weeks later, they gave him $11 million. 8. Trust is built in drips and emptied in buckets. When Smith bought Flying Tigers, he faced a choice: protect the seniority of Tigers pilots or his own FedEx pilots. He chose Tigers. The FedEx pilots—the ones who'd saved his company with their credit cards—called it "treachery." FedEx recovered financially, but the family was dead. 9. Outcome over ego. FedEx lost $629 million in Europe because Smith assumed Europeans wanted overnight delivery. They didn't. Their countries were small enough that regular trucks worked fine. Rather than double down to save face, Smith killed the entire operation. Most CEOs would have thrown another billion at the problem rather than admit they were wrong. They confuse stubbornness with strength. But Smith had learned from military history: sometimes the smartest generals are the ones who know when to retreat. 10. Bounce, but don't break. Smith survived childhood disease, his friend's death, Vietnam combat, near bankruptcy, a coup attempt, and a $629 million failure in Europe. Despite disasters that would have broken most people, he kept going and built an $88 billion empire.