Moon Express makes waves at Churchill Club Conference 2012

Submitted by Brad Kohlenberg on September 24, 2012 06:14 pm

Santa Clara, CA (September 13, 2012) - Moon Express unveiled its "Fly Me To The Moon" competition at the Churchill Club's Changing the Game 2012 event.

From the “Authoring the Future” room in which game changing companies engaged entrepreneurs and silicon valley elite, Moon Express asked the question;

How do we change the paradigm of space exploration in a way that allows the power of entrepreneurship and economic interests to build on the accomplishments of government space programs and open up new sources of energy and resources for a prosperous and unbounded future?

Moon Express rewarded the winning answer to their question with a trip to the Moon. Specifically, a free 23andMe DNA analysis kit which will give the winner the ability to send his or her genotype profile along with other payloads on Moon Express' first lunar mission in late 2014.

The remainder of the conference was spent listening to various inspirational speakers and dialogues.

Salim Ismail from Singularity University and Dick Williams from Shell Oil kicked off the conference by exploring what the term "game changer" really means and discussing the types of innovation that disrupt industries.

In addition to the booth and contest in the 'Authoring the Future' room, Moon Express was further represented when co-founder Naveen Jain was given a microphone and the front stage. Within 20 minutes the entire conference room was undeniably energized. Naveen passionately explained the power and necessity of entrepreneurship and didn't stop until he had tasked the entire crowd with starting 10 billion dollar companies.

"If you want to create a billion dollar company, don't try to solve a million dollar problem, try to solve a 10 billion dollar one."

"I don't want to hear your game changing idea, I don't care, I want to see your execution. Your cab driver has 10 game changing ideas, just take one of his and execute on it." -Naveen Jain

The following images and captions are some of the stand out moments and memories from the conference:

Bob Richards, the lunar evangelist, stands on a soap box and convinces the crowd that going to the Moon is not as crazy as it sounds.

Lorna Ortiz, Global Coordinator of Shell Oil Company's Gamechanger Hunters Network was the winner of the 'Fly Me To The Moon' contest and as a result was presented with her free 23andMe kit by our CEO Bob Richards

Esther Dyson, a friend of Moon Express and now that she has completed her training is Russia one of the next in line to fly aboard the ISS, shared some interesting insight garnered from her illustrious career as an angel investor and entrepreneur on why change is irresistable. When prompted by questions from the audience, Dyson went on to discuss solutions to a range of problems from our failed education system to the bifurcated governance in Washington D.C.

Geoffrey Moore

One of the more interesting observations regarding our political system came from author, Geoffrey Moore who opined on the similarities between politics, entrepreneurship and evolution. In The Origin of Species, Moore began, Darwin talks of both natural and sexual selection. Where natural selection determines if an organism can survive long enough in an environment to be able to procreate and sexual selection determines if an organism can attract a mate to actually procreate. Moore pointed out that often what you see in start ups is a person who is good at raising money which is analogous to sexual selection but not so good at building a profitable company that can survive in the market place comparing that to natural selection. That is often why you see start-ups comprised of two people, one person being the engineer, the other being the fund raiser. Moore went on to say that in politics, good governance is to natural selection as getting elected is to sexual selection. We have a system such that representatives are only incentivized to operate on a form of sexual selection and this can often be seen when a two-year term congress person votes on a bill to enfluence their reelection rather than voting on a bill for its own merits. If we could shift their focus towards a form of natural selection rather than only incentivizing a form of sexual selection, Moore argues that we might see better overall leadership.