The Math Behind Moonshots

How to shoot for the moon and win

Siddharth Chatterjee
8 min readNov 24, 2022
Photo by Alexis Antonio on Unsplash, text by the author.

Wouldn’t it be fabulous if the most wonderful unlikely thing happened to you?

If your novel got published

or your start-up got funded

or Keanu Reeves blew you a kiss through his car window?

That’d be a good day.

But what are the odds? How likely are you to hit a moonshot? Is it ever worth trying?

I’m glad you asked. In this essay, we’ll use probability to develop a strategy for taking moonshots that you can apply to your business, career and life.

I’ve loosely structured my life around these ideas. They won’t turn your galaxy upside down tomorrow. But given time, these ideas will change your life.

Perhaps it’ll work out so well that you feel your life needs no changing at all.

Let’s get started.

The Numbers

In this section I’ll use probability to generate the odds of succeeding at various levels of moonshots. In the next section, I’ll use these estimates to create three key criteria for building a life around moonshots.

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Siddharth Chatterjee
Siddharth Chatterjee

Written by Siddharth Chatterjee

Writer-philosopher. Essays on modernity, creativity and the mind. Let’s build an internet for big ideas: siddharthchatterjee.com/email-list/

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