Rocketships and Slingshots

18 juecd 5 9/4/2025, 9:06:10 PM postround.substack.com ↗

Comments (5)

fitzn · 35m ago
It would have been cool to read stories about a few more examples of slingshots, as the author calls them.
Animats · 8m ago
Right. Just at the point I expected to find the list, there's only a "Subscribe" button to ignore.

Hm. Examples:

- Amazon? Long road to profitability, but there was fast early growth.

- Space-X, which took a long time to get to a successful launch.

- Someone already mentioned Nvidia.

- Waymo, which took about 15 years from start to real service, and now is doubling in size more than once a year.

- ASML, founded in 1984 and took a long time to become the dominant player in photolithograpy.

- Roblox, tiny for over a decade, then gradually found the right market and really grew.

Who else.

akharris · 18m ago
Fair enough. I definitely should have added nvidia to the list.
safety-space · 20m ago
I think that bootstrapped startups are more likely to be slingshots than rockets. Given lower fundings, but more skin in the game for the founder(s)
safety-space · 20m ago
either way, I like the term, definitely going to start using that, with the emoji too of course