Moonshot Trade-Off Test
Classify moonshots by consequential risk and upside, not by workload alone.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 96%
Define a moonshot by the scale of its potential upside and the seriousness of its uncertainty or trade-offs, not by how much labor it consumes. A strategically risky decision may be operationally simple and may even remove large amounts of work. Midjourney’s decision to make Discord central to discovery, education, and community illustrates the distinction: adopting an existing platform reduced the number of surfaces the company needed to build, but tightly coupling distribution and experience to Discord created substantial strategic trade-offs. Evaluate upside, downside, reversibility, dependency, and eliminated work separately. Be suspicious of opportunities described as both low risk and high reward because durable strategic advantages rarely arrive without meaningful trade-offs.
Origin
Brian Balfour used Midjourney’s Discord distribution decision to redefine moonshots on Marketing Against The Grain.
Core principles
- 01A moonshot can eliminate work rather than create more work.
- 02Consequential trade-offs define strategic risk better than project size.
- 03Meaningful upside must compensate for a low-confidence decision.
- 04Low-risk, high-reward opportunities are exceptionally rare.
- 05A narrow, high-risk choice can outperform a broad, expensive initiative.
How to run it
- 1
Define the upside
Describe the customer, distribution, revenue, or strategic gain the bet could unlock.
Pro tip Require an upside large enough to justify unusual uncertainty.
Watch out Novelty alone does not make an initiative a moonshot.
- 2
Map the trade-offs
List dependencies, foreclosed alternatives, lock-in, reputational exposure, and failure consequences.
Pro tip Distinguish reversible experimentation from commitments that reshape the company.
Watch out A small implementation can still create a large strategic dependency.
- 3
Separate risk from workload
Estimate implementation effort independently from the uncertainty and consequences of the decision.
Pro tip Look for choices that simplify operations while concentrating strategic risk.
Watch out Do not label a laborious redesign a moonshot merely because it is expensive.
- 4
Test the asymmetry
Compare credible upside against downside, reversibility, and the company’s capacity to absorb failure.
Pro tip State why the specific company might benefit from the trade-off.
Watch out Claims of easy, low-risk, high-reward growth should receive extra scrutiny.
- 5
Make the commitment explicit
Document the decision, assumptions, trade-offs, and signals that would justify continuing or exiting.
Pro tip Create checkpoints before dependencies become irreversible.
Watch out Unexamined commitment can turn a calculated moonshot into accidental lock-in.
In the wild
Midjourney used Discord for product education, community interaction, discovery, and exposure to other users’ creations. The decision reduced the need to build several proprietary surfaces, but it also coupled the company’s distribution and experience to an external platform with meaningful trade-offs.
→ A low-work but high-risk distribution choice helped support extraordinary early growth.
Common mistakes
Equating moonshot with workload
A project can consume enormous effort while offering little uncertain upside or strategic leverage.
Ignoring concentrated dependency
Using an external platform may simplify execution while creating material platform and distribution risk.
Searching for free upside
Low-risk, high-reward opportunities are usually already competed away or misunderstood.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders evaluating unconventional distribution, product, positioning, or market-entry choices.
Not ideal for
Routine optimization work with well-understood inputs, limited trade-offs, and predictable returns.
From the transcript
“most people perceive moonshots as things that are going to be a lot of work and have a low probability of working.”
“that's a decision that's not a lot of work. In fact, it was a decision to cut a lot of work.”
“it was a really high risk decision because it had some serious trade-offs, right?”
From the episode
Brian Balfour Reveals How To Build An A+ Marketing Team From Scratch (#183)
Brian Balfour