Everybody wants Mars. Nobody wants to build Starlink.

So I'm reading the SpaceX filing the other night and I had to stop and just stare at the screen for a second.

Five billion dollars. That's about what they lost last year. And they're about to go public at something close to $1.75 trillion.

Five billion in the hole. Worth almost two trillion. Same company.

The part of my brain that spent years at GE Capital, where a deal lived or died on whether the model actually held up, kind of short-circuited. Back then a number like that didn't get you a shiny valuation. It got you walked into a conference room full of people who were not smiling.

So I dug in, because of course I did, and the answer's sitting in the most boring corner of the whole business.

Starlink. The satellite internet thing. Made around $4.4 billion in profit last year. Subscriptions, recurring, the kind of revenue that would put a room to sleep at a dinner party (not really, but you get the point).

And that sleepy little money machine is what's paying for Mars.

Sit with that one, because it's the whole game and almost everybody gets it exactly backwards. The rockets, the settlements, the whole colonize-another-planet dream. None of it gets funded without the dull subscription business quietly printing cash underneath it. The purpose runs on the profit. Not the other way around.

Okay. Here's the part that stings a little.

Most founders I talk to are all Mars. Big vision, huge heart, a mission that genuinely matters to them. And no Starlink. Nothing boring and profitable holding the whole thing up. So the dream just kind of hovers there, underfunded, always one big launch or one big client away from finally working.

And honestly, I get it. The boring part is boring. Nobody starts a company because they're fired up about recurring revenue from a service they've run the same way for three years straight. You started it for the Mars.

But a purpose with no profit underneath it isn't a mission. It's a hobby that's quietly going broke. And I say that with love, because I've watched it gut people I really like. The founder is usually the last one to see it coming, because the vision feels so alive that the bank balance turns into the thing you'd rather not open.

Now. Before somebody forwards this to their co-founder as proof that bleeding cash for five years is "playing the long game."

You are not SpaceX. Sorry.

Musk gets to torch billions on a story because the government needs his rockets and the market treats him like his own asset class. You don't get that pass. Nobody's floating you a trillion-dollar narrative to coast on. Which is the entire reason the boring engine isn't a nice-to-have for you. It's the thing keeping the lights on long enough for your impossible dream to even get a real swing at the plate.

So here's what I'd actually do this week. One question. Just sit with it.

What's your Starlink?

Not the dream. Not the thing you talk about on stage. The boring, repeatable, cash-spitting part of your business that quietly pays for everything else.

If you can name it in about three seconds, good. You're already ahead of most people reading this. Now go protect it. Feed it. Stop being a little embarrassed that it's not the exciting part.

And if you genuinely can't name one? That's your real problem. And it was never a vision problem. It's a math problem wearing a vision costume.

SpaceX didn't reach Mars by chasing Mars. They built something deeply unglamorous that pays the bills while they aim at the impossible.

Boring engine first. Bold vision second. Every single time.

So tell me, and hit reply because I actually read these, do you know what your Starlink is? Or are you all Mars right now?

No judgment if it's the second one. I've been there too.

Cruz