I Read Jules Verne Before I Read a P&L

Long before I ever saw an income statement, I was reading Jules Verne. I was a kid when Apollo 8 circled the Moon in December 1968, and when Apollo 11 came home the next summer. Years later I learned something that still makes me smile. Verne had written that story a century earlier. In From the Earth to the Moon (1865), the launch is from Florida, chosen over Texas, with a crew of three and a capsule fired from a cannon called the Columbiad. Apollo 11's command module was named Columbia. On the way home, Neil Armstrong mentioned Verne in a broadcast from space.

Verne wasn't a prophet. He was a disciplined imaginer. He pictured the future in enough detail that you could almost build it.

More than three decades of CFO, COO and CEO work later, I think that is the most underrated skill in finance.

Phileas Fogg Had a Plan

Take Phileas Fogg, my favorite Verne character. He bets £20,000 at the Reform Club that he can go around the world in 80 days. What I noticed later, as a finance person, is that Fogg doesn't just make a bold bet. He funds it.

·         He has a plan. London to Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York and back, each leg with a set number of days.

·         He carries the cash to pay for steamers, elephants and the occasional bribe when the timetable breaks.

·         He tracks progress every day against the plan.

Then the plan meets reality. Ships are late, a railway line in India turns out to be unfinished, and a detective is chasing him. Fogg keeps adjusting and spending, and he arrives in London convinced he has lost. But by traveling east he gained a calendar day without realizing it. He still has time, and he wins.

Verne Would Have Enjoyed This Week

I couldn't write this on a Friday without noting the week we've just had.

·         On Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman named the Artemis III crew: Randy Bresnik, Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio and Italy's Luca Parmitano. In 2027 they'll test both SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon landers in Earth orbit, ahead of a planned Moon landing in 2028.

·         On Wednesday, NASA released the first science from Artemis II's April flight around the Moon: nearly a thousand new images, 814 GB of data, and five impact flashes the crew saw on the lunar surface.

·         That same evening, Bret Baier interviewed Jeff Bezos on the Blue Origin factory floor in Cape Canaveral. That's Florida again, just as Verne wrote it. Bezos said, "We have to beat China to the moon," and that a landing in 2028 is realistic. As for Mars: "We'll go to Mars... But we need to go to the moon first."

·         And a few days earlier, Isaacman told Baier on Special Report that the U.S. and China are in a "great power competition" in space.

Here's what caught the CFO in me. Bezos said he has put $28 billion of his own money into Blue Origin, and that the company recently raised $10 billion from outside investors for the first time. He also said it needs routine cargo deliveries before it can have a lasting base. That's Phileas Fogg all over again: a bold destination, a mapped route and the capital to carry it out.

How This Relates To Finance

Every good plan I've worked on had something of Verne in it:

1.       Imagine the destination in detail. "Grow revenue" is not a destination. "A $40 million business with 18% EBITDA and a clean data room" is.

2.      Map the legs. Quarters, milestones, hiring, capital, each with a date.

3.      Fund the trip. A strategy without the cash to carry it out is just a wager.

4.      Expect the railway to end in the jungle. Build in reserves and decide your options before you need them.

5.       Check the calendar. Sometimes the numbers are better than you feel they are. Read the data, not the mood.

A P&L tells you where you've been. Verne teaches us to ask where we're going and what it will take to get there.

Have a great weekend. What book shaped how you think about business?

John Mortenson | Fractional CFO | Straiteis Consulting