Compounding Toward Greatness
Examples of getting what you want
This post is a part of the Iowa Startup Collective. If you haven't already, check out the other writers at IowaStartupCollective.Substack.com.
“The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”
Marc Andreessen, born in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
KNOWING WHAT I WANT
Example 1:
When we started Clayton Farms in 2017, Danen and I knew that we wanted to build something to help a lot of people have access to better food, year-round.
We established our mission to provide better food to more people. Today, it’s still our mission.
The world of indoor farming looked different in 2017 than it does today. Our thesis on the bigger indoor farms was that they focused too much on bells and whistles. After Y Combinator Demo Day in early 2019, almost all of my VC meetings included the question of “how are you better than Plenty?”
I butchered the answers in EVERY possible way—plus I hated the question on the surface, because worrying about competition is a waste of time until you’re MUCH bigger as a company. If I could go back in time, I would have slid over a couple photos and asked them which one looks like an actual farmer? People deserve to work directly with actual farmers.
The larger indoor farms look like scientists growing food in space ships.
Our farm looks like a farm. Warm, inviting, and fewer lab coats.
Collectively, the above companies have raised somewhere near $3 billion. My wife Mikayla just wrote about how raising VC won’t save your startup, here.
I assumed our last VC round we closed in December 2023 was the final $ we’d have access to before being profitable, and that has drastically helped me to relentlessly focus.
Every single week, we need to be on our A game, and that A game needs to be the best version we’ve ever seen, in order to compound toward greatness.
I’m not good at celebrating wins (because it’s always day 1), but this week we’ve got wins worth celebrating that all point to increasing the odds of fulfilling our mission.
1. We extended our runway another 5 months, by subleasing previous space.
2. We built our first partner farm of 2025 (an entire indoor farm in 4 days).
3. We celebrated 100,000 salads and smoothies farmed and served since opening Clayton Farms Salads location #1 in Ames, Iowa, just under 2 years ago.
A note on #3 above. If we are technology company with a mission of getting better food to more people, then we need to make sure we have the best business model to allow us to get better food to more people.
With our previous model of a home delivery subscription service, it took us 2 years to achieve 10,000 deliveries. Clayton Farms Salads is a 10x improvement in fulfilling our mission of getting better food to more people. 10,000 —> 100,000 in the same span of time.
Cody, Roberto, and I just moments before the 100,000th customer came through during lunch.
Example 2:
Running to win.
I didn’t start running until I turned 30. I’ll turn 38 this year, and I’m in the absolute best shape of my life. Over the past 8 years, I’ve been compounding toward greatness by completely eliminating alcohol, added sugar, caffeine, and meat from my diet.
The sacrifices I have made have led me to a resting heart rate of mid-to-high 40s. My heart is likely 25% bigger than it was 8 years ago.
Alongside the wins I’ve mentioned above for Clayton Farms, another one happened in my running this week. I’ve now surpassed my 2017 and 2018 total miles run, in the first 3 months of 2025.
My running coach, David Roche, is incredibly supportive and data driven. He’s going for the win this year in the Western States 100, which has inspired me to win the Broken Anvil Backyard Ultramarathon in September.
I want to win and still have my best running ahead of me. Over the 115 hours I’ve run so far in 2025, I’ve been able to focus and critically think through most problems in and around life. Your mind goes through interesting places on hours 2 and 3 of a run, while you are subconsciously preparing for hours 12 and 24 of upcoming races.
Example 3:
Willing something into existence through a bounty.
Last year, Mikayla and I launched MooneyGrants.com.
Within the site, we have a bounties section. We have set a budget/payout for something we wish existed. Anyone from anywhere can work on and claim a bounty if it’s open.
Growing up and playing card games for a living at the most competitive levels is a part of my history that I’m incredibly grateful for. Just after launching MooneyGrants.com, I discovered a new crypto digital card game called Fantasy.Top. It’s like Fantasy Sports meets Crypto Twitter (CT) meets Prediction Markets.
There’s an incredible and growing community around the game. It’s simple to play but the amount of data around the game is vast. It’s also nice that it’s mostly passive in the actual gameplay, as you set your lineup(s) once per week and then the game takes care of itself, with tournaments ending on Thursdays.
With only ~720 cards in the game, I put out a bounty for someone to build out a tool for Fantasy Top— shout out to the New Blast City Discord community for helping me incubate this idea. Friend, illustrator of both books I’ve written, and software developer, Michael Schneider quickly claimed the bounty.
He built a Heads Up Display (HUD) for the game, which showed a deeper dive on the card statistics, and who were more consistent cards to play. I created the algorithms for the card statistics.
I knew the tool needed to exist. I brought in someone who could build it.
Flash forward to today, and Fantasy Top HUDs has almost 350 users, with a 90+% weekly use rate.
I believe so much in the product that I continue to use it every week. I’m currently ranked 3rd globally in the game. To add to this week’s milestones mentioned above, the HUD data was so accurate that my decks took 1st, 4th, 8th, 9th, 39th, 40th, 44th, and 101st place in the main tournaments this week. There were almost 22,000 decks entered. The prizes are good. Each week pays out over $350,000 in ETH and cards.
From bounty, to prototype, to paid product, to 1st place. That’s compounding.
To everyone I help, I want you to be the greatest version of yourself. I know that everyone helping me wants that, too.
