In 1714, the British Empire had a costly problem. Ships could easily find latitude (north-south position) using the sun and stars. But longitude - your east-west position - was impossible to calculate at sea. Without it, every ocean voyage was a gamble. Ships crashed into coastlines they couldn't see coming. Cargo worth fortunes vanished into the wrong ports. The Empire was hemorrhaging money and lives.

Desperate, Parliament announced a £20,000 prize - roughly $5 million today - for anyone who could crack longitude.

The solution required something that seemed impossible: a clock that could keep perfect time on a ship. Why? Because if you know the exact time at your home port (say, Greenwich) and the local time where you are (from the sun's position), the difference tells you exactly how far east or west you've traveled. Brilliant in theory. Impossible in practice because no clock could stay accurate while being tossed by waves, corroded by salt, and subjected to wild temperature swings.

Dozens of the kingdom's finest tried. All failed.

Then John Harrison - a self-taught clockmaker nobody respected - built the impossible. His invention would save millions of pounds annually and make global trade possible. The establishment's response? Deny him the prize. The reward was "too large for one man," they argued, even as his invention transformed civilization.

Fast forward three centuries. Same story, different players.

Elon Musk's trillion-dollar pay package has everyone clutching pearls about "obscene" compensation. Are they missing what history keeps teaching us - that breakthrough rewards create breakthrough results? Or is a trillion actually too much for one person?

I think this is the most American comp package I have ever seen, and should inspire us in GTM a great deal. Hear me out.

Musk's 2018 compensation deal was unprecedented: zero salary, no cash bonus, pure performance-based equity. Tesla's market cap had to rise from $50 billion to $650 billion in stages, paired with escalating revenue and EBITDA targets. Critics called it impossible.

By 2022, Musk had unlocked every single tranche. Tesla's market cap hit $1.5 trillion. Shareholders who bet $1 in 2018 had $25 by 2022. Musk's haul: $56 billion.

In January 2024, Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick torpedoed the package because she felt the board was too cozy with Musk. In doing so, she voided a package that had already delivered 2,700% returns to shareholders.

Tesla's new 2025 package has the same structure, but bigger stakes. Musk gets roughly 12% of Tesla's equity - worth approximately $1 trillion - but only if he delivers the impossible within 10 years:

Step back and look at what Tesla's asking for. They're not paying Musk for incrementalism. They're paying him to restructure energy markets, mobility, autonomy, manufacturing, and robotics all in one shot. No government plan, strategic task force, or global consortium could coordinate these outcomes at the pace markets demand. Incentives are the only tool that reliably compresses timelines this large.

The Tesla board knows this is a very tall task for any human, if not seemingly impossible, but for that they also need to incentivize that one man, Elon Musk, to get them there. A man with a lot of wealth and interests, but also the best inventor of our time. 

If Musk hits these targets, the prize will look tiny compared to the enterprise value, GDP spillover, and technological compounding that follow. A trillion dollars is shocking when you see it as personal wealth, but trivial when you see it as a percentage of the value creation required to earn it.

In 1820, Americans lived to 40 and earned $2,500 (inflation-adjusted). Now we live to 79 and earn $85,800. We've become the world's largest economy, commanding half the global stock market.

It's not an accident. America birthed the steamboat, the airplane, the assembly line, the transistor, the microprocessor, the internet. These came from the intersection of regulated capitalism and radical incentives for radical risk.

Critics don't get what we're asking people to do. Only 0.4% of companies ever cross $10M in revenue. Most founders will fail. They'll sacrifice their health, time with family, their sanity, chasing something that probably won't work. If there's no massive upside for the few who succeed, nobody takes these moonshots. And without moonshots, civilization stagnates.

Young people are struggling, I get it. They can't find jobs, can't afford homes, and they're worse off than their parents were. When they see trillion-dollar packages, of course they're pissed.

But limiting incentives won't fix their problems. The breakthroughs that actually help them need someone crazy enough to chase an impossible prize.

Try this thought experiment: if we had to pay $1 trillion today to keep airplanes, GPS, and the internet, would we? Every single time. Because the value we get from these inventions far exceeds that amount. If Musk delivers what Tesla's asking, a trillion will feel obscene today and like highway robbery tomorrow.

I love that America is built on freedom, opportunity and the incentive to take risk. It's what has made us the global superpower that we are, and this package is the most American CEO package we’ve ever seen. More CEOs should be compensated this way, but the lessons go beyond public company CEO packages - there's a lot we can learn from this for GTM today.

Great incentives won't make mediocre people exceptional. But they'll make exceptional people unstoppable.

You hire hard-working, resilient, smart people. Match them with the right incentive package, and you've given yourself the best shot at winning. The package directs their drive exactly where you need it. It gives them reason to push harder than they thought possible.

GTM incentive packages today? They're a joke. I know because QuotaPath serves thousands of companies. The plans are too complicated to understand and too safe to inspire greatness. They aren’t thoughtful nor connected to the mission of the org, and can be misleading. 

When was the last time you saw:

Never. Because we're playing it safe while Musk's board is betting a trillion on the impossible.

The market's about to force our hand. AI is spawning companies at an unprecedented rate - from 585K tech companies in 2024 to 702K today. But these companies will run leaner. Each person, especially in GTM, becomes exponentially more valuable. The war for exceptional talent gets brutal.

The companies that win won't be the ones with the best perks or the coolest offices. They'll be the ones who understand what Tesla's board understands: aligned incentives turn the impossible into possible.

We're slowly getting better at this. Musk's package shows what's possible when boards have courage. But while everyone's debating whether a trillion is too much, smart leaders should be asking a different question: what moonshots could our teams achieve if we actually incentivized them properly?

That's your edge. Most companies won't figure this out for years. You can start tomorrow.

Everyone has been talking about the pipeline crisis unfolding in B2B tech.  Marketers are complaining that everything is broken and nothing works.  But, that’s not what’s happening.  Instead, we’re just seeing the natural consequences of massively increased competition.  In 2023, there were 585,000 tech companies in the US.  Two years later, that number has increased 20% to 702,000.  It’s simple supply and demand.

There are too many mediocre companies chasing the same number of buyers.  With competition that cutthroat, it’s no wonder people are struggling to build pipeline.  If you’re stuck, your first point of inspection should be GRR and NPS.  And if those are broken, you have a product issue to solve before you tear your hair out about pipeline. 

6sense’s latest Buyer Experience Report landed this week, and it’s packed with insights that should make every GTM leader pause. After surveying 4,000+ global B2B buyers, one thing is clear: the moment of persuasion happens looong before your first call.

Here’s what stood out:

The battle for influence is happening way before your reps get a meeting. Winning now means sensing intent earlier, building brand trust faster, and shaping preference before the first touchpoint. If you’re not on that “Day One” shortlist, you’re already behind.

You can register for the 6sense webinar (Nov 18th) breaking this report down here.

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