The Lunatic Who Tried 10,000 Times (and Lit the World)

If It Exists had been around 150 years ago, this would’ve been the historical edition. Every week we talk about the next big thing, but sometimes it helps to look back at the people who already went Zero To One. The ones who didn’t just daydream, but acted so boldly they bent the world.

Lets take a look at Thomas Edison (check out this awesome Founders Podcast on him)

He didn’t sit with a notebook full of half-ideas. He lit barns on fire at six “just to see what would happen.” He read entire libraries. He built newspapers on trains. He stared down the dark and said: “I’m going to erase this problem from human life.”

And if Edison had NTE Pro? Forget it. He’d have burned through all 5,000 ideas in a weekend. By Monday morning, he’d be workign with NTE Zero To One, building five companies at once, sleeping under his desk, and terrifying investors with lines like, “I will banish night itself.”

That’s why this edition is the historical version of It Exists. Because Edison is the blueprint.

The Chaos Kid

Edison’s family history was already wild. His father literally outran the King’s Men for 80 miles through the Canadian woods after a failed insurrection. One wrong step, and there’s no Thomas Edison lighting up America.

At six, young Tom set the family barn ablaze. Not to be bad, he just wanted to know what fire did. His dad punished him with a public thrashing, announced in advance so the neighbors could watch. Imagine your worst childhood screw-up turned into a live event. Edison remembered it for life.

Most kids would’ve been scared straight. Edison came out more stubborn. More curious. The chaos only ramped up.

By twelve, he was selling candy and newspapers on trains, then decided to make his own newspaper on the train. The first of its kind. One article angered a grown man so badly that he beat Edison up and tossed him into a river. PR crisis, 1862 edition.

And in his downtime? He discovered the Detroit Public Library. Most people wander the aisles. Edison read every single book. Later, on telegraph night shifts, he devoured Michael Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity until dawn, describing it as, “My brain was on fire.”

👉 Lesson 1: Knowledge is leverage. He had a library. You have the internet. No excuses.

Hustle Finds the Frontier

One day Edison saved a three-year-old from being hit by a train. The boy’s father, a stationmaster, repaid him by teaching telegraphy, the hottest skill of the era.

The telegraph wasn’t a toy. It was the internet of the 1850s. Global finance, war news, market data, all of it pulsed through those wires. Edison had literally stumbled into the future.

And he didn’t dabble. He practiced obsessively, experimented endlessly, and engineered upgrades that made him invaluable. He was the original “learn to code” guy, except his code powered an entire century.

👉 Lesson 2: Constraints aren’t roadblocks. They’re rocket fuel if you hustle inside them.

Standing Near Chaos

At 22, Edison was transmitting quotes during one of the biggest financial panics in U.S. history: Jay Gould’s failed attempt to corner the gold market. Imagine being a broke kid, watching the entire financial system crash in real time, wired into the chaos.

Soon after, he sold an improved stock ticker. He thought it might fetch $5,000. Western Union casually handed him $40,000. Edison nearly fainted. That night he clutched the money awake, convinced someone would murder him for it.

👉 Lesson 3: Put yourself near the action. Opportunities rub off. And stop undervaluing yourself, the market often will.

Curiosity vs. Focus

Here’s where Edison zigged. His peers each picked one mountain:

• Ford: cars for the masses.

• Jobs: insanely great products.

• Edwin Land: instant photography.

Edison? He wanted the whole mountain range. Telegraphs, light bulbs, phonographs, movies, mining, batteries, even creepy dolls that talked.

The result? He became a legend, but never Ford-rich.

👉 Lesson 4: Curiosity makes you interesting. Focus makes you rich. Edison picked legend over empire.

Menlo Park: The Chaos Factory

After years of getting out-negotiated by sharks like JP Morgan and Jay Gould, “Morganized” right out of his own companies, Edison founded Menlo Park, the first true R&D lab.

It was chaos. Workers put in 18-hour days, slept under benches, and churned out inventions: the phonograph, the light bulb, early motion pictures.

But chaos came with casualties. Edison once sent an assistant to the Amazon to find better filament materials. The man came back after 15 months, cashed his paycheck, partied, and then vanished forever. Nobody ever found him.

Another flop: Edison’s “talking doll,” which sounded like a demon. Kids cried. Parents demanded refunds.

👉 Lesson 5: Obsession births breakthroughs and disasters. If you’re not failing spectacularly, you’re not pushing hard enough.

The Showman

Edison wasn’t just a tinkerer. He was a showman. His labs were open to the press. His pitches weren’t technical specs, they were sermons. “I will banish night itself.” And the Vanderbilts cut checks.

👉 Lesson 6: People don’t just buy products. They buy belief.

Edison If He Was Around Today

Drop Edison into 2025 and he wouldn’t run one startup. He’d run Menlo Park 2.0, a chaos factory with AI in one room, clean energy in another, and an unlucky intern shipped to Mars to test filaments.

Who is he today? Musk’s chaos, Jobs’ theater, Altman’s obsession rolled into one. Who would he follow? Naval for wisdom. Musk because chaos recognizes chaos. And MrBeast, because Edison would’ve LOVED YouTube stunts.

But here’s the fun part: what would Edison think needs to exist today?

• Universal cheap energy. He obsessed over electricity then, he’d be hunting fusion, advanced batteries, and wireless transmission now.

• AI as a utility. Edison industrialized invention itself. He’d see AI as the new telegraph, a frontier tool to scale human creativity.

• Biotech longevity. The guy read Victor Hugo for metaphors; he’d be obsessed with bending biology. Not for vanity but for more time to hustle.

• Next-gen communication. Telegraph was the internet of his day. Today, he’d be poking at immersive AR/VR, brain-computer links, or whatever makes us “talk faster than thought.”

• Transportation leaps. He’d be all over EVs, autonomous systems, and probably backing the first company crazy enough to make lunar commuting a thing.

👉 If Edison had NTE Pro, these would be the categories he binged first. If he had NTE Zero To One, he’d already be testing prototypes in a lab filled with smoke, sparks, and broken glass.

The Spark

So what do we learn from Edison’s 10,000 experiments?

• Curiosity vs. Focus → legends vs. fortunes.

• Read obsessively → he cleared libraries; you’ve got the internet.

• Hustle constraints → scraps can become empires.

• Stand near chaos → he witnessed the gold crash firsthand.

• Value yourself → he asked for $5k, the world said $40k.

• Sell belief → “banish night” beats any pitch deck.

• Guard equity → don’t get Morganized.

• Obsession cuts both ways → light bulbs and demon dolls come from the same lab.

Edison wasn’t divine. He was stubborn, obsessive, and willing to try 10,000 times. That’s the real invention: action over ideas.

That’s why we built NTE Pro, to spark the ideas worth chasing. And NTE Zero To One to help you actually build them, because you probably aren’t Thomas Edison.

The light bulb exists. Movies exist. But Edison’s greatest invention? Proof that the world bends for people who act.

So the only question left is: what will you make exist?