Fast

A good inspiration ↗︎ on ambitious projects:

iPod. Tony Fadell was hired to create the iPod in late January 2001. Steve Jobs greenlit the project in March 2001. They hired a contract manufacturer in April 2001, announced the product in October 2001, and shipped the first production iPod to customers in November 2001, around 290 days after getting started. Source: Tony Fadell.

COVID-19 vaccines. On January 10 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 genome was published ↗︎. 3 days later, Moderna finalized ↗︎ the sequence for mRNA-1273 ↗︎, its mRNA vaccine candidate; the first batch was manufactured on February 7. On February 24 (45 days after genome publication), Moderna shipped the first batch of mRNA-1273 to the NIH for use in their Phase 1 clinical study. 266 days of clinical trials and regulatory coordination followed. On November 16, Moderna announced ↗︎ that the vaccine's efficacy was 94.5%. Source: linked materials. Note: the BioNTech vaccine was produced on a similarly impressive timeline but I haven't yet tracked down sufficiently granular information about its development—pointers appreciated.