How do you pitch huge investment projects such as Tesla’s Gigafactory? By building one in Minecraft, obviously! While not a true investment offer yet, an initiative by Lithuanian Tesla and Minecraft fans has been featured on New York Times and Mashable. It was also instantly acknowledged by Tesla and, most possibly, its founder Elon Musk himself.

Boy, that escalated fast! A discussion in the comments section of an online article in early December turned into a series of meetings and, subsequently, a panel discussion with top government officials and an idea hackathon. Now though, the second place winners have been featured on media outlets such as Mashable, Engadget and New York Times, to name just a few, while Tesla is also definitely aware of Lithuania’s wish to have a European Gigafactory.

How did the Minecraft team do it? Well, by simply implementing their idea and actually building a Lithuanian Gigafactory in Minecraft. More than 40 great Lithuanian Minecraft players were gathered for a weekend to build an amazing piece of e-engineering:

From there, it snowballed fast. First, Tesla’s team saw the video and tweeted their excitement:

Lithuania knows the way to our heart: a Gigafactory 2 pitch using Minecraft. https://t.co/V5COhmMkdu

— Tesla (@TeslaMotors) February 3, 2017

Even Elon Musk then referred to Minecraft in his tweet, even though we’re still unsure what exactly did he mean:

Minecraft pic.twitter.com/lU1YzJjLOZ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2017

As the Lithuanian Gigafactory in Minecraft was ‘legitimized’ by Tesla’s official Twitter account, pitching and/or having organic coverage in the New York Times, Engadget, Mashable, Gas2.org, Bored Panda and other websites has been made easier.

Lessons learned? Passion for your idea can take you very far – this team came second in the hackathon, however, they didn’t give up. Good implementation is also of tremendous importance: the team gathered 40+ Lithuanian Minecraft pros as opposed to going solo. Also, all major pitches must be custom made and tailored – in this case, a ‘geeky’ company such as Tesla has been pitched in a ‘geeky’ way. And of course, quality content opens doors to major international media.

Now let’s see where this buzz takes Lithuania’s wishes to have a Gigafactory.