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Sep 26, 2021 likes 44K
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Trans Script
so when everybody leaves it's just elon
sitting at home brushing his teeth
just bunch of ideas bouncing around your
head when did you realize that that's
not the case with most people
i think when i was i don't know 506 or
something i thought i was
insane it was just strange
because it was clear that other people
did not
would their mind wasn't exploding with
ideas
[Music]
it was like
hmm
i'm strange
i don't think
i don't think you'd necessarily want to
be me
people would like it that much
it's very hard to turn it off
it's like a never-ending explosion
all the time
now is the time to overrule this
administration's pledge to mediocrity
listen
tesla's to sell sell sell you don't want
to own this stock you shouldn't even
rent the dorn thing
why
because beyond the hype there's just not
much going on here tesla still has yet
to turn a profit there'll be a 1.5
billion dollar company with no profit
his most recent quarter actually lost
more money than it did the year before
1.5 billion losing more money than year
before this is a company with limited
visibility
you put 90 billion dollars
like 50 years worth of breaks into into
solar and wind to to solyndra and fisker
and tesla and enter one i mean i had a
friend who said you don't just pick the
winners and losers you pick the losers
private enterprise will not ever
lead a space frontier not because i
don't want them to but my read of
history history tells me they can't it's
not possible
you know there are american heroes who
don't like this idea
neil armstrong gene cernan have both
testified against commercial space
flight in the way that you're developing
it and i wonder what you think of that
i was very sad to see that
because those guys are
yeah
you know those guys are heroes of mine
so it's really tough
you know i i wish they would come and
visit and and see the hardware they were
doing here
and i think that would change their mind
they inspired you to do this didn't they
yes
and to see them casting stones in your
direction
it's difficult
did you expect them to cheer you on
[Music]
so they hoping they would
what are you trying to prove to them
what i'm trying to do is to make a
significant difference in
in space flight and and and help make
space flight accessible to to almost
anyone one of the most difficult choices
i ever faced
in life was
was in 2008
and
i think i had
[Music]
maybe 30 million dollars left
30 or 41 left in 2008 i had two choices
i could
put it all into one company
and then the other company would
definitely die
um or split it
between the two companies and but if i
split it between two companies then both
might die
um
and when you put your
blood sweat and tears into creating
something
you're building something it's like a
child
and so it's like which one am i gonna
let one starve to death
i can bring myself to do it so i put i
split the money between the two
fortunately thank goodness uh they're
both came through
what was your biggest failure and how
did it change you
well there's a ton of failures along the
way that's for sure there's a support
for spacex the first three launches
failed
and uh
we were just barely able to scrape
together enough
parts and money to do the fourth launch
that fourth launch had failed we would
have been dead
so multiple failures along the way
tesla really faced the severe
threat threat of death
due to the model 3 production ramp
essentially the company was bleeding
money like crazy and and just
if if we didn't solve these problems in
a very short period of time uh we would
die uh and it was extremely difficult
to solve them how close to death did you
come we are within
single budget weeks
i went to russia three times to look at
buying um
a refurbished icvm
and uh i can tell you it was very weird
going there in 2000 late 2001 2002 going
to the russian rocket forces and saying
i'd like to buy
two of your biggest rockets
but you can keep the nuke
they thought i was crazy but but i did
have money so that was that was okay
um
and
after making several trips to to russia
i came to conclusion that my thought was
well
that that there's not enough will to
explore and expand beyond earth and have
a mars base and that kind of thing but i
can't conclusion that that was wrong um
in fact there's plenty of will
particularly in the united states uh
because the united states is a nation of
explorers the people who came here from
from other parts of the world i think
the united states really a just a
distillation of
the spirit of human exploration so
after
my third trip i said okay
what we really need to do here is try to
solve the space transport problem
and uh and started spacex
um
and uh this this was against the advice
of pretty much everyone i talked to
uh the thing it was it was tough going
there in the beginning uh because i'd
never built anything physical i mean i
built like little model rockets as a kid
and that kind of thing but
um i never had a company that built
anything physical so i'd kind of figure
out how to how to do all these things
and and bring together the right team of
people it was tough tough going
um
because thing about a rocket is that the
the passing grade is 100
you don't get to
actually test the rocket in the real
environment that it's going to be in
so i think to the best analogy for for
rocket engineering is
it's like if you want to create a really
complicated bit of software
um you could you can't run the software
as an integrated hole and you can't run
it on the computer it's intended to run
on but the first time you put it all
together and write it on that computer
it must run with no bugs
at the first launch i was picking up
bits of rocket near the
launch site was a bit sad
but we we learned with with each
successive flight and and were able to
with uh eventually with the fourth
flight in 2008 reached orbit i tried
very hard to to get the right expertise
in for for spacex i tried hard to to
find a great chief engineer for the
rocket but
the good chief engineers wouldn't join
and the bad ones well there was no point
in hiring them so i ended up being chief
engineer of the rocket
so if i could have found somebody better
than we would have maybe had less than
three failures
how did you get the expertise to be the
chief technology officer of a rocket
ship company
um well i do have a physics background
that's helpful as a foundation
and then i read a lot of books and talk
to a lot of a lot of smart people you're
self-taught yeah well it's self-taught
yes meaning um i didn't i don't have an
aerospace degree so how how did you go
about acquiring the knowledge well uh i
like i read a lot of books talk to a lot
of people and and have a great team
[Music]
when you had that third failure in a row
did you think
i need to pack this in never
why not
i don't ever give up
i mean i'd have to be
dead or completely incapacitated
so many people try to talk me out of
starting a ride company it was it was
crazy what did they tell you
one good friend of mine collected a
whole series of of
videos of rockets blowing up
and made me watch those she just didn't
want me to lose all my money
how did you figure you were going to
start a car company and be successful at
it well i didn't really think tesla
would be successful i thought we would
most likely fail but i thought that we
at least could address the false
perception that people had that electric
car had to be ugly and slow and
and boring like a golf cart
but you say you didn't expect the
company to be successful then why try if
something's important enough you should
try even if the probable outcome is
failure
were you a little naive when you thought
i'll just i can easily build build an
electric car and a rocket
i didn't think it would be easy
like i said i thought they would
probably fail
um
but you know like creating a company is
almost like having a child so it's sort
of like
how do you say your child should not
have food
so one once you have the company you
have to feed it and nurse it
and
take care of
it even if it it ruins you yeah
but supposing there wasn't tough times
in
2008
end of 2008
how did you get through that period of
crisis
so we just break for a second
wanna wait little one
[Music]
yeah sure if it was worth it
sure was worth it
where does that come from or how do you
think about
making a decision when everyone tells
you this is a crazy idea where do you
get the internal strength to do that
well first of all i'd say i actually
think i i think i feel feel fear quite
strongly
um so it's not as though
i just have the absence of fear i've i
feel it quite strongly um
but
there are just times when
something is important enough you
believe in it enough that
you do it in spite of the fear people
should think well i feel fear about this
and therefore i shouldn't do it um it's
normal to be to feel fear like you'd
have to definitely something mentally
wrong if you didn't feel fear
particularly if you're starting a
company you need to work super hard
so what what does super hard mean
well when my brother and i were starting
our first company
instead of getting an apartment we just
rented a small office and we slept on
the couch
and we we showered at the the ymca
and uh we're so hot up we had just one
computer so the
the website was up during the day uh and
i was coding at night
seven days a week all the time
um and i i
sort of briefly had a girlfriend that
period and in order to
be with me she had to sleep in the
office
so
i
work hard like
i mean every waking hour that's that's
the thing i would i would say if you're
particularly if you're starting a
company and i mean if you do simple math
say like okay if somebody else is
working 50 hours and you're working 100
you'll get twice as done as much done in
the course of a year as
the other company
i think certainly being focused on
something that you're confident will
have high value to someone else
and just being really rigorous in making
that assessment
um because people are attend tend to
a natural human tendency is wishful
thinking
so a challenge for entrepreneurs is to
say well what's the difference between
really believing in your ideals and
sticking sticking to them
versus
pursuing some unrealistic dream that
doesn't actually have merit and it's
it's that is a that is a really
difficult thing to to tell you can you
tell the difference between those two
things you know so you need to be sort
of very rigorous um in your self self
analysis
and then just work like hell i mean you
just have to put in
you know 80 hour 80 to 100 hour
weeks every week all those things
improve the odds of success
i think it's important that you really
like whatever you're doing
if you don't like it
life is too short if you like what you
doing you think about it even when
you're not working i mean it'll just
it's something that your mind is drawn
to
but even if you're if you're
the best the best there's always a
chance of failure
and and if you don't like it
you just really can't make it work i
think
if you're creating a company or if
you're joining a company
the most important thing is to
attract is to attract great people so
either of you would join a group that's
amazing that you really respect or
if you're building a company you've got
to gather great people i mean all the
company is is a group of people that
have gathered together to create a
product or service
and so depending upon how talented and
hardworking that group is and the degree
to which they're focused uh cohesively
in a good direction that will determine
the success of the company
so
do everything you can to to gather great
people
if you're creating a company
then i'd say focus on on signal over
noise
a lot of companies get get confused they
spend money on things that don't
actually make the product better
so
for example at tesla
we've never spent any money on
advertising
we put all the money into r d and
manufacturing and design to try to make
the car as good as possible
um
and
i think that's
that's the way to go
before for any given company just
keep thinking about
are these efforts that people are
expanding are they resulting in a better
product or service if they're not stop
those efforts don't just follow the
trend so um
you may have heard me say
that it's good to think in terms of
the physics approach of first principles
which is
rather than reasoning by analogy you
boil things down to the most fundamental
truths you can imagine and you reason up
from there
and this is a good way to figure out if
if something really makes sense or if
it's just
what everybody else is doing it's hard
to think that way you can't think think
that way about everything it takes a lot
of effort
but if you're trying to do something new
it's the best way to think
and that framework was developed by by
physicists to figure out
counterintuitive things
like quantum mechanics so
it's really a powerful powerful method
the final thing i would encourage you to
do is
now is the time to take risk
you don't have
yeah you don't have you don't have kids
as you get older your obligations
increase so
and once you have a family you start
taking risk not just for yourself but
for your family as well it gets much
harder to
do things that might not work out
um so now is the time to do that
before you before you have those
obligations so i would encourage you to
take risks now do something bold
um you won't regret it
what's your mission life why you do
whatever you do
when i was a kid i was wondering
kind of what's the meaning of life
like why are we here what's it all about
and
i came to the conclusion
that uh
what really matters is
trying to understand the right questions
to ask
the more that we can increase the scope
and scale of
human consciousness
the better we are able to ask these
questions
so i think that there's certain things
that are necessary to ensure that the
future is good
and
some of those things are
in the long term having long-term
sustainable transport and sustainable
energy generation
[Music]
and
to
be a space-bearing civilization
and for humanity to be out there among
the stars
and be a multi-planetary
species
[Music]
i think the
being a multi-planet species being out
there among the stars is important for
the long term
survival of humanity
and
that's one reason kind of like life
insurance for life collectively life as
we know it
[Music]
but then the part that i find personally
most motivating is that
it creates a sense of adventure
and it makes people excited about the
future
and if you consider two futures one
where
we are forever confined to earth until
eventually something
terrible happens
or another future where we are out there
on many planets maybe even going beyond
the solar system
how many things can you buy that you
really
love that
really give you joy
so rare so rare i wish there were more
things
that's what we're trying to do just make
things that somebody loves
i think that second version is
incredibly exciting and inspiring
and there need to be reasons to get up
in the morning you know life can't just
be about solving problems otherwise
what's the point
there's got to be things that people
find inspiring
and make life worth living
the universe as we know it will
dissipate
into a fine mist
of
cold nothingness eventually
i don't want to sound like like things
are too dark because i think like you
kind of have to
be optimistic about the future there's
no point in being
pessimistic
it's just too negative it doesn't help
you know
i think you want to be i mean my theory
is like i'd rather be optimistic and
wrong than pessimistic and right
like what are the set of things that can
be done to make the future better
i think that a future where we are
space-faring
civilization and out there among the
stars
this is very exciting this makes me look
forward to the future
this makes me want that future
there need to be things
that make you look forward to
waking up in the morning wake up in the
morning look forward to the day forward
to the future
a future where we are space faring
civilization and out there among the
stars i think that's very exciting that
is a thing we want
whereas if
if you knew we would not be a
spacefaring civilization but forever
confined to earth this would not be a
good future that would be very sad i
think
if there are two futurists and one
futurists were out there among the stars
and things we read about and see in
science fiction movies the good ones are
true
we have these starships and we're
we're going to see what other planets
are like and
we're a multi-planet species and the
scope and scale of
consciousness is expanded
across many civilizations and many
planets and many star systems this is a
great future
this is a wonderful thing to me and
that's what we should strive for
people look like they have a much better
life
than
they really do
people are posting pictures of when
they're really happy
they're modifying those pictures to be
better looking
even if they're not modifying the
pictures they're at least selecting the
pictures for the best lighting the best
angle
so
people basically seem
uh
they're way better looking than they
basically really are
and they're
way happier seeming than they really are
so if you look at everyone on instagram
you might think man
they're all these happy beautiful people
and
i'm not that good looking and i'm not
happy so i'm i'ma suck you know and
that's gonna
make me feel sad
when in fact
those people you think are super happy
actually not that happy some of them are
really depressed they're very sad
some of the happiest seeming people
actually some of the saddest people in
reality
so i think i think things like that can
make people quite sad
this may sound corny
but love is the answer
wouldn't hurt to have more love in the
world
i think you know
i think people should be nicer to each
other and give people and give
give more credit to others
and don't assume that they're mean until
you know they're actually mean you know
just
it's easy to demonize people
you're usually wrong about it people are
nicer than you think
give people more credit
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