want to be happy build a life not just a
business hey it's evan carmichael and
this channel was created to help you
overcome the number one challenge that
is holding you back a lack of belief in
yourself you watch these videos because
you know there's something more inside
you too you've got michael jordan level
genius at something so today let's live
your best believe life and get the best
video for elon musk motivation enjoy
young people globally who want to be
like
elon musk what's your advice to them
i think that
probably
they shouldn't want to be
you
i think it sounds better than it is okay
um
yeah it's uh
not as much fun being me as you'd think
i don't know you don't think so
there's definitely it could be worse for
sure but it's
um i i
i'm not sure i would i'm not sure i want
to be me
okay
but
if
you know i think advice i mean if you
want to make progress in things
i think that
um but
the best analytical framework
for
understanding the future is physics
i'd recommend studying
the
uh
the thinking process around physics like
not just not not the equations i mean
equations certainly they're helpful but
the the the way of thinking in physics
is the it's the best framework for
understanding things that are
counterintuitive
and
you know always taking the position that
you are some degree wrong
and your goal is to be less wrong over
time
one of the biggest mistakes people
generally make and i'm guilty of it too
is wishful thinking
you know like you want something to be
true
even if it isn't true um
and so you ignore the things that
uh you ignore the real truth because of
what you want to be true
um
this is a very difficult trap to avoid
and like i said certainly one that i
find myself in
having problems with
but if you just take that approach of
you're always to some degree wrong and
your goal is to be less wrong
and and solicit critical feedback
particularly from friends
like friends particularly friends if
somebody loves you they want the best
for you
they don't want to tell you the bad
things
so you have to ask them
you know and said really i really do
want to know
and then they'll tell you you don't need
college learning learn stuff okay
everything is available basically for
free
you can learn anything you want for free
it is not a question of learning um
there there is
a value that colleges have which is like
you know seeing whether somebody's
is can somebody work hard at something
including a bunch of
sort of annoying homework assignments
and still do their homework assignments
uh and and kind of soldier through and
and get it done
you know that's
that's like
the main value of college and then also
you know if you you
probably want to hang around with a
bunch of people your own age for a while
instead of going right into the
workforce
um
so i think colleges are basically for
fun and to prove you can do your chores
but they're not for learning i think
failure is bad um i don't think it's
good um but
if if if something's important enough
then you you do it even though the risk
of failure is high
um
and and so i think my advice if somebody
wants to start a company is they should
bear in mind that the most likely
outcome is is that it's not going to
work
and they should reconcile themselves to
that
past strong possibility
and they should only do it if they feel
that they
they're they're really compelled to do
it
you know
um
because it's it's
it's gonna the way starting company
works is like usually in the beginning
it's the very beginning it's kind of fun
um
and then it's really hellish for a
number of years you talked about chewing
glass
yeah there's
there's a friend of mine who's a
successful entrepreneur
and
started actually his career around the
same time as i did and he has a good
good good phrase his name's bully uh
um he said yeah you're starting
companies like eating glass and staring
into the abyss
and
you agree with that
generally true
um
yeah and and and if you don't eat the
glass you're not going to be successful
also if you want to have more self
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there are just times when
something is important enough you
believe in it enough that
you you do it in spite of fear when you
want to do something new you you have to
you have to apply the the physics
approach well we have a lot of good good
people at spacex that
um
a lot of really talented people
uh
in fact i wonder like sometimes
how we can make use of their talents
in the best way because you know i think
we're often not using their talents in
the best way
um
yeah but
you know to the point of the question i
was just asked i want to make sure tesla
recruiting does not have anything that
says requires
university because that's absurd
but there is a requirement of evidence
of exceptional ability like you just
can't if you're trying to do something
exceptional they must have
evidence of exceptional ability
i don't consider going to college
evidence of exceptional ability
in fact
ideally you dropped out and did
something
i mean obviously you know
we just look at like you know
gates is a pretty smart guy he dropped
down
john was pretty smart he dropped out you
know larry ellison a smart guy he
dropped out i'm like
obviously not needed
so did shakespeare even go to college
probably not
but one of the fun things for me is
watching the the cargo go into the crew
vessel you know all of a sudden we had
dragon one now we have crew dragon and
it's substantially different but
familiar so tell us like what's been
some of the hardest parts to transition
from cargo into crew because crew is a
little more
important than
than cargo yes i mean cargo can be
replaced crew cannot um and so the the
level of scrutiny the level of attention
is
i mean i don't know order of magnitude
greater it was it was it was already
high for cargo i mean
and and uh but it's it's just a whole
nother level for for a crew um so
you know after and after i told the
spacex team that you know the
uh
this mission reliability is not really
the top priority it is the only priority
right now um so we're just doing
continuous uh engineering reviews uh
from now
non-stop uh 24 hours a day until launch
just gone over everything again and
again and again and i was out at the pad
just recently just walking down the
rocket
um
we've got a team that's just crawling
over the rocket in the horizontal then
we're gonna rotate it vertical then
we're gonna crawl all over in the
vertical
and
we're just looking for
any
any possible action that can improve the
probability of success no matter how
small whether that comes from an intern
or me or anyone it doesn't matter what
sort of things do you look for in people
or in processes that make the workforce
better
sure well i think
the massive thing that can be done is to
make sure your incentive structure is
such that
innovation is rewarded and lack of
innovation is punished they've got to be
a characteristic
so
uh if somebody is
innovating um
and
doing
making good progress
then
they should be promoted sooner
and if somebody is completely failing to
innovate
not every role requires innovation but
if they're in a role where innovation is
should be happening and it's not
happening then they should either not be
promoted or exited
and let me tell you you'll get promoted
you could you'll you'll get innovation
real fast so now your actual total mass
of a steel
uh
of a reusable steel spacecraft is less
than that of the most advanced carbon
fiber
vehicle
you could possibly imagine yeah
wow but this
happened by accident by the way this may
sound like some great insight but it
actually happened because we were moving
too slowly on composite um and i was
like we cannot move this slowly or we'll
go bankrupt so
just do this with steel so yeah i mean
the design has to be focused on problem
solving otherwise you're going to spend
too much time trying to figure you don't
start with a
yeah
yeah i'm like
sort of taken to management management
by rhyming if the schedule is your
schedule is long your design is wrong
right
this is very true that's good good point
yes advice i'd give to people starting
company to entrepreneurs in general is
um
really focus on making a product that
your customers love
um and it's so rare that you can buy a
product and and you love the product
when you bought it this is
this is there are very few uh things
that fit into that category and if you
can come up with something like that
your business will be successful for
sure tesla really faced the severe
uh 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
we would die
and it was extremely difficult
to solve them how close to death did you
come we were within
single-digit weeks 22 hours a day like
what how many hours working yeah seven
days a week
sleeping in the factory
uh i worked away from the i worked in
the paint shop general assembly body
shop you ever worry about yourself
imploding like it's just too much
absolutely
no one should
put this many hours into work
this is not good
and people should not work this hard i'm
not they should not do this this is very
painful
painful in what sense
it's because my ears my brain
and my heart
so it's
this is not recommended for anyone i
just did it because if i didn't do it
then tesla
good chance as it would die the real way
i think you you actually achieve
intellectual property protection is by
innovating fast enough if your rate of
innovation is high
then you don't need to worry about
protecting vip
because
other companies will be copying
something that you did years ago
and that's fine you know
just
make sure
your rate of innovation is fast um
speed is really the speed of innovation
is what is what matters um
and i do i do say this to my teams like
quite a lot that innovation per unit
time as i go innovation per year if
you're what i say like is is what
matters not
innovation
absent time because if you wanted to
make say
um 100 improvement in something
and that took 100 years or one year
that's
radically different
so
it's like what is your rate of
innovation
that that matters and is the rate of
innovation
is that accelerating or decelerating
um
and a weird thing happens when companies
get big is that most companies
or organizations the bigger they get
they tend to
get less innovative
not just less innovative on a per person
basis but less innovative in the
absolute
and i think this is probably because the
incentive structure is not
uh
is not
there for innovation
um
it's not enough to use words to
encourage innovation the incentive
structure must be aligned with that
that's fundamental you need to work if
depending on how well you want to do and
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
the website was up during the day
and i was coding at night
seven days a week all the time
and i i
sort of briefly had a girlfriend in that
period and in order to
be with me she had to sleep in the
office
so
i
work hard like it i mean every waking
hour that's that's the the thing i would
i would say if if you're particularly if
you're starting a company
um
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 of the these
things is just
there's a certain amount of time and
within that time you want the
the best net outcome
so
for
you know all the set of actions that you
can do
there's going to be
uh and some of which will fail some
which will succeed
and you want the
the net useful
output of your set of actions to be the
highest
so
um
i'm going to like use like a baseball
analogy like
you know baseball they don't let you
just sit there and wait for the perfect
pitch until that you get a real easy one
they didn't give you three shots and the
third one
they say okay they
get off the
go back to the
put somebody else up there um
so these your three strikes on on
baseball
um
not you know not only bad anymore so
so you're what you're really looking for
is like what's the batting average
you know how how are you doing on
uh
on score
um and just
there's going to be some amount of
failure
but you want your net output
um
that useful output to be maximized
failure is essentially irrelevant
unless it is catastrophic 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
uh but if you're trying to do something
new it's the best way to think um and
that framework was developed by by
physicists to figure out
counterintuitive things
like quantum mechanics so
it's really a powerful powerful method
we need to push for radical
breakthroughs um
and if you don't push for radical
breakthroughs you're not going to get
radical outcomes um
and that that does mean taking risks
um
and
yeah
common sense that the the if you take a
big risk in order to
have a big reward there must be a big
risk it's most the time
you cannot find a
big reward for small risk that's why
those are rare
so you're going to have some
proportionality with the risk and reward
i simplify your product as much as
possible
um
you know and then like if i think of
some of the ways which how does a smart
engineer make dumb mistakes
including you know
is optimize something that shouldn't
exist
don't optimize something that shouldn't
exist
um but people are trained to do this in
college you can't say no to the
professor you know the professor's going
to give you the
exam and you've got to answer all the
questions
or they'll get angry
so
and give you a bad grade so then you
you always
optimize the you always answer the
question
a lot of the times you should say this
is the wrong question
right in fact the question is definitely
wrong to some degree just how wrong
and i think just generally taking the
approach that
your design is
some degree wrong probably a lot more
than you think
your goal is to make it less wrong over
time
zip2 started off
as
basically
like say we're trying to figure out how
to how to make enough money to exist as
a company and
the
so so since there wasn't really any
advertising money being made
we thought we could um
help existing companies
get online bring their stuff online so
we developed software that helped bring
um
love in newspapers and media companies
online because they alone just didn't
they also didn't know what the internet
was they were big customers didn't you
yeah
and even the ones that were aware of the
internet didn't have a software team so
they could they weren't very good at
developing functionality
um and uh so we had as um investors and
customers uh the new york times company
night reader host and and so we were
able to get them to pay us to develop
software for them to bring them online
so online publishing stuff we did maps
and directions and yellow pages and
white pages and
various other things 2008 in particular
was was was awful because
we had the third launch failure in a row
of
of our falcon 1 vehicle at spacex um
and um
we
the tesla financing round that we were
raising fell apart
um because the economy is going to
tailspin
um and it's pretty hard to raise money
for a startup car company uh you know
late 2008 when gm and chrysler are busy
going bankrupt
um
that was that was tough and then solar
city had to deal with uh morgan stanley
and morgan stanley had to renege on the
deal because they themselves were
running out of money um so it looked
like all three companies were gonna die
and i was also going through divorce so
that was definitely a low point so it's
2008 you're going through a divorce
which like some to borrow your word
douchebag vloggers are writing about to
make even worse right yes that's true um
in addition to
all that stuff happening i was getting
dumped on massively in the press right
yeah you're you know it looks like all
three companies yeah are going to file i
mean
why do you keep going with all three
like i feel like even a lot of great
entrepreneurs in that situation would
have been like
i've already sunk everything i have in
these companies
and i gotta pick one
but you didn't i mean you kept doing all
three why um yeah that was that was a
very tough call
um
at the end of 2008 that was that was
probably the top you know one of the
toughest goals i've had to make
because i could either
um
reserve capital for one company or the
other i mean before solar city didn't
need a ton of capital so they were okay
um but between spacex and and and tesla
um
you know it's sort of like like you've
got two kids and
what do you do do you spend all your
money to to maximize probably the
success of of one or do you
do you try to keep both left
unfortunately it worked how aside from
making great products how do you get
people excited about tesla there's a lot
of people i know and that i talk to who
are just intrigued and interested and
excited about tesla as a company the
thing i really focus on at tesla is like
we really put all of our money into an
attention to trying to make the product
as compelling as possible so um
because i think that really the way to
um sell any product is through word of
mouth so if if
one somebody gets the car they really
like it they and and actually the key is
like to have a product that people love
um and and general people
um you know if that a party or
tour friends or whatever um you'll talk
about the things that you love
but you know if you just like something
it's okay you're not going to care that
much but if you look at the reactions
from the highs and the lows
you're gonna
yeah you're gonna talk you know and and
then that'll generate work turns word of
mouth that's basically how how our sales
have have grown like we don't we're not
spending money on advertising or
endorsements or
uh and um so anyone like buys our car
they just water because they they like
the car zip2 happened you sold it and
it and bought the mclaren
and if i'm not mistaken you you invested
most of that money into your next uh
your next venture uh x.com that's right
um
so
uh yeah most of most of the funds went
into x.com which was later renamed
paypal that worked out pretty well
[Music]
it worked out pretty well but looking
looking back on it um
would because you put a lot of your eggs
in in that basket would you would you
advise
entrepreneurs to roll the bones quite
the way you did
yeah absolutely i think so um i think i
think i think it's worth investing your
own capital in what you do i don't
believe in the sort of other people's
money thing um
you know i think if you're not willing
to put your own
assets at stake then
you shouldn't ask other people to do
that to do that we don't think too much
about what competitors are doing yeah um
just because i think it's important to
um be
just focused on making the best possible
uh products um
you know it's sort of maybe analogous to
what they say about you know if you're
in a in a if you're if you're in a in a
race um
don't worry about what how the what the
other runners are doing just run what is
the likelihood that you personally will
go to mars 70
we've recently made a number of
breakthroughs that i that i'm just
really fired up about and when does that
happen in our lifetimes yeah yeah i'm
talking about moving there so it's like
so if it can get the price per ticket
maybe around a couple hundred thousand
dollars this could be an escape hatch
for rich people
no if your probability of dying on mars
is much higher than earth
really the app would go to mars would be
like shackleton's after going to the
antarctic
it's going to be hard
there's a good chance of death
going in a little can through deep space
you might land successfully once you
land successfully there will be a map
you'll be working non-stop to build the
base
uh series you're not not much time for
leisure and once you get there even
after doing all this
there's a very harsh environment to use
a good chance to die there
we think you can come back but we're not
sure
now does that sound like an escape patch
for rich people and yet you would
unhesitate and wake up you know there's
lots of people like climb mountains you
know why they climb mountains because
people die on endeavors all the time
they're like doing it for the challenge
it's very important to to seek out to
actively seek out
and listen very carefully to negative
feedback
and this is something that people tend
to avoid because it's it's painful yeah
um
but
but i think this is a very common
mistake is to to not actively seek out
and listen to
uh negative feedback what do you do that
you go into forums do you go into
twitter like what are your areas where
you go to look for feedback on let's say
the tesla
well it's like everyone i talk to is um
in fact when um when friends get a
product i say look i don't tell me what
you like tell me what you don't like
right um and and because otherwise your
friend is not going to tell you what he
doesn't like right this girl's going to
say oh i love this and that and and then
and leave out the this is the stuff i
don't like list because too much of your
friend want you know it doesn't want to
offend you so um
so you really need to
[Music]
to to to to sort of coax negative
feedback um
and you should you know that if somebody
is your is your friend or at least not
your enemy and they're giving you
negative feedback
[Music]
then
they may be wrong but it's coming from a
good place
and sometimes even your enemies give you
good negative feedback as a kid i didn't
really have any grand designs i mean the
reason i started programming computers
is because i like computer games
and i play lots of computer games and
i learned that if i wrote software and
sold it then i could get more money and
buy better computers so it wasn't really
you know with some grand vision or
anything um when i was growing up and
i'd read lots of books
and uh
they were very often set in the united
states and it seemed like a lot of new
technology was being developed in the
united states so i i thought okay i
really want to work on new technology so
i want to get to silicon valley
um you know which
when i was growing up silicon valley
seemed like some sort of mythical place
uh you know like mount olympus or
something
i came to conclusion that
my initial premise was was wrong
uh that in fact
the um
there's there's a great deal of will uh
you know that there's there's not such a
shortage
um but people don't think there's a way
um and and that if people thought there
was there was a way or do something that
wouldn't
break the federal budget um
then then people would support it
which in retrospect i think is actually
kind of obvious because
um
the the united states is a distillation
of the human spirit of exploration
people came here from other places um i
mean it's
you know there's no nation there's no i
mean there's no nation that that's more
a nation of explorers than united united
states but but people need to believe
that it's possible and it's that it's
not you know it's they're not going to
give up like healthcare or something
important
it's just it's got to be
that that that's important so
so i thought okay well
then it's not a question of well it's a
question of showing that there's a way
in the beginning nobody wanted a tesla i
can tell you that
the the the
when we made the original sort of roads
to sports car
uh people were like why would i want an
electric car that's
my gasoline
car works fine
i'm like no electric car is better i
should try it
um
and it was you know hard to get people
to
do a test drive
first one nobody knew who we were and
then we heard this company
and like yeah we're named after nikola
tesla you know that guy nope
um
so
for sure we were doing push in the
beginning because people said there was
no one telling us that they wanted an
electric car so it was not it was not
out of like
you know it was like lots of people
coming up to me saying hey i really want
an electric car i heard that zero times
um
some people like it's like man we're
gonna make an electric car and show that
these things can be good um and then
people want them
um
you know it's like i think it's like
henry ford said that like the you know
we're talking about the model t it's
like if you ask the public what they
wanted they'd say a faster horse
so if you did like a big survey and say
well hey public
before automobiles
what would you like it's like well i'd
like my horse to go three miles an hour
faster and eat less food and
uh
you know be stronger and
live longer and that kind of thing
um there will be basically a bunch of
incremental improvements on horse
um
because you learn when you say like what
about an automobile that car that drives
itself like what are you talking about
that's not that sounds crazy
but when you actually make an automobile
and give it to people and say okay
now this is a horse where you can keep
it in the barn and if you leave for a
month it's still alive
yeah uh
so carry more more weight than a horse
and go further and that kind of thing so
it's like when when it's a radically new
product people don't know that they want
it because it's just not in their in
their scope i think when they first
started making tvs
they did a nationwide survey
i think this might have been like
46 or 48 it's like famous nationwide
survey will you ever buy a tv
no i was like 96 percent of respondents
said no
someone some crazy number
like basically everyone's like would you
buy a tv and maybe they put a price in
there or something
but
it was famously
almost everyone said they would not buy
tv but they didn't know what they're
talking about
so the big game-changing stuff at the
beginning is a company push kind of a
thing most of the time but then changes
to the product over time can be a lot
more customer pull kind of a focus
yeah change changes to the product over
time can be
incremental changes
um
then the customers can certainly tell
you it's good to get customer feedback
to say how can we improve the product
and once they're using it they can say
okay i like this thing about it i don't
like this other thing and then we can
improve the product over time customer
feedback after they they have
the fundamental thing
is is great
when trying different things
you've got to have some acceptance of
failure as you're alluding to earlier
failure must be an option if failure is
not an option it's going to result in
extremely conservative choices and
you may not may get something even worse
than lack of innovation things may go
backwards
so
if
what you really want is
uh
risk risk
to you you want reward and punishment to
to be proportionate to the actions that
you seek
so if
uh if what you're seeking is innovation
then you should reward success and
innovation
um and
only
[Applause]
there should be
minor consequences for lack of
minor consequences for for trying and
failing
should that should be minor
um with significant rewards for trying
and succeeding
minor consequences for trying and not
succeeding um and big
and major negative consequences for not
trying or maybe i just blank out the
word doubt
[Laughter]
so uh you know i mean
totally frank i doubted us too so
i i thought we you know had maybe
when starting spacex maybe had a 10
chance of reaching orbit so
so you know to those who who doubted us
i was like well i think you're probably
right you know um i mean there were
times uh
that i was told like
uh because i was taking the money that i
learned from from paypal and enrolling
into
to create spacex and tesla and they
ended up spending it all it wasn't the
intention but
um
and and and uh almost both companies
went bankrupt frankly 2008 was a tough
year
you know it took us took us four
attempts just to get to orbit with
falcon 1.
um
and uh
so but a lot of times i was you know i
people would tell me this joke like how
do you make a small fortune in the
rocket industry you start with a large
one is the punch line and i was like
okay i already heard that joke 12 000
times you know
so
anyway um and it was it almost came true
[Music]
you know we just barely made it there
that fourth launch of falcon one that's
all the money we had for that fourth
launch
and then uh and that wasn't even enough
to to save the company we also then had
to win the nasa cargo resupply contract
um so that that came a little after you
know a little bit later or towards the
end of 2008
those are the two key things that that
saved spacex otherwise we would have we
would have you know
not made it so
so hey i think those those doubters were
their probability assessment was correct
um but fortunately uh
vader smiled upon us and brought us to
this day as you look back on your career
in the space industry what has been the
most surprising or unexpected challenge
that you faced and along those lines if
you were to go back in time and talk to
your 20 year old self would you do
anything differently
go back in time
to your 20 year old self
i mean i think
if i get it i think it would make
far fewer mistakes obviously if i could
go
like here's a list of all the dumb
things you're about to do please do not
do them
wouldn't we
be a very long list and like
here let me
write it down or something you know
um
i mean it's hindsight's 2020. so it's
hard to say
um
i mean a number of i've made so many
foolish mistakes i had a lot count
honestly
um
i mean some of these things i just wish
i'd like that like that's a
simple sort of mantra
management by rhyming i mean it worked
for homer okay
um
the management by rhyming is
the thing i'm saying like if the if the
schedule's long the design is wrong
we've overcomplicated the design many
times
um
and i think we should have just gone
with a simpler design
um
with the acid test being
how long will it take to
for this to fly
and if it's going to take a long time
don't do it do something else i think
one thing that's important is
if you have a choice of a lower
evaluation
with someone you really like or a higher
evaluation with someone you have a
question mark about take the lower
valuation
it's better to have a higher quality
venture capitalist who you think is it
would be great to work with than to um
you know get a higher evaluation with
someone
where there's
even a question mark really you know i
think that's that's important it's sort
of like getting married you know i mean
the way i tend to view problems is from
a from a physics standpoint and i think
i think physics is a good analytical
framework
um
and one of the key things in in physics
is to reason from first principles um
this is contrary to the way most human
reasoning takes place which is by
analogy
um
reason for first principles just means
that you you figure out what are the
fundamental
what are the fundamental truths or or
things that are pretty people are pretty
sure are fundamental truths
and and can you build up to a conclusion
from from that uh or perform those
principles and um
and then certainly if you come up with
some idea and it appears to violate one
of those
fundamental
truths then you're probably wrong um
or you should get a really big prize or
something like that
um
so uh this may seem like i don't know it
maybe it may seem sort of obvious when
it's explained but it's actually not
what people do
reasoning my analogies is helpful
because it's a shortcut yeah um
and it's and it's mostly correct but but
uh it tends to be most incorrect when
you're dealing with new things
because it's hard to analogize to
something really new it doesn't really
face the sphere
threat of death
due to the model 3 production ram
essentially the company was bleeding
money like crazy and and just
if we didn't solve these problems in a
very short period of time we would die
and it was extremely difficult
to solve them how close to death did you
come we were within
single digit weeks 22 hours a day like
what how many hours working so seven
days a week
sleeping in the factory
uh i worked everywhere from i worked in
the paint shop general assembly body
shop you ever worry about yourself
imploding like just too much absolutely
no one should
put this many hours into work
this is not good
and people should not work this hard i'm
not they should not do this this is very
painful
painful in what sense
it's because my ears my brain
and my heart and you started with a much
smaller rocket that's often one
and what's your goal at that point when
you started with falcon 1 to get to the
point where we had nine inches for
falcon 9 was that your goal at that time
when i started spacex i i only thought
there was maybe a ten percent chance of
getting felt than one two of us i did
not at all think that this would happen
uh so this is for sure a dream come true
um
uh but i i literally at the time i
didn't know anything about rockets uh
and i was you know i've been the chief
engineer of spacex since day one and i
don't hear anything about rockets which
is why the first three rockets failed
right um and then
so the first three falcon ones for space
actually failures yes and then
tell me about uh
the fourth one so i had actually only
had enough money for three three flights
um so i had no more money that would
manage to
the
team sort of rallied and we managed to
put together enough spare parts to
create a bit of a fourth launch and that
both was successful
and
uh so what would happen if it wasn't
successful oh we would just basically
die so we would not be here right now
uh at this moment getting ready to
launch
crew dragon to the international system
we've got a lot of work to do because
we've got
a lot of service centers
and charge stations to construct
so mostly it's like we're trying to
build our service and charge
infrastructure as fast as possible
and
i know this like some of the customers
who have ordered a car they're not in
the major cities so
they're all unhappy with us because we
are delaying delivery of their car
and
in fact i'm going to apologize to some
of them personally to expand explain the
reason we are delaying deliveries
because it's we really want them to have
a good experience but if they're too far
from a service center and and the
charging is not sorted out then they
will not have a good experience
so
we're
going to delay their cause just for a
few months to make sure that they have a
good experience i think it's also
important to reason from first
principles rather than by analogy so the
normal way that we conduct our lives is
we we
we reason by analogy um it's we're doing
this because
it's like something else that was done
or it's like what um other people are
doing me too type ideas
yeah it's like
yeah slight
[Music]
it's kind of mentally easier to reason
by analogy rather than from first
principles but my first principles is
kind of a physics way of looking at the
world
and what that really means is
you kind of boil things down to the most
fundamental truths and and say okay what
do we sure as true or sure as possible
is true
and then reason up from there
that takes a lot more mental energy um
give me an example of that like what's
one thing that you've you've done that
on that you feels worked for you sure so
um somebody could say um in fact people
do uh that battery packs are really
expensive and that's just the way
they'll always be because that's the way
they've been in the past um you're like
well
no that's that's pretty dumb you know
because if
if you apply that reasoning to
anything new that then
you wouldn't be able to ever
get to that new thing right you are
unusually fearless and
willing to go in the face of other
people telling you something is crazy
and i know a lot of pretty crazy people
you still stand out uh where does that
come from or how do you think about
making a decision when everyone tells
you this is a crazy idea or 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 quite strongly um
but
there are just times when
something is important enough you
believe in it enough that
you you do it in spite of fear so
speaking of important things like people
shouldn't think i i i
i should if 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 fair
um
so you just feel it and let the
importance of it drive you to do it
anyway
yeah you know actually something that
can be helpful is fatalism uh to some
degree um if you just just accept the
probabilities um then
that diminishes fear
uh so
um
starting spacex i thought the odds of
success were less than ten percent
um
and i just accepted that actually
probably i would just lose lose
everything
but that maybe would make some progress
if we could just move the ball forward
even if we died maybe
some other company could pick up the
baton and move and keep moving it
forward
so we still do some good
um yeah same with tesla i thought the
odds of a car company succeeding were
extremely low this is widely regarded as
one of the most robotics driven auto
assembly lines on the planet elon part
of the thing i heard about the model 3
is that there's too many robots that
made it i agree you do you think so too
that maybe you need more people in here
working we do in some cases the robots
actually slowed the production yes they
did where this crazy complex uh network
of conveyor belts and it was not working
so we got rid of that whole thing this
is cool elon yeah realizing it needed an
overhaul musk personally took over the
model 3 production line at the beginning
of april training for really extreme
levels of precision uh more than any
other vehicle in the world he says he
has resorted to pulling all-nighters at
the plant when things get really intense
i don't have time to go home and shower
and change so i sleep here i want to see
where is that oh yeah
um i mean it's pretty boring overall
really
um
it's actually cold in here too yeah i
like it cool so you have a you like it
cold i sleep on the couch over there so
you're just laying here on the couch
yeah last time this year i actually
slept literally on the floor because the
couch was too narrow yeah i was gonna
say
and elon i have to say it's not even a
comfortable couch either no it's
terrible this is not a good couch musk
feels like all the overtime is paying
off and now he says the model 3 line is
back on track and we're able to unlock
some of the critical things that were
holding us back
from reaching 2000 cars a week but since
then we've continued to do 2000 cars a
week do you think that this is
sustainable this pace is sustainable
yeah i remember when you first told me
that you were thinking about tunnels
yeah what did i always tell you about
that years ago okay it's like a long
time ago i thought you were joking yeah
it was i was joking but
um it's not because of some epiphany
that i had one day um
driving down the 405.
that's how it gets translated somehow i
was talking about tunnels for years and
years
um for probably five years or four years
at least
whenever i'd give a talk and people
would ask me about what opportunities
you do you see in the world i'd say
tunnels can someone please build tunnels
so after four or five years of begging
people to build tunnels
and still no tunnels i was like okay i
want to build a tunnel
like maybe
i'm missing something here
um
so
um yes i was like basically talking
people's ears or tunnels for for several
years and then said well let's find out
what it takes to build a tunnel
and um
yeah so i started digging a tunnel i
wanted to start the tunnel
uh from where i could see it from my
office at spacex so i said well let's
just carve off a part of the parking lot
across the road so i can see if it's if
anything's happening or not
um and then we named our first boring
machine uh godot
because i kept waiting for it it never
came
um
finally it did
and and we got it going and um now we're
making good progress i really take some
thought to like how can i provide advice
that would be most helpful and i'm not
sure i've given enough thought to
to that to give you the best possible
answer but i think
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
[Music]
because people are attenti
natural human tendency is wishful
thinking
um
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
so you need to be sort of very rigorous
um in your self
self analysis
um i think certainly extremely tenacious
uh and
um
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
because
and then a lot of work that all those
things improve the odds of success okay
i mean if if other people are putting in
40-hour work weeks and you're putting in
100 hour work weeks then even if
you're doing the same thing you know
that
in in one year you will achieve what
they achieve you will achieve
in
four months what it takes them a year to
achieve i certainly was
quite um
i was very very bookish i was reading
all the time so i was either reading
uh working my computer
reading comics playing dungeon dragons
that kind of thing
i understand hitchhiker's guide to the
galaxy that wonderful book by douglas
adams that was a that was a key book for
you what what was it about that book
that that fired your imagination um yeah
so
uh i guess when i was
in uh around 12 or 13 i had a company
existential crisis and i was reading
various books
um
on trying to figure out the meaning of
life and well like what does it all mean
because
uh it starts seeming quite meaningless
and then um
uh my we happen to have like some some
books by nietzsche and schopenhauer in
the house which you should not read at
age 14
is bad
it's really negative
um
so so uh but then i then i read the
hitchhiker's guide the galaxy was like
quite positive i think and um
uh and it sort of highlighted the the an
important point which is that a lot of
times the question is harder than the
answer and if you can properly phrase
the question then the answer is the easy
part
and so
uh
the if to agree that we can
better
understand the universe then we better
know what questions to ask and
um then whatever the question is that
most approx approximates what's the
meaning of life
you know that that's that's the question
we could ultimately get closer to
understanding
and so i thought well to agree that we
can
expand the scope and scale of
consciousness and
knowledge
um
human knowledge then that would be a
good thing question that has been
discussed over the past couple of days
should we be considering one trips
one-way only trips to mars uh
what's the best uh approach to to
colonize uh the planet is it uh
well what's your view is that socially
acceptable do you think people will sign
up to do it i think there's plenty of
people that have signed up for a
warranty trip to mars
but
maybe if i could we could have a show of
hands who would consider such an option
i see some not married or perhaps enough
for a couple of missions so it's
certainly
suddenly beat up i mean i think it's
sort of like is it a one-way mission and
then you die or is it one-way mission
and you get resupplied that's a big
difference
wait for the second option yeah exactly
um but i mean i think it ends up being a
moot point because you want to bring the
spaceship back like these spaceships are
expensive okay if they're hard to build
you can't just leave them there
so whether or not people want to come
back or not is kind of like they can
jump on if they want but they need the
spaceship back
thank you
um i mean they're kind of weird like
there was like a huge collection of
spaceships on mars over time like
it was like we should stay in the back
and of course we should turn it back one
of the most difficult choices i've ever
faced
in life was
was in 2008 um
and um
i think it had
like
maybe 30 million dollars left
or 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
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 going to let one stop to death
i can bring myself to do it so i
split the money between the two
fortunately thank goodness they both
came through i've heard people say
listen he's out of the box thinker
he's a businessman he's an entrepreneur
but people that know you say i wouldn't
say you would say i'm not really a
business plan you're not a businessman
no no
what are you
um i'm sure there's probably lots of
analysts on wall street would agree that
i'm not a businessman okay well what do
you think you are
um i like i'm an engineer an engineer
yeah is it your dream to
conquer the world and make the world a
better place to
what is your dream our technology's like
magic you know
i mean i think technology is the closest
thing to magic that we have in the real
world
and so
i think like
engineering creative engineering is
essentially technology development um
and um i guess maybe it was like lord of
the rings is my favorite book is it yeah
that's really like what's the closest
thing to being a wizard
in the real world and that's like
creating new technologies what was your
biggest failure and how did that
change i have to really think hard about
that
failure
there's your answer
well there's a ton of failures along the
way that's for sure um
like so as i said for spacex the first
three launches failed
and uh we were just barely able to
scrape together enough
parts and money to do the the fourth
launch that fourth launch had failed we
would have been dead
so multiple failures along the way
um
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 what motivations do
people need to harness to try to make
change as opposed to just reading about
change
um
and that's not supposed to be an easy
question
oh it's this
well like i said i think if
if you study engineering and you figure
out how to design new things
then
it's relatively easy to start a company
you just need to get a few like-minded
people
with you and and then focus on creating
a prototype for compelling prototype as
soon as possible um and then that you
know there's a there's a strong venture
uh capital industry in this country that
will give you funding to take things to
the next level um and that that's all
there is to it um and you might if you
know tried a few times you might may or
may not succeed but um i think sometimes
people fear fear starting a company too
much um you know they have to say really
what's worse that could go wrong you're
not going to stop to death you're not
going to die of exposure
what's the worst that could go wrong
how do you come with this idea actually
sometimes they're pushing the human
limit you are always pushing the human
limit why
well
i i
when i i think about what
what technology solution is necessary in
order to achieve the particular goal
and then try to make as much progress in
that direction being a multi-planet
species and 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
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
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 there's a
friend of mine who's got a great saying
about creating a company
which is
creating trying to build a company and
have it succeed is like eating glass and
staring into the abyss
so i mean what tends to happen is it's
sort of quite exciting for the first
several months of starting a company and
then then reality sets in things don't
go as well as planned customers aren't
signing up the technology or the product
isn't working as well as you thought
and
and then that can sometimes be
compounded by a recession
and
it can be
very very painful for several years um
so i think
frankly starting a company
i would advise people to have a high
pain tolerance when did it
occur to you that zip2 might be
a success
well i mean when we first started out i
think our ambitions were really quite
quite low um
it was really to make enough money to
pay the rent yeah we we got a visa give
us money that was
yay
we thought it was all over then yeah it
was pretty crazy i mean when we started
out at 95
we literally at the beginning we had one
computer
which um would be the web server during
the day
and and then at night i'd program on it
and
we'd sleep in the office yeah we
couldn't afford to to yeah an apartment
it was cheaper to rent the office than
to rent an apartment so we just rented
the office and stepped in the office and
showered at the end of the ymca
and for me the worst part was eating a
jack-in-the-box three times yeah man
this is like i'll see it's really
difficult to get food at palo alto after
like 10 p.m um it's like jack-in-the-box
and a few other options
we rotated through the jack-in-the-box
menu through the end of 95 where that's
essentially just sleeping in the office
and charging the ymca and then
um
and around the end of 95 is when
netscape went public and
and then
whether or not somebody knew what the
internet was they knew that you could
make money on the internet somehow
or even if it's only on the greater pool
theory so
when we went and talked to venture
capitalists in early 96 there was a much
greater
interest in what we were doing um in
fact the round closed in like maybe a
week or something it's crazy yeah we
went from sleeping in the office to
people throwing i mean again this is a
financial crowd so you guys see these
numbers every day but for us to here
we'll give you three million dollars
yeah sounded extremely we thought they
were crazy like why would they do that
it was literally like these people are
insane they obviously do not realize
we're sleeping in the office
in fact when they when they did fund us
they realized that we were illegal
immigrants
well
yes we were i've seen it was a great
area yeah yes we were
i was there we were illegal immigrants
we were sleeping in the office we didn't
have a car we had one car with the wheel
kept falling off but well actually yeah
the the wheel didn't actually fall off
the car oh yes exactly um and then and
the venture capitalists actually bought
us cars
yeah well like it gave us 40 grand give
us 40 grand to go buy cars which was at
the time was more money than we've ever
seen yeah you need a team around you to
deliver a lot of idea how do you choose
your team based on what
well
i suppose honestly that
it tends to be gut feel more than
anything else
so when
i interview somebody
my interview question is always the same
it's just
i said tell me the story of your life
and the decisions that you made along
the way and why you made them
and then
um
and and also tell me about some of the
most difficult problems you worked on
and how you solved them
and
that that question i think is very
important because
the people that really solve the problem
they know
exactly how they solved it
they know the little details
and the people that pretended to solve
the problem
they can maybe go one level and then
they get stuck
the president's first space policy
directive to me was go to the moon and
the word in there is sustainable tell me
reusability is fundamental um the the
fully reusable vehicle uh will cost uh
a hundred times less per flight than an
expandable vehicle it kind of makes
sense think of uh of any other motor
transport it could be like uh
aircraft or
cars bicycles horses every other mode of
transport boats they're all reusable
the only the weird one that is reusable
is space that's right so um you can
imagine how expensive it would be if
every time you flew in a jet that you
had to get a new jet right
as opposed to refuel the jet
that would be insanely expensive to fly
a jedi a single use there wouldn't be
anybody flying no exactly i'd be like
a few research flights at uh at an
extreme expense and that's that's all
the flying that would occur i actually
don't care at all about money at all
but i do care about us becoming a
space-bringing civilization yeah and i
do know that uh if we don't uh achieve
full and rapid reusability it will not
happen and so that's why that's the only
reason i actually
want money at all what i really want to
see is
you know coming to face on the moon
permanently uh occupied human base on
the moon and
us building a city on mars that's like
i can see the beginning of that before i
die i'll die happy in creating these
companies that we thought that we would
be successful
i thought that the most likely outcome
was failure
but
but it was still worth doing even though
the odds of success were low in fact
even for for support spacex
the
originally what i started doing was not
creating a rocket company but but
actually was going to do
a small mission to mars which was just a
philanthropic mission where you would
send a small greenhouse with seeds and
dehydrated gel in the wood
upon landing hydrate the gel and you'd
have
this cool picture of green plants on a
red background and the public tends to
respond to precedence and superlatives
so this will be the first life on mars
furthest that life's ever traveled
and you'd have this great money shot of
green plants on the right background
so
um yeah i thought that would that would
get people's attention so
um
but but the expectation for that was was
no return so i thought we wouldn't get
any uh you know we'll just spend the
money on that and it wouldn't wouldn't
happen you want to do some things that
were of benefit to humanity
why why did you think that well because
not everyone does yeah no i
i guess it was um i it's sort of a
existential crisis
of like what does it all mean and what's
the meaning you know what's the meaning
of life and
uh is this three a.m over a beer or this
was well more seriously probably goes
back to high school i guess uh
um i don't want to give a laboriously
long answer but
uh
i was uh
i yeah i had sort of a
dark childhood it wasn't good
um
probably partially brought on by by
reading some of the philosophers like do
don't ever read schopenhauer nietzsche
if you're 14.
it's
it's not good yeah or ein rand either
too yeah
yeah so
um i was just trying to find figure out
what you know what does it all mean and
um
actually
uh
when i read the hitchhiker's guide to
the galaxy which i think is a great
working philosophy
um
that sort of highlighted the point that
uh very often the issue is understanding
what questions to ask and if you can
properly frame the question then the
answer is the easy part
um so i thought uh things that uh expand
the scope and scale of human
consciousness um and allow us to better
ask questions and
you know and and and achieve greater
enlightenment
those are good things and so that's sort
of what what can we do that's going to
most likely lead to that outcome back in
95
there weren't very many people on the
internet
and certainly nobody was making any
money at all
most people thought the internet was
going to be a fad a year ago musk sold
his software company zip2 which enabled
newspapers to publish online for 400
million dollars cash receiving cash is
cash i mean those are
just a large number of ben franklin's so
this is an atm and what we're going to
do is transform the traditional banking
industry
i do not fit the picture of a banker
x.com this is julie raising 50 million
is a matter of making a series of phone
calls
and the money is there
i've sunk the great majority of of my
net worth into x.com which is the new
banking and mutual funds company on the
internet that i've started
exactly x.com i think x.com could
absolutely be a multi-billion dollar
bonanza because if you look at the
industry that x is pursuing it's the
biggest
sector of the world economy and what
you've got going on with the internet is
it's basically like an earthquake where
the epicenter is silicon valley
and it's it's shaking up the whole world
elon you've been compared to henry ford
richard branson
you know steve jobs
who do you compare yourself to um and i
don't really compare myself to anyone um
i mean it's not um
i mean there's some people that i admire
from history that i think are
you know i think are great um
so certainly many of the
scientists and engineers and literary
figures and so forth
and uh like i'm a big big fan of ben
franklin you know he was a
scientist and sort of thinker and yeah i
mean he was kind of guy who did
did what needed to be done you know so i
like guys like that i right
i wouldn't say i compare myself in any
way but i certainly admire them now i've
got a special bonus clip that i think
you're gonna enjoy but before that it's
time for the question of the day i wanna
know what was your single biggest
takeaway from this video and what is
your specific plan of action for the
next week
when you just watch a video and get
motivated by it you have a 35 chance of
following through but when you get
motivated and then create a specific
plan of action you have a 91 chance of
following through that's what we do here
believe nation we get motivated but then
we do something about it and when you
commit to other people you increase your
chances even further of following
through so what was your biggest
takeaway from this video and then what
is your plan of action around for this
week put it down in the comments below
because i want to celebrate you well i
think part of the problem the reason
people aren't as excited about space is
that we haven't been pushing the
frontier as much
and so you can only you can only
watch the same movie so many times and
it before it gets a little boring
um and
you know in in the 60s and
early 70s we're really pushing the
frontier of human space flight
and and obviously that those
landing on the moon is regarded as one
of the greatest achievements of humanity
of arguability of life itself
and and even though only a handful of
people went to the moon vicariously we
all went there well at least i wasn't
alive at the time so
but retrospectively
and you know and it was it was just one
of those really inspiring things that i
think made everyone glad to be a you
know human you know it's like the things
that we
where we don't
they're bad things human ideas and
they're good things and and that's one
of the good things um and i i do think
it's important that that we have these
inspiring things
that uh uh you make you glad to get up
in the morning and um
and that that's uh
and and glad to be a member of human
race um and and and we need to we need
to push that that frontier um
so um and and i think uh the the great
goal we should be trying to pursue is
trying to make life huma
like make life multi-planetary so to to
establish a self-sustaining and growing
uh civilization on another planet uh
mars being the only realistic
possibility um
and uh and i think that would just be
one of the greatest things humanity
could ever try to do
if you want to know the five pieces of
life-changing advice from bill gates
check out the video right there next to
me i think you'll enjoy it continue to
believe and i'll see you there when you
have a business that's important as this
with this many competitors you're going
to have people saying some nasty things
the thing that was scary to me wasn't
quitting and starting the company it was
when i started hiring my friends