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17 years ago, Elon Musk old interview talking about his company!!! · Elon Musk Thinking

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: When Elon was twenty three, he got out of college.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: He went to San Francisco, the Bay Area, with a car,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a computer, and two thousand dollars. Yeah, that's right, and
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: he started a company called zip two. It was sort
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: of like what the early Yahoo was.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: It was an online directory.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Four years later, when he was about my age, he
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: sold the company for just over three hundred million dollars
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: to compac. And I bring this up not because it
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: was the largest internet company acquisition at the time, but
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: because he's done so much stuff since.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Then that nobody even remembers.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: This initial success for zip to doesn't get much play.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: So I'm gonna ask him some questions.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: We're going to go through he's got, you know, as
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Jane said, three mind blowing companies, and then hopefully we'll
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: have some time for you all to ask him some questions.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So start thinking and we'll get to those. So I'm
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: gonna put up something that probably looks familiar to most
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: people here. This is the home page of PayPal. In
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: two thousand, Elon was a co founder and the company
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: was sold to eBay and two for one point five
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: billion dollars. And we all know what PayPal is today.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: But I was hoping you could sort of share with
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: us kind of what your vision was from the beginning.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: Well, it certainly evolved over time.
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: Initially the well, after selling ZIP two, I want to
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: do something more on the Internet. And it seemed to
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: me that there hadn't been all that much innovation in
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: the financial sector. And given that money is kind of
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: just an entry in a database and it was low bandwidth,
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: you s didn't require some big infrastructural upgrade to the Internet.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: It seemed it should lend itself to innovation. So I
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: try to think of what could be you know, what're
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: something compelling it could be done? And I thought, well,
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: if we can combine all types of financial services in
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: one so you can have like mortgages, like basically all
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: your your entire financial relationships seamlessly integrated together in one
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: place online, that would be cool. And then there was
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: a little feature that just seemed like an obvious feature,
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: which was the ability to transfer money from one person
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: to another by entering a nique identifier like an email address.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: There was like just the sort of a little feature.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: But then whenever we demonstrate the product, people wouldn't get
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: excited about the consolidated financial services, but they would get
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: excited about emailing money, so you're sort of focusing our
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: energy on that, and that really ended up being the
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: big driver of growth.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Right, So it sort of went from a super bank
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I think that's what the media called.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like a super financial services thing, to really narrowly
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: focusing on email payments. Although I should point out that
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: actually a lot of people aren't aware that a lot
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: of the success of paypalt is due to the underlying
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: financial services that are there, such as the money market fund,
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: which is one of the highest yielding, in fact, I
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: think the highest yielding in the country. And the fact
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: that there's a PayPal debit card which operates off the
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: massive card system, so you can you can buy things,
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: you know, by thinkings in the real world and get
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: cash from an ATM that directly taps into your PayPal account.
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: Those are actually very important to the PayPal business model.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: So you were CEO of the company for for most
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: of two thousand, I think, and you went PayPal merged
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: or sorry, Elon's company merged with.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Another company it became PayPal.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: He was running the company, he went on an investment
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: raising trip and when he got back.
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: What happened?
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: You know, I think it's not a good idea to
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: leave the office when there are like a lot of
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: major things underway which are causing people a great deal
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: of stress. But it was a combination of needing to
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: raise money and I had not gotten married earlier that
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: year and not had any vacation or honeymoon or anything.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: So it was kind of a combined financing trip, sash honeymoon, yeah,
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: and and.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: Anyway, but away for two weeks.
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: And there was just so much that there was just
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: a lot of worry, and that that caused the management
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: team to decide that I wasn't the right guy to
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: run a company. And so the bard was like, you know, geez,
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: what do we do? So basically I could, I could
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: afford it really hard, but instead I except, you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: rather than fight at it at this critical time, best
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: to sort of concede.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: It's amazing to me how you managed.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: When I first asked you about this, you said you
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: buried their hatchet. And you know, one of the basically
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: the person who replaced you just put I think twenty
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: million dollars or so into your company. And how did
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: you get past that? Kind of betrayal. I mean, did
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: you how did you guys patch it up?
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's actually an interesting story. Well, well, I didn't
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: agree with their conclusion. I understood why they took the
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: action they did. And they're not you know, Peter and
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: Max and David and the other guys not. I mean,
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: they're smart people with generally the right motivations. They did
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: what they thought was was right, and I think for
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: the right reasons. I mean, except that the reasons weren't
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: valid in my opinion. But it's hard to argue with
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: the ultimate outcome, which is which is positive.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: So you know, I just thought, you know.
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: It's just easy to be better and and uh and
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: and have I just hate them forever, but you know,
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: it's best that the right better course of action is
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: to any other cheek and and sort of you know,
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: make make the relationship good. And and it was, you know,
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: but I've put a lot of effin into sort of
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: making things good and and then yeah, actually, recently, the
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: Founder's Fund, which is comprised primarily of ex PayPal people,
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: including Peter, who replaced me as CEO, invested in SpaceX.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I invested in Peter's things before that.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: So I want to put up something about what this,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: you know, PayPal sale to eBay helped make possible.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Uh, tell us, tell us what we're looking at.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: That's the Tesla Roadster, which is the world's first production
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: electric sports car.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: And how much does it cost? Give us the sales pitch. Okay,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: they just opened a dealership, so he should be good
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: at this.
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Actually, I've sold a lot of cars. So the
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: Tesla Roadster is the nutshell that you know. The elevator speech.
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: Thing is that the Roadster is faster than a Ferrari
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: and more efficient than a Prius, so it actually has
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: been better acceleration than any Ferrari except the Enzo. And
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: it's about a three point nine seconds zero to sixty,
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: and that actually understates the true acceleration because zero sixty
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: for a gasoline car is measured from when the wheels
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: start moving, but the wheels only stop moving when you
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: engage the clutch, and it typically takes about a quarter
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: second or more to engage the clutch. But there's no
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: clutch for our car. It's direct drive, so you don't
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: have a clutch engagement delay. So it's like equivalent to
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: a gasoline car with a zero to sixty for about
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: three point six seconds, and it's good, incredibly good handling.
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: And then the energy efficiency of the car is probably
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: the most amazing thing. It only costs four dollars at
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: current California rates to go about two hundred and fifty miles.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: So the range, the current EPA rated range, which is
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: a combination of highway in the city with the conditioning on,
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: is two hundred and forty four miles.
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  Speaker 2: So it's amazing.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: So this is I mean, it's so cool. It costs
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: one hundred and nine thousand dollars. If anybody's interested.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: It's it's expensive, but it's comparable to like a portion
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: nine lemon, you know. So we wanted to have something
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: which was in the price range of a comparable guesstline
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: car that it could, you know, probably beat, and you know,
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: so that's that's key because you know, it's one thing
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: to have a compelling product, but it has to be
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: a compelling product a compelling price.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Right you in the press obviously, this this has gotten
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of attention, and Elon has taken a lot
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: of flak for various redesigns. You've sort of been you've
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: been portrayed as a micromanager, you know, redesigning the headlights
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: or whatever.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: I thought it was a nano manager. I've improveditude.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: So why why does the car need to be perfect?
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, why did you need to redesign you know,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: the doors for instance.
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, the car is definitely not perfect.
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: In fact, one of the things that that troubles me
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: personally is like when I see a product, it's sort
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: of I commediately see a readout of all the flaws.
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: I need to reprogram myself or remind myself to like
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: look at the good things as well. So it's certainly
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: far from perfect.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: But the.
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: Acceptance, I mean fundamentally, if you don't have a compelling
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: product at a compelling price, you don't have a great company.
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: And that's that was really my gate, the gate that
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: the product that the car had to pass through. And
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: so there were things like the dorsals because we used
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: a chassis that was inherited from the Lotus lease. In retrospect,
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: we should have completely redesigned the car and not and
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: not use any a lease componentory because we really it's
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: sort of like you go into a house and you
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: think you'll just change this or that, and it'll be okay,
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: and then you end up changing everything in the house.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: It would have been better to just level the house and.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: Start and produce the knew Because the car, our car
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: is thirty percent heavier, the load points are all different,
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: so we had to really redesign the chassis. And one
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: of the things I said, we've got to do is
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: to lower the dorsals.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: And as it is, that dorsals is still too high.
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: But if I'd say, imagine if they're two inches higher,
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: because that's what they were, it made it almost unusable
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: in my view.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what are you on.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I think you were quoted saying something like Dolorean failed
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: because we built a bad car, and you need to
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the car needs to be worth one hundred and nine
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars.
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely exactly if you don't exactly, We did not
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: want to create another Dolorian, and the Dolorian kind of
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: looked kind of cool, but it was really weak on performance.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: It was unreliable, and there were.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: Lots of little issues with the car, and we just
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: didn't want to be in that situation. And it's not like,
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: I mean, we could have built a worse car and
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: still sold a bunch of them. But if you don't
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: sell enough to make it make the business look attractive
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: to future investors, you're not going to attract the capital
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: to take it to the next level or even to
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: sustain where it is.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: How many orders have you taken? Twelve hundred deposits?
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: Wow, so we only take orders when somebody puts down
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: a deposit of at least five thousand dollars.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm going to move to another company. But
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: you told me that the last successful car startup was Jeep.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: In nineteen forty one.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah in the US. Yeah, in the US.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: So doesn't that kind of say something bad about going
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: to the car business?
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, why why go for this?
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: Well, it certainly I would not have done this if
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: it were a gasoline car. So this is not about
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: it's not because I thought the world had a shortage
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: sports cars that we started Tesla. It's because it's very
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: important that we accelerate the transition away from gasoline for
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: environmental reasons, for economic reasons, for national security reasons. It's very,
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: very fundamental and frankly, so you know, even if you
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: don't think believe in the environ bental reasons, even if
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: you don't believe in the national security issues reasons. It's
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: obviously gasoline oil is not a renewable resource, and sooner
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: or later, the economic issues are going to cause a
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: collapse of the economy, literally a collapse of the economy
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: if we don't find an alternative, because you'll be paying
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: twenty thirty forty dollars gas for gasling. The stuff's going
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: to get you know, it's going to start approaching the
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: price of gold. I mean, it's going to be crazy.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: So we got to find a renewable alternative. And the
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: good that Tesla's doing is not just Tesla's what Teslas itself,
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: it's the example that Tesla sets for the rest of
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: the industry. In fact, people are probably see the announcement
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: for the Chevy Vault. Well, Bob Lat's Bob Blatz is
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: the champion of the Chevy Vault, and he credits Tesla
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: with the with starting getting the Chevy volt started. Because
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: when we unveiled our Tesla Roads to a couple of
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: years ago, he saw the press release, he took the
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: Tesla press release, went to his development guys and said,
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: if a little company in California can do this, why
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: can't we Yeah, and that's what prompted the Chevy Vault.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, let's let's talk about how we power these things.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Uh oh, that's a that's a picture of the workshop
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: in uh In Center or just south of San.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: Francisco, right.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: And then this is another company that you on. This
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: is probably the one that you're maybe least involved with
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: on a day to day basis, but it's uh it's
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Solar City, And sort of the elevator pitch for this one,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: as you've told it to me before, is you know
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: you're gonna do for solar power what Dell did for computers,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: which I think is such a nice way of putting it,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and I was hoping you could just unpack that for
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: us a little bit.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: Certainly, Well, Dell doesn't make the CPU or the hord
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: drive or the memory, but they put it all together,
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: and they managed their relationship with the end customer, and
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: they manage the service and all that. And that's a
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: very important element because if you had to go to
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: Intel and buy your CPU and somewhere else and buy
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: your hard drive and put that all together, very few
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: people would have computers. So Solo City is about packaging
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: that or making it really easy to use. Would just
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: basically make one call. It's just seamless and painless. And
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: then they also have a lot of innovation on the
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: financing front. So they did a three undred million dollar
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: debt facility with the mortgage Stanley that allows the end
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: consumer to sign up for solar power, put no money down,
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: and your utility build decreases.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: So it's a complete no brainer.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: Now, it doesn't work for every house because your house
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: has to be you know, south face, you know, have
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: a south facing roof and of sufficient size, and you
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: have to be in an area where electricity is not
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: super cheap.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: But it works for a lot of a lot.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: Of houses and you know, maybe a third probably third
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: of the house in California and something like that. And
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: so they've just enjoyed phenomenal growth. I mean they're literally
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: growing as fast as they can hire good people. And
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: I mean the numbers for the month of August came
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: in and solar cities as big as the next five
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: solar power providers combined in California. So and all credit
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: to them. I mean, really, it's a phenomenal job. I
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: mean I was sort of weighing every now and again,
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: like yeah, how about that?
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: So how about that? But really is of very little credit?
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: No, no, no managing.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: There, No, not at all. Yeah, thank goodness.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: So Jane brought up Mars in our introduction and you know,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: you got out of PayPal with and zip to, you know,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: with a lot of money. And I think, I'm sure
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: people in this room have had this happen to them,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: and many people will have it happened sometime in the future,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I hope.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: And instead of buying mutual.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Funds or I don't know, doing whatever one does with
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: several hundred million dollars, you decided.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: To emolts backed securities. There they're great.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: You you decided to start a rocket company with the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: express purpose of well making it cheaper to get stuff
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: in outer space and then eventually going to Mars for
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: helping humanity go to Mars.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: And I just wanted to.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Know, you know, why, why do that?
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: It isn't obvious.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: Well, when I was in college, there was sort of
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: three areas that sort of what's really going to affect
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: the future humanity in a significant way. The three things
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: that seemed to be most significant to me were the
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: Internet of the transition to a sustainable energy economy, and
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: the third was the extension of life beyond Earth becoming multiplanetary.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: I didn't think i'd be involved in at all in
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: option three, But the reason I think it's important is
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: is it goes to how we decide that anything is important,
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: and the lens of history is a good way to
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: distinguish what seems important in the moment from what is
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: truly important over the long term. And if you zoom
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: out and look at a long enough period of time
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: and sell the four billion year history of Earth and
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: the evolution of life itself, then there's only about half
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: a dozen or so major of milestones in the.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: History of life.
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: There's obviously single celled life, multiceliar life, differentiation to plants
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: and animals, the transition from oceans to land, mammals, consciousness
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: so and then also on that scale would fit life
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: becoming multiplanetary. It would be I think at least important
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: as life going from the oceans to land, and probably
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: more important or more significant, because at least that that
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: was a gradual transition. If you didn't, if land was
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: if things got a little uncomfortable on land, you could
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: just hop back in the ocean, and that's not really
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: feasible on interplanetary journeys.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: So you know, here we are.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: It's sort of the first time in the four billionaire
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: history of Earth that life has been able to go
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: beyond Earth. And that window may be opened for a
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: long time, and I'm optimistic that I hope it will,
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: and I'm actually fairly optimistic about the future of Earth.
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: But something may happen that that closes that window and
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: prevents us, prevents life from extending beyond Earth, and that
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: risks the extension of life, or at least consciousness as
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: we know it, and that would be a terrible thing.
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: Life is a terrible thing.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Aways, So I want to give people a sense of
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: what kind of we're talking about.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: So we just have a shut Oh, this is you know,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: building the rocket, and this should give people a sense
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: of So so that's your rocket, and and and that launched.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that that that launched, Uh what about three three
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: weeks ago or four weeks ago?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: And we'll get to what happened.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: But I just want to ask you, I mean, watching
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: that and and and when you watch that for the
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: first time, the first your first rocket went in five
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: I believe.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Or I mean, how did that how did you feel when.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: You know, one hundred million dollars years of work and
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: you know you're shooting something, you know, in the air.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I mean it must have been amazing.
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty new wracking, that's for sure. The Parker
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: factor on launch day is very high. So now you
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: know me, well, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm actually
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: should be said, I'm actually kind of like a physics guy.
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm like an engineer really, and I do
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: kind of the business stuff because you know, you kind
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: of have to do the business stuff, or if you
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: don't do the business stuff, somebody's else can to do
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: it for you, and then then you could.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: Be in trouble. And I actually the chief designer of
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: the rocket.
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: I mean I could tell you I could redraw that
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: rocket without without the benefit of blueprints for the most part.
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: So it's sort of like seeing my baby go up there,
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: you know, and it's it's pretty scary.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: So, so there have been three flights so far, and
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: each one has obviously the goal is to get into orbit.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Each one has sort of not made it.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: Did you deal with the Well, we got to space.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, you got to space, but it didn't you didn't
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: get where you wanted.
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: To go not all the way sorry, well you know,
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: but necessarily go all the way on the first few days.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: SpaceX has.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: You gotta work your way up there.
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: So but it certainly flights two and three got to
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: well into well beyond the boundaries of space. It didn't
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: get to full a little velocity though.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean you've got SpaceX has several hundred employees,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: and obviously you said it was like your baby. I mean,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: how did you deal with it personally? And then how
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: did you deal with the company as a manager, sort
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: of helping them get past it and helping your customers
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: get past it obviously to keep their money because nobody's
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: taking their money out of SpaceX. They've sold twelve flights
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: and none of the customers have asked.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: For their money.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Bet, that's true.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: So how did you do that?
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Lots of therapy, lots of handholding. It was just I think.
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: The customers that are that are signed up for SpaceX
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: are pretty sophisticated.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: They understand that.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: In the early early attempts at flight, you know, in
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: the development phase essentially called the beta phase if it
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: was software, there will be crashes and things.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Things won't initially go hum percent.
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: They obviously do expect that once we get out of
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: the development phase that there will be a good reliability
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: and that really is function of eliminating design related issues.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: You know, the last launch had a problem because we
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: had a brand new engine on it that had a
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: a thrust transit that was longer than the last one,
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: and so there was an issue following stage separation. But
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: generally they're quite sophisticated customers and they understand what's going on.
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: And actually the first three flights were paid for by well,
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: first two were paid for by DARPER, the Defense Advanced
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: Research Project Agency, and the third one is played for
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: by the Air Force Operational Responsor Space Office. And their outcome,
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: the outcomes they were looking for were not really the
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: delivery of a satellite to all bit. They were actually
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: looking for demonstration of rapet launch, right, and so they
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: actually felt that that we were fully paid full three flights.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna ask one more question and then we'll
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: have some time for a quick Q and A. You know,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: there's there's another rocket that looks just like this right
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: now in the Marshall Islands where SpaceX launch is from,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: and it's I think you told.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: Me it's going to go on this coming week, hopefully.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Hopefully this week.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: And you know you told me, and I think you've
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: written this elsewhere that starting a rocket company is it's
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: so risky, it's like playing Russian Roulette, and uh.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Well each launch is a bit like Russian Roulette.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah okay, and.
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: But yeah left Russian. Let you know, it's with pointing
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: out that you're probably gonna win.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: But but I wanted to ask you, you know, Russian roulette.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: You know, how do you know that you're dead? I mean,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: when do you when do you stop? When do you
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: say you know what I've I'm not going to make it?
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Or how do you know?
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: I think if we run out of money, but we
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: actually I know this sounds crazy, but we were profitable
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: last year.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: We're going to be profitable this year. I'm not a
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: big profits.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: We feel a small profit and we have enough funding
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: on hand and with existing contracts that independent of Falcon one,
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: to last through the end of next year.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, So I was just told I guess we don't
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: have time for questions, and I'll let that be my
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: last question. But Elon, thank you so much for being
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: here and just sharing your story with us, it's it's
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: so inspiring and thank you, thank you,