Latest / Elon Musk Thinking / Part 1: Elon Musk Story - Tesla Podcast!

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Part 1: Elon Musk Story - Tesla Podcast! · Elon Musk Thinking

0:00
Speaker 1: Latest interview of Elon muss Tasmanian.
0:03
Speaker 2: Hi, all right, great, and then we got galile A
0:05
Speaker 2: Russell from hyper Change what out third Row?
0:08
Speaker 1: And then we got Viv from Who's Falcon Heavy?
0:11
Speaker 3: Hey?
0:11
Speaker 1: Great? All right, Omar, do you want to introduce our guest.
0:15
Speaker 4: Please welcome the inventor of the car fart, Elon miss.
0:18
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. Please put that on my grapestone.
0:24
Speaker 3: I love it so yeah.
0:27
Speaker 5: It's kind of crazy that we're actually all here, and thank.
0:30
Speaker 1: You so much for doing This're welcome.
0:31
Speaker 5: We'll all test the customers, fans, and it's really good
0:35
Speaker 5: that is finally happening. I remember that I was looking
0:38
Speaker 5: at your Wikipedia tweet that it's like this bizarre fictionalized
0:41
Speaker 5: version of reality, and I replied to him, wait, why
0:44
Speaker 5: don't you come on a podcast and like tell your
0:46
Speaker 5: fictionalize version of reality?
0:47
Speaker 1: Sure, exactly, tell my.
0:49
Speaker 5: Fictionalized and You're like, okay, sure, And I was kind
0:56
Speaker 5: of like taken by surprise by that. And you know
0:59
Speaker 5: the way you engage listen to your customers online, It's
1:02
Speaker 5: like I've never seen anything like that from you know,
1:05
Speaker 5: CEO of a public company or any executive. So can
1:08
Speaker 5: you tell us a little bit where that came from.
1:10
Speaker 5: Why you communicate directly instead.
1:11
Speaker 4: Of like having this PR strategy that.
1:13
Speaker 1: Most companies have.
1:16
Speaker 6: Sure, well, I mean it started out. I actually had
1:22
Speaker 6: one of the very very first Twitter accounts, like when
1:25
Speaker 6: it was like less than ten thousand people, and then
1:29
Speaker 6: everyone was tweeting at me like what kind of lat
1:31
Speaker 6: they had it Starbucks, Like this seems like the silliest
1:34
Speaker 6: thing ever. So I'd leaded my Twitter account and then
1:38
Speaker 6: someone else took it over and started tweeting in my name. Yeah,
1:44
Speaker 6: and then a couple of friends of mine, Wellie and
1:49
Speaker 6: Jason Calcaana said they both said, hey, you should really
1:52
Speaker 6: use Twitter to get your message out. And also some
1:55
Speaker 6: somebody's tweeting in your name and they're crazy things. So
1:59
Speaker 6: I'll crazy things in my name.
2:03
Speaker 1: Did you have to pay them? No?
2:04
Speaker 6: No, they they they I'm not sure who it was,
2:08
Speaker 6: but it was for some reason. I got my account
2:10
Speaker 6: back great, and and then it was just I don't
2:14
Speaker 6: know some of you. It's like just sort of I
2:17
Speaker 6: just started tweeting for fine really and my early tweets
2:19
Speaker 6: are quite crazy.
2:21
Speaker 7: Uh.
2:21
Speaker 6: As I was trying to explain, like it has the
2:23
Speaker 6: arc of insanity is short and that is not very
2:28
Speaker 6: steep because it started off insane, and so if it's
2:33
Speaker 6: still insane, it's you know, it hasn't changed that much.
2:37
Speaker 6: So yeah, and I don't know, it seemed it seemed
2:43
Speaker 6: kind of fun too, you know. Like I said before,
2:47
Speaker 6: it's like, you know, some people use their hair to
2:48
Speaker 6: express myself.
2:49
Speaker 1: I use Twitter. Why did you like Twitter? Some? I
3:00
Speaker 1: mean you could use platforms, yeah, exactly.
3:06
Speaker 6: Well, like I don't trust Facebook obviously, you know, and
3:11
Speaker 6: and and then Instagram is fine, but it's i think,
3:18
Speaker 6: not exactly my style. It's hard to convey sort of
3:25
Speaker 6: intellectual arguments on Instagram. It's hot on Twitter too, but
3:29
Speaker 6: it's but you can't, you know. It's so yeah, Instagram
3:34
Speaker 6: is also owned by Facebooks, and I was like, yeah, yeah, deleted, yeah, yeah,
3:42
Speaker 6: just deleted it to It's like I don't really need
3:45
Speaker 6: to just if I need to say something, I only
3:47
Speaker 6: really need to say it on one platform pretty much,
3:50
Speaker 6: and so and so if I'm trying and I don't
3:56
Speaker 6: spend too much time on social media, so it's just
3:58
Speaker 6: like if people want to know what I'm saying, then
4:01
Speaker 6: they can just sort of go to Twitter. You know,
4:03
Speaker 6: let's keep doing that as long as Twitter is good,
4:06
Speaker 6: I suppose more good than bad.
4:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, cryptos cameras are really I understand that they've been
4:16
Speaker 1: taken advantage of Vincent recently. I know really Yeah, there's
4:19
Speaker 1: like ten Vincent's out there.
4:22
Speaker 6: All right, but they totally they can copy everything and
4:24
Speaker 6: just like changed one my.
4:25
Speaker 3: Avadars and then the picture and then they just post
4:28
Speaker 3: like right.
4:29
Speaker 1: Below yeah your tweet. Yeah yeah wow yeah, and they
4:34
Speaker 1: blocked me to We fight them all all the time.
4:37
Speaker 2: We're always like reporting them, like every day we report
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Speaker 2: like ten people.
4:41
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I have so many like yeah, exactly, a
4:45
Speaker 6: conversations of Twitter, like come on, can you just like
4:49
Speaker 6: I think it would take like three or four customer
4:52
Speaker 6: service people to just look look at this. It's cryptos
4:56
Speaker 6: can block it, and it should be easy.
4:58
Speaker 2: It should be easy. Like my wife Figan Shelley, I
5:01
Speaker 2: think you'd like to tweet it. The other day she
5:04
Speaker 2: got banned for like replying to one of your tweets
5:06
Speaker 2: and quoting like the video inside of it, and then
5:09
Speaker 2: she got suspended for like a day.
5:11
Speaker 1: Or something, and I was like, what the heck is
5:12
Speaker 1: going on? Yeah, So it's just weird how the algorithm works.
5:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of manipulation. But you're going
5:19
Speaker 4: back to the Wikipedia page. You know, it's kind of
5:21
Speaker 4: interesting just what a decade you've had. I remember I
5:24
Speaker 4: was reading somebody's article. I think they interviewed you in
5:26
Speaker 4: two thousand and nine or something like that, and they said,
5:29
Speaker 4: you know, if you had met Elon Musk in two
5:30
Speaker 4: thousand and nine, right after the recession, they're like struggling
5:34
Speaker 4: with the roadster. You know, you never would have thought
5:37
Speaker 4: that you are where you are today. You're you know,
5:41
Speaker 4: launching astronauts into space hopefull. Well yeah, this year, you know,
5:46
Speaker 4: servicing the International Space Station, I mean Tesla with the
5:49
Speaker 4: Model three, the model why you know, electrification really without Tesla,
5:55
Speaker 4: it would not be where it is today. You see
5:57
Speaker 4: where the other legacy automakers are, they're not doing great.
6:01
Speaker 4: So you know, looking at kind of like this, like
6:06
Speaker 4: you've become this legendary figure and looking at kind of
6:09
Speaker 4: like how people kind of see you, kind of the
6:13
Speaker 4: Ashley Vance biography or Wikipedia page, what is it that
6:16
Speaker 4: really kind of sticks out to you or you know,
6:19
Speaker 4: makes you laugh like that's just completely off base.
6:24
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I think I mentioned that that I kept
6:28
Speaker 6: getting referred to as an investor in like the munch things,
6:31
Speaker 6: and it's like, but I actually don't invest really except
6:36
Speaker 6: in companies that I help create. So I only have
6:40
Speaker 6: the only publicly traded share that I have at all
6:42
Speaker 6: is Tesla. I have no diversity on publicly traded share
6:48
Speaker 6: so and yeah, that's right, quite unusual. So, uh, you
6:56
Speaker 6: know what's everyone diverse by agree? And then the only
7:03
Speaker 6: stock that I have of significance outside of Tesla is
7:06
Speaker 6: space X, which is privately private corporation. And and and
7:14
Speaker 6: then in order to get liquidity, which is mostly to
7:18
Speaker 6: reinvest in SpaceX and Tesla and occasionally in like uh,
7:23
Speaker 6: provide funding for much more projects like your link and
7:27
Speaker 6: boring company. Uh, then I'll actually take out loans against
7:31
Speaker 6: the Tesla and space X stock. So the so what,
7:36
Speaker 6: so what I actually have is is whatever my tail
7:39
Speaker 6: list in space X stock is. And then there's about
7:41
Speaker 6: a billion dollars of debt against that, so which you know,
7:48
Speaker 6: it's it's that this is starts taking to imply that
7:51
Speaker 6: I'm claiming that I have no money, which I'm not claiming,
7:56
Speaker 6: but it's it's something to make it clear that you'll
7:59
Speaker 6: see some like number some big number in like four
8:03
Speaker 6: or something. People will think I have the tessent space
8:06
Speaker 6: like stock, and I have the cash, and I'm being
8:09
Speaker 6: somehow I'm just sitting on the cash doing nothing like
8:13
Speaker 6: hoarding resources, and like, no, it's you know, the only
8:18
Speaker 6: alternative would be to say, okay, let's give the stock
8:20
Speaker 6: to the government or something, and then the government would
8:23
Speaker 6: be running things, and that the government it just is
8:26
Speaker 6: not good at running things.
8:27
Speaker 1: That's the main thing.
8:29
Speaker 6: But there's like a fundamental sort of quick question of
8:33
Speaker 6: like consumption versus capital allocation. This is probably gonna get
8:38
Speaker 6: me to travel, But the paradigm of say communism versus capitalism,
8:44
Speaker 6: I think is fundamentally sort of orthogonal to the reality
8:48
Speaker 6: of actual economics in in some ways. So what you
8:57
Speaker 6: actually care about is like the responsiveness of the feedback
8:59
Speaker 6: loops to the maximizing happiness of the population. And if
9:04
Speaker 6: if more resources are controlled by entities that have poor
9:10
Speaker 6: response in their feedback leaps. So if it's like a
9:13
Speaker 6: monopoly corporation or a small oligopoly or in the limit,
9:17
Speaker 6: I would take the monopolistic corporation in the limit is
9:21
Speaker 6: the government. So you know, it's just it's it's this
9:26
Speaker 6: is not to say people who work at the governor
9:27
Speaker 6: a bad if if those same people are taking and
9:29
Speaker 6: put in any better sort of operating system situation, that
9:32
Speaker 6: outcome will be much better. So it's really just what
9:38
Speaker 6: is the responsiveness of the organization to maximize in the
9:41
Speaker 6: happiness of the people. And and so you want to
9:47
Speaker 6: have a competitive situation where it's truly competitive, where companies
9:53
Speaker 6: aren't gaining the system, and then where the rules are
9:58
Speaker 6: set correctly, and then you need to be on the alert
10:02
Speaker 6: for regulatory capture where the referees are in fact captured
10:07
Speaker 6: by the players, which is, you know, and the players
10:10
Speaker 6: should not control the referees essentially, which which can happen,
10:16
Speaker 6: you know. I think like that happened, for example with
10:18
Speaker 6: I think there's a emission vehicle mandate in California where
10:24
Speaker 6: California was like really strict on EV's and then they
10:28
Speaker 6: the car companies managed to sort of, frankly my view,
10:31
Speaker 6: trick the regulators into into saying, Okay, you don't need
10:36
Speaker 6: to be so hardcore about the EV's and instead you say, say,
10:40
Speaker 6: fuel sales of the future, but fuel sales of of
10:42
Speaker 6: course many years away, so.
10:45
Speaker 1: Forever this is so then, so that's something that they
10:49
Speaker 1: let up the rules.
10:51
Speaker 6: And then you know, GM recalled the e V one
10:54
Speaker 6: and crushed them in a junk yard, which is against
10:58
Speaker 6: the wishes the owner.
10:59
Speaker 1: They all lined up to buy them, and they wouldn't
11:00
Speaker 1: let them buy that.
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Speaker 6: I mean, Chris Paine did this great documentary on it,
11:03
Speaker 6: and it's like the you know, the owners of the
11:07
Speaker 6: the ev one, which why there wasn't actually that great
11:09
Speaker 6: of a car, but they still wanted the electric car
11:11
Speaker 6: so bad that they held a candle vigil at the
11:15
Speaker 6: junkyard where their cars were crushed. Like it like it
11:18
Speaker 6: was like a like a prisoner being executed or something
11:21
Speaker 6: like that. That was literally like when is the last time
11:24
Speaker 6: you even heard of that for a product?
11:26
Speaker 1: Right?
11:27
Speaker 6: You know, GM is stops the product. I mean what
11:31
Speaker 6: I mean, listen, man, They're not doing that for any
11:33
Speaker 6: other GM product. You thought, I'm doing the evo. It's
11:41
Speaker 6: kind of time times hard to get through these guys,
11:43
Speaker 6: you know. So anyway, I think that's a very important thing.
11:49
Speaker 6: So generally, where you could see like these oligopolies forming
11:53
Speaker 6: or duopolies and then they get effective of price fixing
11:58
Speaker 6: and then they cut back in the R and D.
11:59
Speaker 6: But Fudgret like kind of a silly one. Frankly, it's
12:03
Speaker 6: like like candy, like there's a there's a candy oligopoly,
12:07
Speaker 6: and it's like when's the We don't see much innovation
12:10
Speaker 6: in candy, so.
12:11
Speaker 4: You're still working on the candy company Still candy?
12:13
Speaker 3: Is that boring candy?
12:15
Speaker 1: Boring candy? He's gonna be boring.
12:17
Speaker 6: I haven't seen a candy yet that's good enough to
12:21
Speaker 6: send out. But and it's yeah, but I think I
12:25
Speaker 6: think it it's it's there's there's like three companies or
12:30
Speaker 6: something that control the candy in the world pretty much.
12:33
Speaker 6: It's crazy and dog food, Yeah, there's somebody constructed like this.
12:39
Speaker 6: It's this crazy conglomerate and and it's like and it's
12:43
Speaker 6: like dog food and baby food and candy, and it's
12:46
Speaker 6: like all you know.
12:48
Speaker 1: Rendering, Yeah, hundreds of brands.
12:50
Speaker 6: Yeah, you think you're buying from different companies, but it
12:53
Speaker 6: all funnels up to like three companies or something like that.
12:55
Speaker 8: Don't send the rendering food to the candy company.
12:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, a big candy.
13:03
Speaker 6: So you want to have like a good competitive forcing
13:06
Speaker 6: functions so that you have to make the product better.
13:10
Speaker 1: Or you'll lose.
13:11
Speaker 6: Like, if you don't make the product better and and
13:12
Speaker 6: and improve the product for the end consumer, then then
13:16
Speaker 6: that company should have relatively less prosperity comparative company it
13:19
Speaker 6: makes better products. Now, the car industry you know, is
13:23
Speaker 6: actually pretty competitive, so that's good. And then the good
13:32
Speaker 6: thing about it competitive company industry, then if if you
13:34
Speaker 6: make a product that's better, it's going to do better
13:37
Speaker 6: in the marketplace, definitely.
13:38
Speaker 1: So this is Gene Wilders Whole House.
13:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing, it's lovely. Thanks for having us here
13:46
Speaker 2: as well. Thanks you really special.
13:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good it's a cool spot and it's
13:48
Speaker 1: got a soldo glass roof.
13:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, portion too, right, we didn't notice it, but you
13:53
Speaker 4: checked it out the second time.
13:54
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for my three. So I'm waiting for a
13:56
Speaker 1: version three.
13:57
Speaker 2: Well, whatever is they're going to put on, I don't
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Speaker 2: care human motions, right, yeah, looking forward to it.
14:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, we saw it at the store in Torrents. Actually
14:03
Speaker 4: they've got in the stores now. It looks really good.
14:05
Speaker 6: Well that it's actually design such that you don't notice it.
14:11
Speaker 1: So he's like this, look it's old.
14:14
Speaker 6: This is like it's an old house, I know, probably
14:16
Speaker 6: fifty years old something like that, and it's quite quirky.
14:19
Speaker 6: So if you put something on that was like it
14:22
Speaker 6: didn't blend in that it would it would not look right.
14:24
Speaker 1: It would be pretty straightent. And this had a black
14:29
Speaker 1: comp shingle roof.
14:30
Speaker 6: So I was like, Okay, let's see if we can
14:32
Speaker 6: actually have it weave in and still feel natural, look good.
14:36
Speaker 6: And yeah, and I think it's it's sort of achieved
14:40
Speaker 6: that goal. But yeah, this is a lovely quirky little house.
14:44
Speaker 6: I'll show you around afterwards. It's got all those of
14:46
Speaker 6: weird things.
14:46
Speaker 1: It's exactly what is it, Francloyd right now? I don't
14:50
Speaker 1: think so.
14:51
Speaker 6: I think it was just built in increments over time
14:56
Speaker 6: by probably several people, but that they would have just
15:02
Speaker 6: knocked it down and built a giant house here.
15:04
Speaker 1: So it's like, so glad I didn't. Yeah, it's super cool.
15:06
Speaker 6: Really So gene Wild is one of my favorite actorms actually,
15:10
Speaker 6: so it's great.
15:12
Speaker 1: What was some movies?
15:13
Speaker 9: So, so when you come up with a product like
15:17
Speaker 9: the solar glass roof, I think a lot of people
15:19
Speaker 9: misunderstand that, like your goal is to bring these crazy
15:22
Speaker 9: technologies to market and really create a change in the world,
15:25
Speaker 9: and so I think it's fascinating that you do it
15:26
Speaker 9: through companies, and it seems like the fastest way to
15:29
Speaker 9: create that feedback loop and to really like get go
15:31
Speaker 9: from inventing something to millions of people using it right away. Yes,
15:34
Speaker 9: so like like it seems like buying a Tesla is
15:37
Speaker 9: almost like the best thing you could do to help
15:39
Speaker 9: the climate crisis because you're like turbo charging, R and
15:41
Speaker 9: D and products and innovation. I feel like not enough
15:44
Speaker 9: people really understand that.
15:46
Speaker 6: Yeah, that is I think there's lots of good things
15:50
Speaker 6: people can do for the climate, but just generally anything
15:53
Speaker 6: that is moving towards sustainable energy, whether it's sustainable.
15:59
Speaker 1: Energy, create generation through solar or with an electric vehicle.
16:09
Speaker 6: Actually just think just things like better installation in a
16:11
Speaker 6: house just is just really effective for energy consumption. But
16:18
Speaker 6: but fun is more fun, it's ingratiating. That's mom on
16:23
Speaker 6: the motion. I actually got him a little folloween, a
16:29
Speaker 6: little mistage mob in the Martian, you know, the helmet
16:34
Speaker 6: with it looks super cute.
16:37
Speaker 1: You got enough funny.
16:40
Speaker 4: So did you always know, like you know, business was
16:43
Speaker 4: the way you wanted to kind of attract attack these
16:45
Speaker 4: problems versus say, you know, maybe a nonprofit or you know,
16:48
Speaker 4: working as a college professor or something. I don't know.
16:52
Speaker 6: Uh, well, when I was in in high school, I
16:55
Speaker 6: thought I would most likely be doing physics at a
16:57
Speaker 6: particle accelerator. So that's what I was if physics and computers.
17:03
Speaker 6: I mean, I got distinctions in two areas in physics
17:05
Speaker 6: and computer science and those who are yeah, some of
17:08
Speaker 6: my two best subjects. And and then I thought, okay,
17:12
Speaker 6: well that I want to want to figure out what's
17:14
Speaker 6: the nature of the universe, and so you know, go
17:18
Speaker 6: try to working with people banging particles together and see
17:22
Speaker 6: what happens. And and then these sort of things went along,
17:27
Speaker 6: and the superconducting super collider got canceled in the US,
17:31
Speaker 6: and that actually I was like, whoa, you know what
17:35
Speaker 6: if I was working at a collider, I spent all
17:38
Speaker 6: these years and then the gunment just canceled it. Wow,
17:41
Speaker 6: and then that would I was like, I'm not going
17:43
Speaker 6: to do that. So so it's like, well we roll
17:50
Speaker 6: it back a little, like I was trying to forget
17:55
Speaker 6: what when I was had like this existential crisis and
17:58
Speaker 6: I was about twelve years old or something, and and
18:01
Speaker 6: I was like, well, what does the world mean, what's
18:04
Speaker 6: it all about?
18:05
Speaker 1: We're living some meaningless existence. And then.
18:09
Speaker 6: I made the mistake of reading Nieture Inchoprenur and and.
18:13
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, don't do that. Not a be a
18:19
Speaker 1: little older. And actually lately these days are s rear it.
18:23
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it's actually he's not that bad.
18:26
Speaker 1: He's got issues, got issues. I have a question about it,
18:29
Speaker 1: but you know, it's so.
18:34
Speaker 6: But there are the hitchbacks, guys to the galaxy Douglas Adams,
18:37
Speaker 6: which was which is like quite really, quite a good
18:39
Speaker 6: book in philosophy, I think, And I was like, Okay,
18:44
Speaker 6: we don't really know what the answer is obviously, so
18:47
Speaker 6: but the universe, the universe is the answer, and that really,
18:50
Speaker 6: what are the questions we should be asking to better
18:52
Speaker 6: understand the nature of the universe? And so then to
18:55
Speaker 6: the degree that we expand the scope and scale of consciousness,
19:00
Speaker 6: then we'll better be able to answer the ask the
19:02
Speaker 6: questions and understand the why we're here or.
19:08
Speaker 1: What it's all about.
19:09
Speaker 6: And so we should sort of take the set of
19:11
Speaker 6: actions that are most likely to result in its understanding.
19:15
Speaker 6: What questions to ask about the nature of the universe.
19:20
Speaker 6: So that so therefore, we must propagate human civilization on
19:24
Speaker 6: Earth as far into the future as possible and become
19:27
Speaker 6: a multiplanet species to gain extend the scope and scale
19:31
Speaker 6: of consciousness and increase the problem lifespan of consciousness, which
19:39
Speaker 6: is going to be I think probably a lot of
19:40
Speaker 6: machine consciousness as well.
19:41
Speaker 1: In the future.
19:44
Speaker 6: And that's the best we can do it, basically, you know,
19:47
Speaker 6: And yeah, that's the best we can do. So, you know,
19:54
Speaker 6: and think about the various problems that we're facing or
19:57
Speaker 6: what would most likely change the future. The when they
20:02
Speaker 6: were in college, there were five things that I thought
20:04
Speaker 6: would be I thought these were actually I would not
20:09
Speaker 6: regard this as a profound insight, but rather an obvious one,
20:13
Speaker 6: that the Internet would fundamentally change humanity because it's it's
20:17
Speaker 6: like a humanity would become more of a super organism
20:21
Speaker 6: because the Internet is like the nerves, like the nervous system.
20:25
Speaker 6: Now suddenly any part of the human human human organisms
20:30
Speaker 6: anywhere would have access to all the information instantly. You
20:34
Speaker 6: were like, hey, well, I can imagine if you if
20:37
Speaker 6: you didn't have a nervous system, you wouldn't know what's
20:39
Speaker 6: going on your fingers wouldn't know what's going on. Your
20:41
Speaker 6: total knows what's going on. You'd have to do it
20:43
Speaker 6: by diffusion. And yeah, and the way information used to
20:47
Speaker 6: work was really by diffusion. One human would have to
20:49
Speaker 6: call another human or to write them. Yes, like if
20:53
Speaker 6: it was a letter you would have to write. You'd
20:57
Speaker 6: have to have that letter to another human. That would
20:59
Speaker 6: be carried through a bunch of things and finding another
21:01
Speaker 6: person would give it to you inefficiently, extremely slow diffusion.
21:06
Speaker 6: And if you wanted access to books, if you're not
21:08
Speaker 6: did not have a library, you're not, you don't have it.
21:11
Speaker 1: That's okay. So now you have access to all the
21:16
Speaker 1: books instantly.
21:18
Speaker 6: And if you can be in a remote like you know, mountaintop,
21:24
Speaker 6: jungle location or something and have access to all of
21:27
Speaker 6: humanity information, if you've got a link to the internet,
21:30
Speaker 6: this is a fundamental, profound change. So that's one thing.
21:36
Speaker 6: I was on the Internet early because of you know,
21:38
Speaker 6: the physics community. That was pretty normal, although it was
21:41
Speaker 6: interface was you know, almost entirely text and hard to use.
21:46
Speaker 6: But that another one be obviously making life multiplanetary, making
21:54
Speaker 6: consciousness multiplanetary, the change human genetics, which obviously I'm not
22:04
Speaker 6: doing By the way, there's a thorny subject, but it
22:09
Speaker 6: is being done with Crisper and others. You know, it
22:11
Speaker 6: would it will, it will become normal to I think,
22:15
Speaker 6: to change the human geno. It will become normal.
22:17
Speaker 9: Like what's the opportunity, Like why is that something that's inevitable.
22:20
Speaker 6: Or well, you know, I think for for sure, as
22:24
Speaker 6: far as say getting rid of diseases or propensity to
22:28
Speaker 6: various diseases, then that's gonna be like the first thing
22:32
Speaker 6: that you'd want to edit out, you know. So it's like,
22:34
Speaker 6: if you've got like your you know, a situation where
22:38
Speaker 6: you're definitely gonna die of some kind of cancer at
22:40
Speaker 6: age fifty five, I prefer to have that edit it out.
22:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, So I think, you know, edit that out.
22:47
Speaker 6: You know, there's the Gatacus sort of extreme thing where
22:50
Speaker 6: it's not really edited out, but it's like it's edited
22:53
Speaker 6: in for various enhancements and that kind of thing, which
22:57
Speaker 6: probably will come too.
22:58
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, you.
23:01
Speaker 6: Know, arguing for against, I'm just saying this more likely
23:04
Speaker 6: to come than not down the road.
23:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, so then and then aim really major one.
23:13
Speaker 2: So these are all big motivational factors to keep our
23:17
Speaker 2: consciousness going.
23:18
Speaker 6: And it's sustainable, yes, yes, sustainable energy. So sustainable energy
23:24
Speaker 6: actually was something that I thought it was important before
23:30
Speaker 6: the vital environmental implications became as obvious as they are,
23:36
Speaker 6: because if you mine and burn hydrocarbons, then you're gonna
23:40
Speaker 6: run out of them, because it's it's not like it's
23:44
Speaker 6: not like mining sort of say metals for example, if
23:48
Speaker 6: you if you know that we recycle steel and aluminum,
23:53
Speaker 6: and because that's just it's it's it's.
23:56
Speaker 1: Not a change of energy state.
23:57
Speaker 6: Whereas if you if you take fossil fuels, you're taking
24:00
Speaker 6: some from a high energy state converting it to a
24:03
Speaker 6: lower energy state like CO two, which is extremely stable.
24:07
Speaker 1: You know.
24:07
Speaker 6: So whereas we will never run out of metals, not
24:10
Speaker 6: a problem, we will run out of mind hydrocobbins. And
24:14
Speaker 6: then necessarily, if we have got billions, ultimately twillions of
24:18
Speaker 6: tons of hydrocobbins that were very deep underground, in solid
24:22
Speaker 6: liquid gas form whatever, but they're deep underground, you should
24:25
Speaker 6: remove them from deep underground to the oceans and the atmosphere.
24:27
Speaker 1: You will have a change in.
24:29
Speaker 6: The chemistry of the of the surface obviously, and then
24:35
Speaker 6: there's just a certain probably associated with well, how bad
24:38
Speaker 6: will that be? And the range of possibilities goes from
24:43
Speaker 6: wildly bad to extremely bad. But then why would you
24:46
Speaker 6: run that experiment? That seems like the crazy, especially since
24:50
Speaker 6: we have to go to sustainable energy anyway, why would
24:54
Speaker 6: you run that experiment? This is the maddest thing I've
24:57
Speaker 6: ever heard. I'm not saying it shouldn't be some use
25:00
Speaker 6: of hydroc commons on Earth, but there just should be
25:03
Speaker 6: the cover the correct price pay placed on CO two production.
25:07
Speaker 6: And the obvious thing to do is have a common tax.
25:10
Speaker 6: It's a no brainer every if I don't know the
25:15
Speaker 6: ninety plus percent of economists would say this, and I
25:18
Speaker 6: think of physicists, and it's just the you know, the
25:21
Speaker 6: mark system works well if you've got the right price
25:24
Speaker 6: in things, it's very very simple. And if you've got
25:28
Speaker 6: a price of zero effectively or very low, then it's
25:34
Speaker 6: well people will wave accordingly, though, So it's just that's
25:37
Speaker 6: that's the thing that needs to get done.
25:40
Speaker 1: I think it will get done.
25:43
Speaker 6: And then the if, over time, as you raise the
25:47
Speaker 6: price on common you can actually I think encourage sequestration
25:52
Speaker 6: technologies over time, and and and there'll be a lot
25:56
Speaker 6: of innovation in that regard and now that's the way
25:59
Speaker 6: we to do it.
26:00
Speaker 4: So you had these realizations about you know, areas of
26:03
Speaker 4: big value and you went and started zip to you
26:08
Speaker 4: sold it, got you know, twenty million cash. You were
26:11
Speaker 4: the largest shareholder at PA of Papal at the time
26:14
Speaker 4: eBay acquired it. I think, you know, you got one
26:16
Speaker 4: hundred sixty million or something like that. You know, you
26:22
Speaker 4: have enough money basically for an entire lifetime. Why go
26:27
Speaker 4: and put your money into SpaceX, which is a huge,
26:30
Speaker 4: you know, risky operation or Tesla. Why not just kind
26:33
Speaker 4: of you know, relax.
26:38
Speaker 1: Sure what?
26:39
Speaker 6: So yeah, basically, you know, I graduated from from from
26:46
Speaker 6: Penn with basically physics and economics and then that we're
26:54
Speaker 6: act a road trip to to Stamford with with Robin
26:59
Speaker 6: rand who is in my class and now it works
27:02
Speaker 6: at Tesesla.
27:02
Speaker 1: Actually yeah, he grew up in Shanghai, so yeah, this
27:08
Speaker 1: was a very smart guy.
27:09
Speaker 6: He ended up continuing at Stanford and I ended up
27:13
Speaker 6: going on Deferma to complate into the semester. But I
27:16
Speaker 6: was going to be studying material science and the physics
27:20
Speaker 6: of high in age dentistic capacitors for use electric vehicles.
27:23
Speaker 6: So the intent was I was going to go, Okay,
27:25
Speaker 6: I'm want to work on energy storage solutions for electric vehicles,
27:29
Speaker 6: and I'd worked at a company at Cold Pinnacle Research
27:32
Speaker 6: for a couple of summers that did high energy density capacitors.
27:36
Speaker 6: I was going to try to do effect me like
27:38
Speaker 6: a solid state version of what they were doing with
27:44
Speaker 6: It's going to get very complicated from a technical standpoint,
27:50
Speaker 6: but they're using ruthenium tantlemox side. Ruthum is extremely rare
27:54
Speaker 6: and expensive. You cannot scale that, so like can you
27:57
Speaker 6: find a substitute for ruthenium? But they were able to
27:59
Speaker 6: get to uh energy dynasty is comparable to let us
28:02
Speaker 6: at battery, but with incredibly high power density. So just
28:06
Speaker 6: I can go down a deep rabbit hole air. But
28:09
Speaker 6: what's the capacitor in an no?
28:13
Speaker 1: I think with the.
28:14
Speaker 6: Advent of high energy lithium batteries, a capacitor is not
28:18
Speaker 6: not the right path.
28:19
Speaker 4: What was your thinking back then though, that made you
28:22
Speaker 4: think you could be useful for evis?
28:23
Speaker 6: I want to use advanced chip making equipment to make
28:28
Speaker 6: capacitors that were precise at a molecular level, so at
28:32
Speaker 6: the you know, just a level of precision that that
28:36
Speaker 6: was sort of unheard of in in capacitors. Like capacitors,
28:40
Speaker 6: energy is a function of its area or and a
28:43
Speaker 6: separation distance. So if you have if you can have
28:45
Speaker 6: very tiny separation distance, and you can and you can
28:49
Speaker 6: inhibit quantum tunneling, like so how do you things get
28:53
Speaker 6: pretty estery? So you're going to inherit quantity tunneling, give
28:56
Speaker 6: very short gap and and then you can in theory
29:03
Speaker 6: get to very high energy densities you by making capacitors
29:07
Speaker 6: in the way that you would make a a an
29:11
Speaker 6: X eighty six processor. And since there's there there were
29:16
Speaker 6: tens of billions of dollars going into chip making R
29:18
Speaker 6: and D that I thought there might be a way
29:21
Speaker 6: to make an advanced capacitor using chip making equipment instead
29:25
Speaker 6: of the conventional means.
29:28
Speaker 8: So is it off the table alter capacity?
29:29
Speaker 6: It's unnecessary? Interesting, it's unnecessary, It's it's I think I
29:37
Speaker 6: think it's I think it's probably is physically possible, but
29:39
Speaker 6: it's it's unnecessary at this point.
29:42
Speaker 4: I mean, I know a lot of people were talking
29:44
Speaker 4: about Maxwell and they had been working on some stuff
29:46
Speaker 4: with capacitors.
29:47
Speaker 6: The funny thing is that when I was doing the
29:50
Speaker 6: my intentions that this uh mass capacity company called Pink Research,
29:55
Speaker 6: which was in Less Godess. We talked a lot about
29:57
Speaker 6: Maxwell and Maxwell is also trying to kags to Capacitor.
30:01
Speaker 1: Is no Tesla a required Maxwell?
30:05
Speaker 8: Yeah, Wow, we're looking forward to that investorday.
30:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of a big deal. That's great. Great
30:11
Speaker 1: to know.
30:12
Speaker 6: Maxwell has a bunch of technologies that are that where
30:18
Speaker 6: if they're applied in the right way, I think can
30:21
Speaker 6: be have a very big.
30:22
Speaker 1: Impact, Like the dry electrode stuff that every one of them.
30:27
Speaker 1: That's a big deal.
30:28
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure, much much bigger deal than it may seem. Yeah,
30:35
Speaker 6: and there's a few other things with the space that
30:38
Speaker 6: it takes up for the ovens that you know, for
30:40
Speaker 6: the current technology, you can save all that that real
30:42
Speaker 6: estate space.
30:43
Speaker 2: Now that's one aspect. And the cost reduction, the weight savings,
30:47
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many pluses.
30:49
Speaker 6: Right, Yes, and there's many things that but I left
30:53
Speaker 6: wait until you know whatever battery day. Sure, hope in
30:57
Speaker 6: a few months, but I think we've had some pretty
30:59
Speaker 6: exciting things to share.
31:02
Speaker 4: So Galley's very exciting.
31:04
Speaker 9: Yeah, it seems like the pace of the innovation of
31:07
Speaker 9: the battery things just taken off like since you guys
31:09
Speaker 9: have more capital and being able to like have the
31:12
Speaker 9: Giga factory be vertically integrated. It seems like know of
31:14
Speaker 9: their car company is making that many batteries, so they're
31:16
Speaker 9: not even thinking about what comes next.
31:18
Speaker 1: But they're not even you know, man, not even come
31:23
Speaker 1: cool at all. I can two hundred and one mile
31:27
Speaker 1: not not either.
31:28
Speaker 6: That's a joke, Yeah, no, it's really, it's true. The
31:32
Speaker 6: other countries just really want to outsourced battery technology, not
31:36
Speaker 6: even not even making the like this.
31:39
Speaker 1: Battery module and cell.
31:41
Speaker 6: But they're they're obviously outs hosting the cells, but even
31:43
Speaker 6: out sourcing the modules in the packs. Yeah, you know,
31:45
Speaker 6: and it's like they're really not thinking about fundamental chemistry improvements.
31:49
Speaker 6: And there's some pretty deep wizardry at TELSA.
31:53
Speaker 1: On this front.
31:54
Speaker 6: I should say a bit about like like electric vehicles,
31:57
Speaker 6: and it was sustainable energy in general.
32:00
Speaker 1: I said it was.
32:01
Speaker 6: It was pretty I think obvious to not not just me,
32:04
Speaker 6: to me, to a lot of people even go back
32:06
Speaker 6: thirty years or or longer, that we must have a
32:10
Speaker 6: sustainable energy solution. In fact, it's it's toto logical, if
32:13
Speaker 6: it's un if it's if it's not sustainable, we must
32:16
Speaker 6: at some point find an alternative to it. And so
32:19
Speaker 6: even if there were no environmental impact to the sort
32:24
Speaker 6: of fossil fuel economy, then we would run out of
32:26
Speaker 6: them and then we would have economic collapse and well,
32:30
Speaker 6: civilization would fall apart. So so that that that was
32:33
Speaker 6: actually my initial motivation for electric vehicles is like, Okay,
32:36
Speaker 6: we've got to have a solution that does not require
32:40
Speaker 6: mining hydrocarbons, that that that is sustainable in the long term.
32:45
Speaker 6: It was not actually initially from an environmental standpoint, because
32:49
Speaker 6: I had not realized the gravity of the environmental situation
32:52
Speaker 6: at that time, and I thought, actually, for sure by
32:56
Speaker 6: now we'd have electric cars, like for sure, but back
32:59
Speaker 6: on the moon. Yeah, yeah, totally. Why are we not
33:01
Speaker 6: back on the moon? It's insane, insane. If you sold
33:06
Speaker 6: something in sixty nine that, yeah, that would not be
33:10
Speaker 6: back on the moon, And in like twenty twenty, they'd
33:13
Speaker 6: be like you probably might have getten punched, honestly, because
33:16
Speaker 6: they'd be like, you're just it's like so insultingly rude
33:20
Speaker 6: to if youture.
33:23
Speaker 1: Because they'd be like, what is wrong with you?
33:26
Speaker 6: It's encouraging encouraging them, Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it's like,
33:29
Speaker 6: we should have a sure of a base on the Moon,
33:31
Speaker 6: we should have sent people to Mars. None of that's occurred.
33:34
Speaker 6: You know, it's gonna that We've got to make that happen. Yeah,
33:38
Speaker 6: So it's a bit on the sustainability front. It was really,
33:40
Speaker 6: like I said, not so much initially, not so much
33:43
Speaker 6: from an environmental standpoint, but from the necessity of replacing
33:47
Speaker 6: a finite resource in order to ensure that civilization could
33:52
Speaker 6: continue to grow. And then the urgency of it became
33:55
Speaker 6: much more obvious, like, wow, we're just really better do
33:58
Speaker 6: something because the environmental stuff is becoming quite serious, and
34:03
Speaker 6: the the the inertia of large existing companies is just
34:08
Speaker 6: hard to appreciate that they just want to keep doing
34:11
Speaker 6: the same thing and maybe five percent different every year,
34:15
Speaker 6: maybe five percent difference. Big companies had changed. So so
34:22
Speaker 6: then the you know, the time that Tesla you know,
34:27
Speaker 6: was creator, you know, there was no no one was
34:30
Speaker 6: doing electric cars. They weren't really startups. There weren't big
34:33
Speaker 6: car companies weren't doing it. Uh GM tot cancel their
34:38
Speaker 6: EV programs.
34:39
Speaker 1: Now everybody's doing it right now, like.
34:42
Speaker 7: And their mom, the mom is doing it, and we
34:50
Speaker 7: will all like to congratulate about the take off.
34:53
Speaker 1: Actually three one, yeah.
34:54
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's and I would like to know, like why
34:58
Speaker 7: China is the best country to build a first foreign
35:02
Speaker 7: Giga factory.
35:04
Speaker 6: China is the biggest consumer cars in the world, so it's.
35:11
Speaker 1: So that that that alone would be enough to do it.
35:15
Speaker 6: I think also there was a lot of uncertainty about
35:17
Speaker 6: the tariffs, and and you know, it's like potentially would
35:22
Speaker 6: be unable to sell effectively in China if we did
35:25
Speaker 6: not have a factory locally, or at least unable to
35:28
Speaker 6: sell at prices that weren't extremely high. But those are
35:31
Speaker 6: really the two two main reasons.
35:34
Speaker 1: I think that.
35:37
Speaker 6: But I think there's also a third important reason that
35:40
Speaker 6: that there's just so much talent and drive in China
35:44
Speaker 6: that I think it's a good place to do a
35:46
Speaker 6: lot of things. And the evidence is there in the
35:52
Speaker 6: incredible progress in the factory, which was built with very
35:58
Speaker 6: very high quality and very short period of time, and
36:04
Speaker 6: that the car is coming out of of Shanghai are
36:08
Speaker 6: already very high quality.
36:10
Speaker 1: I can't tell. And the run rate is amazing.
36:13
Speaker 2: And I love that they used the Chinese badge as well.
36:16
Speaker 2: It's like a simple pride and you know made made
36:18
Speaker 2: in China.
36:19
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's cool, it's super cool.
36:21
Speaker 4: How did Tesla manage to get the first wholly owned
36:24
Speaker 4: foreign car company in China? I mean a factory?
36:28
Speaker 6: Uh well, I've went to China many times and they
36:33
Speaker 6: kept saying that we would have to do this, you know,
36:36
Speaker 6: majority local venture. And I said that, well, we had
36:41
Speaker 6: to partner with someone, and say, well, oh, you know,
36:43
Speaker 6: we're a little late to the dance here, you know,
36:46
Speaker 6: so who do we partner with? You know, there's nobody,
36:51
Speaker 6: nobody left, and uh and also we're just a little company,
36:54
Speaker 6: so you know, we're you know, like because they should
36:59
Speaker 6: get married, like we're young.
37:04
Speaker 1: That's a good example.
37:07
Speaker 6: But yeah, you know, and then so then you know,
37:11
Speaker 6: but and then also is pointing out like you know,
37:13
Speaker 6: there's so many Chinese companies that are going to you know,
37:16
Speaker 6: that are establishing factories or in the US, and there's
37:19
Speaker 6: like Verity Future and that kind of thing, and that's
37:23
Speaker 6: known by them. And so I mean, to be fair,
37:25
Speaker 6: it should be allowed that a marine car company should
37:28
Speaker 6: be able to own its factory in China as well.
37:31
Speaker 6: And so we talked to him over and over of
37:34
Speaker 6: years and they eventually said Okay, well.
37:39
Speaker 1: We'll change law.
37:40
Speaker 6: They changed law, but now those other companies can do
37:43
Speaker 6: it as well, so it's not just limited to Tesla.
37:47
Speaker 9: And how much of that production hell like learnings have
37:50
Speaker 9: really enabled because one of the I don't want to
37:52
Speaker 9: like to bring up Capex, but one of my favorite
37:54
Speaker 9: things is the stats and the shareholder letter. It's so
37:56
Speaker 9: much cheaper, not only faster, but it seems like that
37:59
Speaker 9: you have learned so much from this the Fremont factory,
38:03
Speaker 9: and that really enabled like kind of a turbo charged
38:06
Speaker 9: build for Shanghai.
38:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, the.
38:12
Speaker 6: I think the big difference is is like we are
38:15
Speaker 6: way less dumb than we were, so the the fullishness
38:21
Speaker 6: of capital expenditures was very high and it's less high.
38:26
Speaker 1: Know, and then.
38:30
Speaker 6: The the Shanghai factory, we designed out all of or
38:35
Speaker 6: as much of the foolishness as we could think of
38:40
Speaker 6: that exists at Fremont and at Nevada. So we just
38:45
Speaker 6: made a lot of decisions that weren't smart and and
38:49
Speaker 6: we designed those out so such the production line is
38:52
Speaker 6: much simpler, So it's much simpler and better implemented. And
38:58
Speaker 6: then we also found like that in most cases the
39:03
Speaker 6: suppliers were more efficient in China as well than in
39:07
Speaker 6: the US, so, but we've also managed to get a
39:12
Speaker 6: lot more output from existing equipment in the US as well.
39:17
Speaker 6: So the Model three bodyline in Fremont, for example, was
39:24
Speaker 6: only ever meant to do five thousand cars Model three
39:27
Speaker 6: is a week and it's doing seven thousand nice, nice
39:31
Speaker 6: and with with with with turning off a bunch of
39:36
Speaker 6: unnecessary things that were being done. So it I mean,
39:42
Speaker 6: there's just there's a lot of bullish things that were
39:44
Speaker 6: doing so and we changed some of the designs and
39:50
Speaker 6: made it easier to would it's it's like hundreds of
39:54
Speaker 6: little things to make it, to make it easier to build,
39:59
Speaker 6: and and so being able to get forty percent more
40:02
Speaker 6: output off the same line obviously makes it makes a
40:05
Speaker 6: big difference, and while while reducing the cost of the module,
40:09
Speaker 6: cost of production and I and I think improving the
40:12
Speaker 6: quality of the car. So it's just all good, good stuff.
40:17
Speaker 6: It was the result of a ton of hard work
40:20
Speaker 6: by a lot of people. So yeah, it was kind
40:24
Speaker 6: of necessary in that there was we didn't really have
40:28
Speaker 6: a place to put a second molitary body line. So
40:31
Speaker 6: it's like you either we either make with one go
40:33
Speaker 6: faster or we will not be able to achieve production.
40:40
Speaker 6: But the Model three body line in Shanghai is much
40:45
Speaker 6: much simpler than the one in and I said that
40:48
Speaker 6: a good way then, because it has the same the
40:51
Speaker 6: same end result. So if if you know and and
40:56
Speaker 6: but but it's much easier to understand this just getting
41:00
Speaker 6: rid of unnecessary movement. There's a lot of unnecessary movement
41:04
Speaker 6: in the Freemont body line, but not in Shanghai.
41:10
Speaker 4: So you guys said in the production letter that you
41:12
Speaker 4: just started battery production in Shanghai too, And I heard
41:16
Speaker 4: that you guys were getting cells from cattle and l GCM.
41:20
Speaker 4: Are the cells basically kind of like a commodity part
41:24
Speaker 4: that you can assemble into your battery packs there or
41:27
Speaker 4: you know, does it make a difference. How do you
41:28
Speaker 4: see that long term?
41:32
Speaker 6: I believe these cells are not yet from LG We
41:35
Speaker 6: do expect to use locally, locally produced cells, but I'm.
41:43
Speaker 1: Like, I don't know, it's a week clear.
41:44
Speaker 6: I don't always know exactly what's going on everywhere in
41:47
Speaker 6: the fifty thousand person company. So some of the things,
41:50
Speaker 6: like most most most of the things I say, will
41:52
Speaker 6: be crippets of maybea occasionally something that's not as to
41:56
Speaker 6: that my knowledge, we're not yet using Algae camp cells.
42:00
Speaker 6: We are using Panasonic cells made in Nevada.
42:04
Speaker 4: But LGAE CAM can make pretty much the same cells
42:06
Speaker 4: as Panasonic.
42:08
Speaker 6: Yes, but pretty much is not the same as the same.
42:11
Speaker 6: So there's still a few bugs to work out with
42:14
Speaker 6: the LGA camp cells before we can use them in
42:18
Speaker 6: our module and battery pack production system. The CTL cells,
42:26
Speaker 6: the CL situation will be more of an integrated module
42:30
Speaker 6: then it will be a cell. And that's so that
42:35
Speaker 6: it's it's not just it's not super easy to replace
42:39
Speaker 6: these things. But yeah, we'll be We do expect to
42:46
Speaker 6: use CTL. We do expect to use Algae. Currently we're
42:49
Speaker 6: use using Panasonic. Might expect to use I mean like
42:53
Speaker 6: virtually a matter of months. So by the middle of
42:55
Speaker 6: this year we will probably be using both LGA and
42:59
Speaker 6: ctail in volume.
43:02
Speaker 3: Wow.
43:03
Speaker 8: So we were talking about a lot of Tesla stuff,
43:06
Speaker 8: but we kind of wanted to ask you about your
43:07
Speaker 8: personal history because we were saying you were saying how
43:09
Speaker 8: there's some misconceptions you would like to make straight. And
43:12
Speaker 8: you know, Ashley Vance wrote a book about you. I
43:15
Speaker 8: just read May's loved the book, and it was really wonderful.
43:17
Speaker 8: I loved it, and I learned a little bit more
43:19
Speaker 8: history about your family and you. What are some of
43:21
Speaker 8: the misconceptions that you would like to correct?
43:25
Speaker 6: You know, most of this is just and it ended
43:26
Speaker 6: up being kind of water under the bridge that people
43:28
Speaker 6: didn't notice that much. Yeah, I mean there's a sort
43:32
Speaker 6: of some stories in there where it sounds like I
43:35
Speaker 6: like fired people all of a sudden and arbitrarily, which
43:39
Speaker 6: was not the case.
43:41
Speaker 1: There.
43:45
Speaker 6: You know, it just Ashley asked somebody who who didn't
43:50
Speaker 6: know what was going on, and then that person was
43:51
Speaker 6: suddenly not there.
43:52
Speaker 1: And they didn't know why.
43:53
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I yeah, I definitely do not fire talented people.
43:59
Speaker 6: And yeah, you know, unless there's no option. So yeah,
44:04
Speaker 6: and absolutely not not without warning or like.
44:07
Speaker 8: Keep hearing you say, we like it sounds like you're
44:09
Speaker 8: always thinking of everybody. I see you as a very
44:12
Speaker 8: selfless person. I mean seriously, I mean, yeah, it's like
44:17
Speaker 8: from the age of twelve, it sounds like you've been
44:19
Speaker 8: thinking about how to help humanity.
44:21
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I'm not trying to be sort of
44:24
Speaker 6: like some you know, the sort of savior or something
44:28
Speaker 6: like that. You know, but it's really just that if
44:36
Speaker 6: it just seems like there, it's just I don't know,
44:40
Speaker 6: it feels like the obvious things to do. I can't like,
44:43
Speaker 6: I'm not sure why you do anything else. We want
44:51
Speaker 6: to maximize happiness to the population and propagating to the
44:56
Speaker 6: future as far as possible and understand the nature of reality,
45:02
Speaker 6: and from that, I think everything else follows.
45:05
Speaker 5: I saw you on Twitter like talking about how like
45:09
Speaker 5: people are having this rumor that you've been wealthy your
45:11
Speaker 5: whole life and that would be like the only reason
45:13
Speaker 5: who became successful and you've debunked that, And can you
45:16
Speaker 5: ask share more about your upbringing and what led you
45:18
Speaker 5: to go into North America.
45:21
Speaker 6: Sure, I was in South Africa and it seemed like
45:26
Speaker 6: wherever there was like a lot of the advanced technology
45:30
Speaker 6: in the world was being produced in America and Solucton
45:34
Speaker 6: Valley especially, So I wanted to be where I could
45:38
Speaker 6: sort of have an impact on technology, so that's or
45:42
Speaker 6: be involved in the creation of new technology. So that's
45:46
Speaker 6: what brought me to go to at first Canada because
45:51
Speaker 6: I could get citizenship in Canada through my mom, and
45:54
Speaker 6: then ultimately to the US.
45:58
Speaker 1: But yeah, I just left Slavco. When I was seventeen and.
46:06
Speaker 6: Land in Montreal, I had like about two thousand dollars Canadian.
46:11
Speaker 1: Uh yeah.
46:12
Speaker 6: I started staying in a youth hustle for a few days,
46:15
Speaker 6: and then there was a you could buy a ticket
46:18
Speaker 6: to across the country for hard bucks and stopped along
46:21
Speaker 6: the way, and so I put that and just took
46:27
Speaker 6: it greyhound across Canada and sold these like little towns.
46:33
Speaker 1: Well we were getting I didn't have much.
46:37
Speaker 6: I had like a backpack again suitcase books, but that
46:41
Speaker 6: the bus company, the Greyhound, unloaded it in one of
46:47
Speaker 6: the cities and then the bus left without my stuff.
46:51
Speaker 1: So I literally had nothing. All your books but you're
46:55
Speaker 1: closed to.
46:56
Speaker 6: Actually, weirdly, I think I might have had the books thing,
46:58
Speaker 6: but I closed that prior you need it, Yeah, because
47:02
Speaker 6: I needed. I was just sitting in the bus station reading,
47:04
Speaker 6: waiting for the bus to get ready, and I think
47:07
Speaker 6: I have the books but not not.
47:08
Speaker 1: But no clothing.
47:13
Speaker 6: So anyway, but I managed to get to Swift Current, Saskatchewan,
47:20
Speaker 6: and then my, my, it's your cousins cousin's son, Yeah,
47:26
Speaker 6: has a whaed farm there, and I worked on the
47:28
Speaker 6: wheat farm for about six weeks and turned eighteen and Saskatchewan.
47:34
Speaker 1: It's just a ton of called swift current.
47:36
Speaker 2: So that was summertime, right it is June, Yeah, June
47:40
Speaker 2: twenty eighth, So because I've been there in the winter
47:41
Speaker 2: and it's like minus forty yeah, yeah, you don't want
47:44
Speaker 2: to be traveling.
47:45
Speaker 8: Yeah did you ice kate? Did you try ice skating?
47:47
Speaker 1: No? There was it was quite warm.
47:49
Speaker 8: Well, I mean in the winter.
47:51
Speaker 1: Stay for there in the winter. I was just I
47:53
Speaker 1: was there for about six weeks. Oh, you're lucky you survived.
47:55
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah.
47:56
Speaker 6: I was old there literally working on the wheat farm,
48:00
Speaker 6: did a bond raising and they cleared out the wheat binds,
48:03
Speaker 6: you know, the grain, grain salos, that kind of thing,
48:05
Speaker 6: and I just worked the vegetable patch basically just doing
48:09
Speaker 6: various things.
48:10
Speaker 8: Would your mind just thinking of what you're what you're
48:12
Speaker 8: going to do after that?
48:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, t figure what I do next. I don't know
48:17
Speaker 1: what to do.
48:18
Speaker 6: So then, but I ended up getting back on the
48:21
Speaker 6: bus and went to Vancouver and I had a half
48:26
Speaker 6: uncle there who was kind of in the lumber industry.
48:30
Speaker 6: He like made lumber, like lumber equipment.
48:32
Speaker 8: Sounds like the Northwest.
48:34
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, basically throwing up chains, throwing logs and working
48:41
Speaker 6: on the slumber mill and cleaning out the where they
48:47
Speaker 6: where they boil the pulp and just like create crazy
48:52
Speaker 6: so boiler rooms and that that might be the hardest
48:55
Speaker 6: job I've had, actually, because you had to like crawl
48:59
Speaker 6: through this little tunnel and it has mat suit and
49:02
Speaker 6: then with shovel with and then shovel the sort of
49:10
Speaker 6: steaming sand and mulch out of the boilers.
49:15
Speaker 1: To clean him out.
49:17
Speaker 6: And you had to like there's only one entrance to exit,
49:20
Speaker 6: which is like a little tunnel. If you're classrophobic, you
49:23
Speaker 6: could be real bad. And then you could shovel the
49:28
Speaker 6: sand and the mulch through the tunnel and it actually
49:31
Speaker 6: blocked the tunnel, and then somebody else would reach in
49:33
Speaker 6: and shovel it out from the outside. So it just
49:35
Speaker 6: big enough long enough if you have a trovel with
49:38
Speaker 6: a long handle, one person on the inside can shovel
49:41
Speaker 6: it far enough that someone on the outside can shovel
49:43
Speaker 6: it out. And then you have to rotate every fifteen
49:46
Speaker 6: minutes to avoid getting hyperthermia.
49:48
Speaker 8: Oh wow, and the safeties just a man looking out
49:54
Speaker 8: for you.
49:55
Speaker 6: There were just two people kind of paired up. So
49:57
Speaker 6: if like one person's collap and you go to call somebody,
50:02
Speaker 6: but it'd be really hard to drag somebody out. I
50:04
Speaker 6: have to say that it does not seem safe because
50:07
Speaker 6: if the tunnel gets blocked, trying to get then and
50:09
Speaker 6: block that tunnel would be very difficult in a short
50:11
Speaker 6: period of time. So, but it was the highest painting
50:16
Speaker 6: job at the employment office. Sorry, I was like, okay,
50:21
Speaker 6: the other jobs were like, I don't know, eight dollars
50:23
Speaker 6: an hour and this one was eighteen dollars an hour.
50:25
Speaker 8: It fire your clothes and were gone.
50:27
Speaker 1: Well they gave you they did you give you a
50:28
Speaker 1: have hazmat suits?
50:30
Speaker 6: Yeah?
50:30
Speaker 1: How long did you have to did you do that
50:32
Speaker 1: job for? It was like four days, it was it
50:36
Speaker 1: was then it was done.
50:37
Speaker 6: Yeah, you said it was like a short term thing,
50:39
Speaker 6: clean green fins, continding that the boilers the ball.
50:42
Speaker 3: Rooms, so what was next? We were in boiler rooms and.
50:45
Speaker 1: Then yeah, so basically.
50:49
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean literally it was like a lump of dragons,
50:51
Speaker 6: chainselwing logs and just during the lumber or lumber stuff
50:57
Speaker 6: basically for a few months there and then applied for college,
51:03
Speaker 6: going to Queen's University and Kingston.
51:10
Speaker 1: And was there for a couple of years.
51:13
Speaker 6: And then some of that's just that I should apply
51:16
Speaker 6: to Jupan, and I didn't think I'd be able to
51:20
Speaker 6: go because I've paid for my own way through university
51:23
Speaker 6: just which is actually not that hard in Canada because
51:26
Speaker 6: the tuition system.
51:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, the tuitions had yourselves that I is in Canada.
51:30
Speaker 6: So so with you know, with basically some if you
51:35
Speaker 6: sort of worked during the summer semester and take out
51:39
Speaker 6: some omens and get some scholarships, you can pretty much
51:42
Speaker 6: go to any college in Canada, I think. But I
51:45
Speaker 6: met someone who was at Yupan and they said you
51:48
Speaker 6: should at least apply, and I applied and they actually
51:51
Speaker 6: gave me like quite a big scholarship, so that that
51:54
Speaker 6: allowed me to go there, and so that I did
51:57
Speaker 6: the physics and economics there and uh and and then.
52:04
Speaker 1: That that's what led to the road trip to Stafford
52:07
Speaker 1: with Robin ran.
52:10
Speaker 6: And and and then I was during that that summer
52:15
Speaker 6: that I was was like, Okay, if I can either
52:19
Speaker 6: spend several years kind of doing a PhD and know
52:23
Speaker 6: that I care about the PhD actually, but I just
52:24
Speaker 6: need a lab. But I could either spend a bunch
52:28
Speaker 6: of years working in a lab and maybe it would
52:31
Speaker 6: maybe the technology would pan out or maybe it wouldn't,
52:35
Speaker 6: but the Internet would was definitely about to go super
52:40
Speaker 6: and over in ninety five. So I was like, Okay,
52:45
Speaker 6: I can always come back to working on electric cars basically,
52:50
Speaker 6: and which I did, but the Internet is not going
52:55
Speaker 6: to wait. So it's so then I put stafford on
52:59
Speaker 6: defoement and started up to which was really just you know,
53:08
Speaker 6: I started off with maps and directions, yell pages, white pages,
53:11
Speaker 6: that kind of thing, and it was the best of
53:17
Speaker 6: my knowledge of the first maps and directions on the Internet.
53:20
Speaker 6: So this was some like patents I have. I don't
53:25
Speaker 6: know how many more of it. They've obviously lapsed at
53:26
Speaker 6: this point, but for maps and directions and yell pages
53:31
Speaker 6: and advertising and stuff. And I wrote the whole the
53:35
Speaker 6: whole initial code base I wrote personally because there wasn't
53:37
Speaker 6: any reels.
53:38
Speaker 1: It's just me so.
53:41
Speaker 6: And I only had a few thousand dollars and my
53:45
Speaker 6: brother joined and he brought like five thousand dollars, which
53:48
Speaker 6: was led. Yeah, at least for the first few months,
53:51
Speaker 6: there was literally only one computer. So the website when
53:55
Speaker 6: the website wasn't working. It was because I was compiling
53:57
Speaker 6: code and and even again an interat connection was pretty hard,
54:03
Speaker 6: but there was an Internet service provider on the flow blows.
54:08
Speaker 6: We're more or less squatted in this office because the
54:11
Speaker 6: landlord was like out of the country or something and
54:15
Speaker 6: nobody was using it.
54:18
Speaker 1: So so you've lived in there.
54:20
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think I've read that in Mays book. You
54:23
Speaker 8: showered at wymc A then, right, that's right. Yeah, it's
54:25
Speaker 8: smart though, I mean you were thrifty to what you
54:27
Speaker 8: had to do.
54:29
Speaker 4: We just like had no no money, so we're gonna
54:33
Speaker 4: do you know, what did people think about zip tou generally?
54:36
Speaker 4: Was it like seen as a crazy idea or like
54:38
Speaker 4: do people even understand the Internet? Back then, most people
54:41
Speaker 4: didn't understand the Internet.
54:42
Speaker 6: Most people didn't know Even on sand Hill Road, like
54:46
Speaker 6: we tried pitching people to invest in an inter company.
54:50
Speaker 1: Most of the vcs we pitched too had never used
54:52
Speaker 1: the Internet.
54:53
Speaker 4: Do you remember some of the VC firms you went
54:54
Speaker 4: to on sandial.
54:56
Speaker 6: I remember most of time we wouldn't take a meeting,
54:58
Speaker 6: and if they didn't take a meeting, there were pretty
55:00
Speaker 6: bored and not say like who's who's made money on
55:04
Speaker 6: the Internet. No, like no one, okay, but the seed
55:09
Speaker 6: change occurred when Escape went public.
55:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
55:14
Speaker 6: So the first thing I tried to do was not
55:17
Speaker 6: to start a company. I tried to get a job
55:18
Speaker 6: in Netscape, but they didn't reply to me. Oh no,
55:22
Speaker 6: oh man, So I just I tried. I tried hanging
55:24
Speaker 6: out in the lobby at Escape. I don't know who
55:27
Speaker 6: to talk to. I was really too shy to talk
55:30
Speaker 6: to you when I don't know. So it's like, Okay,
55:32
Speaker 6: I can't get a job at the only internet company
55:34
Speaker 6: that you know that that does Internet software, So then
55:39
Speaker 6: I'll try writing software.
55:42
Speaker 1: So that's.
55:45
Speaker 6: Kind of what happened there. Yeah, and then like I said,
55:48
Speaker 6: my brother came down and joined. This is like well
55:50
Speaker 6: like late ninety five.
55:53
Speaker 4: And then.
55:55
Speaker 1: In January ninety five, I think it was the.
56:01
Speaker 6: There was there was a lot more interest in the
56:03
Speaker 6: internet stuff following the newscape I p O and that's
56:09
Speaker 6: the software software was more impressive, I guess.
56:13
Speaker 1: So then we then more more. David aw invested so
56:18
Speaker 1: they're VC from on sand Hill Road and they.
56:25
Speaker 6: They invested I think it was like three million dollars
56:28
Speaker 6: for effectively sixty percent of the company.
56:31
Speaker 1: Wow, which we thought was crazy.
56:36
Speaker 6: They're like, well, these get Learn gives us the money
56:38
Speaker 6: for nothing, they must be mad. Yeah, so they that
56:48
Speaker 6: this this seems like like crazy that they're to give
56:52
Speaker 6: so much money for a company that consisted the time
56:55
Speaker 6: of about five people, like literally I think five people.
57:02
Speaker 1: At the time.
57:02
Speaker 6: So but anyway, it worked out well for them in
57:06
Speaker 6: the end, so we hired a lot more people were
57:12
Speaker 6: both out the service, and they also ended up writing
57:16
Speaker 6: a bunch of software to bring the newspapers online. So
57:19
Speaker 6: Night Ritter, New York Times Company, Hurst well became investors
57:24
Speaker 6: and customers, and at one points of two which responsible
57:29
Speaker 6: for a significant section of the New York Times company website. Yeah,
57:35
Speaker 6: so I got to know the media industry pretty well.
57:38
Speaker 6: And but over what really happened with with it effectively
57:44
Speaker 6: got too much there was too much control by the
57:49
Speaker 6: existing media companies, so that too may board seats and
57:52
Speaker 6: too much boarding control, and that they kept trying to
57:56
Speaker 6: push the company down directions that made no sense. So
58:03
Speaker 6: like so, if you actually had really good software, I'd
58:08
Speaker 6: say software is comparable in some ways more advanced than
58:11
Speaker 6: say Yahoo were excite at the time, but it was
58:13
Speaker 6: just not being used properly, and it was all being
58:16
Speaker 6: forced through uh, through media companies who they're not.
58:21
Speaker 1: Not use it, you know.
58:22
Speaker 6: So it's like it's okay, we've got the best technology,
58:25
Speaker 6: but it's it's not being deployed properly. So but unfortunately
58:30
Speaker 6: compback came along and they compat compact It acquired Digital Equipment,
58:37
Speaker 6: and Digital Equipment had owned Aulti Vesta, which at the
58:41
Speaker 6: time was probably the best the search best search engine.
58:44
Speaker 6: So they thought that their idea was they will combine
58:47
Speaker 6: Altivesta with a bunch of other Internet companies and try
58:50
Speaker 6: to compete create a competitor to Yahoo or Excite that
58:54
Speaker 6: that was the Excite used to be a big thing,
58:56
Speaker 6: amazingly and yeah, who used to be a big thing
59:00
Speaker 6: a long time.
59:00
Speaker 4: Ago that it was like owned by Verizon or something.
59:03
Speaker 8: Yeah, and there was Ala.
59:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a crazy story. They you know, they
59:10
Speaker 4: failed to ocquord Google twice. You know, Microsoft offered them
59:13
Speaker 4: like forty billion or something and they turned.
59:15
Speaker 9: It down and then Alibaba saved them out of nowhere.
59:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Alibaba steak was worth more than the whole
59:23
Speaker 4: whole company I went.
59:24
Speaker 9: By, like, yeah, huge amount. It was basically a proxy
59:27
Speaker 9: for Alibaba shares training.
59:29
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. But at one point, I mean at that time,
59:33
Speaker 1: like if you get back.
59:34
Speaker 6: To say ninety eight, ninety nine, yeah, who seemed like
59:37
Speaker 6: an unstoppable juggernaut, Like literally like this company, will you know?
59:42
Speaker 6: It's a behemoth. Nobody could possibly defeat them. But anyway,
59:50
Speaker 6: and where's com back today?
59:52
Speaker 1: Yeah?
59:52
Speaker 6: So, but that was their idea, which is at least,
59:57
Speaker 6: if executed well, could have made sense.
1:00:01
Speaker 3: Kimball, Yeah, what do you what are you guys doing?
1:00:06
Speaker 4: We're recording a podcast?
1:00:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, how do you want me to join?
1:00:11
Speaker 1: Yeah?
1:00:14
Speaker 4: So what do you remember about it?
1:00:15
Speaker 1: Too? Well? Remember?
1:00:18
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, but then the Internet came along with came
1:00:20
Speaker 3: this huge thing. I mean it was always it was
1:00:22
Speaker 3: always there, but it became a big deal. And then
1:00:25
Speaker 3: Elan was working on uh, working in Silicon Valley, and
1:00:29
Speaker 3: as I remember it, you know, I never heard a
1:00:32
Speaker 3: meeting where some of the Yellow Pages companies were thinking
1:00:35
Speaker 3: of doing sort of online yellow Pages, And.
1:00:38
Speaker 1: No, where would I why would I have been? This
1:00:43
Speaker 1: is a long time ago.
1:00:44
Speaker 3: You called me up and you said we should do
1:00:46
Speaker 3: you think you can do a better job, so we
1:00:48
Speaker 3: think we can do it.
1:00:48
Speaker 4: Maybe you made that up to try and get Kimball interested.
1:00:51
Speaker 1: How would I be in a meeting with Yellow Pages company.
1:00:53
Speaker 3: I have no idea, that's what I remember Leafless.
1:01:02
Speaker 1: I don't even know any of Yellow Persons.
1:01:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with you now. But so it was
1:01:09
Speaker 3: like I think April of nineteen ninety five we started
1:01:12
Speaker 3: working on it, and the I guess the idea was
1:01:18
Speaker 3: fairly simple to take mapping and apply it to the Internet,
1:01:24
Speaker 3: and there were a few other companies trying to do it,
1:01:26
Speaker 3: but no one with the very cool technology of sort
1:01:31
Speaker 3: of what was called vector based mapping, which is which
1:01:34
Speaker 3: is what we all use today, where the map is
1:01:36
Speaker 3: actually alive, you know, not just a picture.
1:01:38
Speaker 4: I was very ahead of its time.
1:01:40
Speaker 3: I think we were the first. I know there were
1:01:42
Speaker 3: other people putting maps on the Internet, but I think
1:01:44
Speaker 3: we were the first to put vector based mapping, which
1:01:47
Speaker 3: is what the kind of technology used today on the Internet,
1:01:50
Speaker 3: and orginal directions. So it was cool. I remember my
1:01:53
Speaker 3: brother and I pressing go on his server at our
1:01:57
Speaker 3: office and took about sixty seconds for the first door
1:02:03
Speaker 3: to door directions to come up on the screen. And
1:02:08
Speaker 3: even sixty seconds was amazing. You're like, this is incredible.
1:02:12
Speaker 3: Directions to anywhere. This is just amazing and definitely seen
1:02:17
Speaker 3: amazing at the time. Definitely seen amazing at the time.
1:02:19
Speaker 3: Yeah it now, it's like, but this was like an
1:02:25
Speaker 3: impossible thing. It was so cool and using Java, you know,
1:02:32
Speaker 3: had coated a interactive map, which again all super normal
1:02:37
Speaker 3: stuff today, but the ability to just draw square and
1:02:40
Speaker 3: zoom in or zoom out, that was just unheard of technology.
1:02:46
Speaker 3: Draw square, yeah, you remember that, it was a little
1:02:49
Speaker 3: little red square on the Java browser.
1:02:52
Speaker 1: That was unusual.
1:02:53
Speaker 4: Yes, just like, yeah, well you cheated if you're using
1:02:57
Speaker 4: Java applets.
1:02:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is when Java sucked and it was barely.
1:03:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was like probably the most I think we
1:03:04
Speaker 3: even got some sort of recognition because it was the
1:03:06
Speaker 3: most advanced Java application on Java at the time because
1:03:11
Speaker 3: it was so ridiculously hot.
1:03:13
Speaker 1: It was.
1:03:13
Speaker 3: It was a really crappy technology at the time, but
1:03:16
Speaker 3: this this was done on it.
1:03:18
Speaker 6: The thing is that if you if you downloaded the
1:03:21
Speaker 6: job outplet, we could we could transmit the vector data,
1:03:24
Speaker 6: not just a betmap. And this is what when everyone's
1:03:27
Speaker 6: on a modem, so something's on like you know, twenty
1:03:29
Speaker 6: covets motem or you know, trying to download a map
1:03:34
Speaker 6: image to take forever, whereas if you had downloading the
1:03:38
Speaker 6: vector data, is that locally rendered using the Java applet
1:03:41
Speaker 6: was super was relatively speaking, super fast.
1:03:44
Speaker 1: That's what made it cool.
1:03:45
Speaker 4: Sparta, I mean yeah, even like vector maps are even
1:03:49
Speaker 4: Google Maps using like raster maps a few years ago,
1:03:51
Speaker 4: like it seems like very out of its time.
1:03:55
Speaker 3: Well, we were the first, I believe. I believe the
1:03:57
Speaker 3: two of us were the first humans to see the
1:04:01
Speaker 3: maps and little directions on the Internet, which I think
1:04:03
Speaker 3: is pretty cool, very cool cool.
1:04:05
Speaker 8: Yeah, Garman came out. When did Garman first launch?
1:04:10
Speaker 3: Well, they were an Internet based right, so you could
1:04:13
Speaker 3: you could. Actually I don't think Garman was even a
1:04:16
Speaker 3: player at this point. It was Navtek was the only
1:04:19
Speaker 3: place that we were. That's where we got the data from. Yeah,
1:04:22
Speaker 3: and they were building it for for Hurts Never Lost,
1:04:25
Speaker 3: which came out a few years lady. You know those
1:04:27
Speaker 3: things that no one uses in the GPS systems, really
1:04:32
Speaker 3: really bad technology. But the actual mapping data was amazing,
1:04:35
Speaker 3: and so we took that and applied it to the Internet.
1:04:39
Speaker 3: That we were twenty two and twenty three at the time.
1:04:43
Speaker 3: It had cost them three hundred million dollars to build
1:04:45
Speaker 3: this data. And they gave it to us for free
1:04:48
Speaker 3: with a simple contract saying, if you ever make any
1:04:50
Speaker 3: money on this, you've got to you've got to come share.
1:04:54
Speaker 3: And that's how we got it. That's amazing that, Yeah,
1:04:57
Speaker 3: you can say it's amazing what happens if you ask nicely.
1:05:02
Speaker 3: And there's also part of it was these guys had
1:05:04
Speaker 3: been working so hard on the tech and no one
1:05:05
Speaker 3: had ever seen what they were doing because it was
1:05:08
Speaker 3: not on the internet and it was not being used
1:05:10
Speaker 3: for for hurts, and so it was just they were
1:05:13
Speaker 3: excited that someone would use the data and it would
1:05:16
Speaker 3: think people could see what they've been they've been working on.
1:05:19
Speaker 9: So how did you guys get the engineering chops to
1:05:21
Speaker 9: pull this off? Because it sounds like you were so
1:05:23
Speaker 9: young you didn't really have any help and then you
1:05:25
Speaker 9: built this like cutting edge piece of technology.
1:05:27
Speaker 3: Did you need to teach yourselves from I don't know
1:05:30
Speaker 3: what time, what age, but publisher for the.
1:05:32
Speaker 9: Like blast Star game, right, yeah, when it was twelve.
1:05:35
Speaker 1: Did you write any other cool stuff back then? Yeah?
1:05:38
Speaker 6: I wrote a bunch of games. Yeah, and then like
1:05:45
Speaker 6: occasionally software for people like asked for software.
1:05:49
Speaker 3: You know, you also worked for a video game company.
1:05:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, our funily it was called rocket Science. Yeah, that's funny.
1:06:00
Speaker 4: By the way, we took a SpaceX to yesterday.
1:06:02
Speaker 1: It was insane. Thank you for that. That was amazing. Yeah,
1:06:04
Speaker 1: it was so good.
1:06:05
Speaker 4: It's like Batman's layer in there.
1:06:08
Speaker 3: It's really it is amazing.
1:06:09
Speaker 2: But it gives your perspective on what Tesla's doing because
1:06:11
Speaker 2: the technology is so advanced and that there's you know,
1:06:14
Speaker 2: interchange of information there. Like the I know they used
1:06:17
Speaker 2: to incannel fuse right, was from SpaceX. When they couldn't
1:06:20
Speaker 2: get the power output right, it kept burning up the
1:06:23
Speaker 2: fuse in the in the performance models. So yeah, that's awesome.
1:06:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty cool to see the SpaceX tech being
1:06:30
Speaker 3: applied to Tesla. I think I think there's a joint
1:06:32
Speaker 3: there's one joint employee between SpaceX and Tesla, and it's real.
1:06:35
Speaker 3: It's the materials is it the materials engineer?
1:06:38
Speaker 1: What about you want.
1:06:42
Speaker 3: In addition to el because they're just not that many
1:06:45
Speaker 3: humans on the planet that know how to do this stuff.
1:06:48
Speaker 1: Well, it sounded like back in the old days it
1:06:49
Speaker 1: was was it just elam doing the coding or.
1:06:52
Speaker 6: I mean I did a little for like HTML friend,
1:06:56
Speaker 6: not recently but no, there was there was no money,
1:06:59
Speaker 6: so you can employ it.
1:07:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I strolled the software and you worked through
1:07:03
Speaker 1: the night.
1:07:04
Speaker 8: Right, you just never according to his book, he never slept.
1:07:06
Speaker 8: I don't know.
1:07:07
Speaker 3: I mean we we lived in a little office. I
1:07:09
Speaker 3: think this address was four to seventy Sherman Way in
1:07:14
Speaker 3: Palo Alto. It was probably Lea. Yeah, it was probably
1:07:18
Speaker 3: like fifteen feet wide by thirty feet long, with a
1:07:22
Speaker 3: little little closet in the back. And we would we
1:07:27
Speaker 3: we couldn't afford a place to sleep or like a
1:07:29
Speaker 3: house home apartment, so we would sleep in it and
1:07:32
Speaker 3: it had a couch that was a photon and it
1:07:34
Speaker 3: would pull out the futon, take turns sleeping on the
1:07:36
Speaker 3: fouts on or the floor, although he coated a lot
1:07:38
Speaker 3: at night, so I usually got the futon at night,
1:07:42
Speaker 3: and we had we had to coat it at night
1:07:45
Speaker 3: because the server when the Internet was live, needed to
1:07:48
Speaker 3: be functional, and we just had data for the Bay
1:07:50
Speaker 3: area at the time, so we were just kind of
1:07:51
Speaker 3: making sure that the people in the Bay area could
1:07:53
Speaker 3: use it. And then and then we had a little
1:07:57
Speaker 3: little mini fridge with a cooking stove on and we'd
1:08:00
Speaker 3: cook simple things, you know, pasta, sauce and pasta and
1:08:03
Speaker 3: things like that that would be as cheap as dirt.
1:08:06
Speaker 3: People think it's expensive to eat. Real food is actually
1:08:08
Speaker 3: really cheap. Yah, books, vegetables, pasta and beans and stuff.
1:08:12
Speaker 3: Beans super cheap, so that Jack the cheapest, and then
1:08:16
Speaker 3: we would go eat a Jack in the Box, which
1:08:18
Speaker 3: I can still and still kind of shiver a little
1:08:22
Speaker 3: still even there for probably twenty years or longer, maybe
1:08:26
Speaker 3: twenty two years, and I can still probably recite the
1:08:29
Speaker 3: entire menu.
1:08:30
Speaker 6: Yeah, recycled through the menu and Jack in the Box
1:08:33
Speaker 6: because what it was like just a few blocks away
1:08:35
Speaker 6: from and it was up in twenty four hours, over
1:08:38
Speaker 6: twenty four hours, and tried to get to you know,
1:08:40
Speaker 6: dinner at Coalbelta after ten a zero.
1:08:42
Speaker 5: Yeah.
1:08:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, So did they know you very well Jack in
1:08:45
Speaker 1: the Box.
1:08:46
Speaker 3: Well they didn't really, they did know. And I remember
1:08:49
Speaker 3: one time I got a milk chick and I was
1:08:50
Speaker 3: so tired. I was like four in the morning and
1:08:52
Speaker 3: just needed to get some sugar for the rest of
1:08:54
Speaker 3: the night. And there was something in it, and I
1:08:57
Speaker 3: remember just flicking it out and just pertaining it didn't exist,
1:09:00
Speaker 3: kept drinking my milkshake. It was it was like that
1:09:06
Speaker 3: or that kind of like not in the zone to
1:09:07
Speaker 3: go back into Jack argue about a milkshake, but I
1:09:10
Speaker 3: don't want to not drink the milkshake.
1:09:12
Speaker 6: And probably reason that food was like so cheap is
1:09:14
Speaker 6: that they had some people I think that had of
1:09:16
Speaker 6: food poisoning.
1:09:18
Speaker 3: Right around that time when they got fit into a
1:09:20
Speaker 3: food poisoning scare.
1:09:23
Speaker 6: Yeah, so that there, it was just very cheap to
1:09:25
Speaker 6: eat there, and I figured, like, you know, they probably
1:09:28
Speaker 6: you know, have taken some action because that after the
1:09:32
Speaker 6: food poisoning, so hopefully, Yeah.
1:09:35
Speaker 1: There's just like eat a little bit of it, just
1:09:38
Speaker 1: tastes funny. Stop eating if it tastes funny.
1:09:43
Speaker 3: You run out of things to eat because after like
1:09:46
Speaker 3: the seventeenth chicken feet at Peta, you like can't do it.
1:09:52
Speaker 1: The yacha boll, remember that is that one good? It's
1:09:56
Speaker 1: actually it veried, but it was it was edible. It
1:09:59
Speaker 1: was so bad.
1:09:59
Speaker 3: Which one one? The chariochy baal teriochy ball wasn't bad.
1:10:02
Speaker 3: There was the sort of sour dough grilled grilled cheese
1:10:06
Speaker 3: thing that was wasn't bad.
1:10:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, those were the good old days, right, I mean
1:10:11
Speaker 4: it was honestly good days.
1:10:13
Speaker 3: I mean we just we were just hoping that people
1:10:15
Speaker 3: would let us stay in the country.
1:10:19
Speaker 1: We weren't really that word about what we were eating.
1:10:21
Speaker 3: We were just doing everything we could to to get
1:10:25
Speaker 3: to get someone to support the company. We didn't really understand.
1:10:28
Speaker 3: I didn't understand the venture capital that much. So we
1:10:30
Speaker 3: were doing a seed round and angel around and doing
1:10:33
Speaker 3: our best to talk to everyone and anyone we could find.
1:10:37
Speaker 3: We had a very good friend with us, Greg Curry,
1:10:39
Speaker 3: who now passed away, who was older than us by
1:10:42
Speaker 3: about ten years I think, And yeah, it was a
1:10:44
Speaker 3: wonderful mentor helped us out and put a little money
1:10:47
Speaker 3: in as well. And and then I did a lot
1:10:50
Speaker 3: of the work to just find just network with people.
1:10:53
Speaker 3: I think our our first salesman who was selling Yellow
1:10:57
Speaker 3: Pages ads for us, I was a real state agent
1:11:00
Speaker 3: who knew another person who knew this other person who
1:11:04
Speaker 3: helped us, who helped us raise put together We ended
1:11:09
Speaker 3: up not doing the round, but put together a round
1:11:11
Speaker 3: of like two hundred thousand dollars or something.
1:11:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we did like part of it or something.
1:11:18
Speaker 3: But I think once we had the Java Java Map,
1:11:20
Speaker 3: which was really quite impressive. I mean, if you've never
1:11:23
Speaker 3: seen if you're never you've never seen Google maps or
1:11:26
Speaker 3: Java maps before. It really is a remarkable thing to see.
1:11:30
Speaker 3: We started to go to we got it. We got
1:11:33
Speaker 3: some audiences with some venture capitalists, and it just went
1:11:36
Speaker 3: from we were starving, we had no car. Well, the
1:11:40
Speaker 3: car we had it broken, the will fell off, the
1:11:43
Speaker 3: wheel fell off, the wheel fell off. Yeah, what kind
1:11:45
Speaker 3: of car was it? I remember that's an old BMW
1:11:47
Speaker 3: three wed across the country.
1:11:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one that my mom mest some pictures of.
1:11:53
Speaker 3: I think there's I think there's still a there's a
1:11:55
Speaker 3: there's a car of in the in the road at
1:11:57
Speaker 3: page Mill and night alchemmed. Literally the wal came off,
1:12:00
Speaker 3: will fell off, and and and the guy literally in
1:12:02
Speaker 3: the air section just drove it without the wheel to
1:12:06
Speaker 3: the to the silence.
1:12:09
Speaker 6: It's pretty much time for the junk yard at that point,
1:12:11
Speaker 6: because the whole car is falling apart. So yeah, it's
1:12:16
Speaker 6: like the point which the wheel falls off, it's time
1:12:19
Speaker 6: to go to the junkyard.
1:12:28
Speaker 4: In the morning. No, that was that was way more.
1:12:30
Speaker 3: That was way later because we already had the deal,
1:12:34
Speaker 3: but we were we were not I don't know if
1:12:36
Speaker 3: you were, but I was not legally in America. So
1:12:39
Speaker 3: I was illegally there.
1:12:42
Speaker 1: I was legally there, but but I was mentioning student work.
1:12:46
Speaker 3: At a student work you you were you were doing
1:12:49
Speaker 3: you were supposed to be doing a PhD in Stanford.
1:12:50
Speaker 1: And yeah, I decided not to do so. And it
1:12:52
Speaker 1: was like I was allowed to do work sort of
1:12:54
Speaker 1: supporting whatever, you know, I don't know.
1:12:58
Speaker 3: I tried to get a visa, but there's just there's
1:13:00
Speaker 3: just not no visa you can get to do a startup.
1:13:03
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, nobody was paying you anything either, and so so
1:13:07
Speaker 1: we ended up.
1:13:09
Speaker 3: We got a deal from from from More David out
1:13:12
Speaker 3: and uh, this really high well respected DC firm, and
1:13:16
Speaker 3: we had to break the news to them that that
1:13:19
Speaker 3: that we take the bus. We took the bus to
1:13:21
Speaker 3: get to to the offices. We don't have a car,
1:13:24
Speaker 3: and we don't have an apartment, and were illegal.
1:13:27
Speaker 1: No, no, no, you're illegal.
1:13:33
Speaker 6: And so I was legal, but my visa was going
1:13:35
Speaker 6: to run out in two years, okay, yeah, but I
1:13:38
Speaker 6: was definita.
1:13:39
Speaker 3: We needed to get it sorted. And so, uh they
1:13:42
Speaker 3: were great. I mean they're the lead investor's wife was
1:13:46
Speaker 3: from Canada. They knew the whole challenge of being an
1:13:48
Speaker 3: immigrant and we had Canadian passports, and so uh. They
1:13:52
Speaker 3: they funded the company and they gave us some money
1:13:56
Speaker 3: to each buy a car, and they gave us a
1:13:59
Speaker 3: salary so could rent an apartment, and they I got
1:14:03
Speaker 3: a visa through the company. But but the day, the
1:14:07
Speaker 3: morning we were supposed to present to the partners, I
1:14:09
Speaker 3: went to Toronto because my mother was freaking out because
1:14:12
Speaker 3: she needed her computer fixed. And seriously, this is brutal.
1:14:17
Speaker 5: So I.
1:14:18
Speaker 3: Flew out there planning to fly back on Sunday and
1:14:21
Speaker 3: the meeting was on Monday. And I get to the
1:14:24
Speaker 3: airport on Sunday and the border control they they called
1:14:30
Speaker 3: me out. They're like, you're you're you're going down to work.
1:14:32
Speaker 3: You're not going down for for for travel. I was like, no, no, no,
1:14:34
Speaker 3: I'm going out to work. I explained, Actually no, I didn't.
1:14:37
Speaker 3: I said I'm not going to work because I think
1:14:39
Speaker 3: that's what I was supposed to say. The Lord's told
1:14:41
Speaker 3: me not to say anything, and so they rejected me
1:14:44
Speaker 3: from the border and so I'm sposed to would do
1:14:47
Speaker 3: the presentation with you on the next morning, and so
1:14:49
Speaker 3: a friend of mine came to pick me up at
1:14:51
Speaker 3: the airport and drove me across the border, and we
1:14:54
Speaker 3: went to the Buffalo border and just said we're going
1:14:56
Speaker 3: to go see the David Letterman show. And the Border
1:14:59
Speaker 3: Control I was like, yeah.
1:15:00
Speaker 1: Go ahead, wow'z I.
1:15:04
Speaker 3: I got on the late night flight from Buffalo to
1:15:06
Speaker 3: San Francisco and we made the meeting in the morning.
1:15:09
Speaker 6: So yeah, I mean, technically we're not going out of
1:15:11
Speaker 6: work because that would have required meant you of being
1:15:14
Speaker 6: paid something.
1:15:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:15:15
Speaker 3: I wasn't actually paid anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, technically we weren't.
1:15:17
Speaker 3: Actually you're not actually breaking the law. We're not breaking
1:15:20
Speaker 3: the law because we we were not being paid anything. Yeah.
1:15:26
Speaker 3: I should have told them that the Border Control.
1:15:29
Speaker 1: Anyway, it was very getting paid for something. No, no, yeah,
1:15:33
Speaker 1: you're right exactly. We were not not being paid exactly.
1:15:37
Speaker 1: But yeah.
1:15:38
Speaker 3: So so then they approved the deal that Monday, and
1:15:42
Speaker 3: we started buildings up too, you know. And it wasn't
1:15:46
Speaker 3: a business model for you know, back in those days,
1:15:48
Speaker 3: well it was.
1:15:49
Speaker 6: It was kind of like a pre like YELP is
1:15:51
Speaker 6: like business model is similar to sort of yell But
1:15:54
Speaker 6: it was at a time when most businesses didn't didn't
1:15:56
Speaker 6: know what the internet was so and most people didn't
1:15:59
Speaker 6: haven't email address or yeah, we went online flinging to.
1:16:02
Speaker 3: Them what a website was. The internet was kind of
1:16:04
Speaker 3: this cool thing. People were using Netscape browser and I
1:16:09
Speaker 3: think by the end of it, we got eighteen thousand
1:16:12
Speaker 3: businesses to be on our service, pay pain to be
1:16:15
Speaker 3: like with websites and everything, you know a lot of
1:16:18
Speaker 3: the things that you can do today, like automatically build websites.
1:16:21
Speaker 3: We built a lot of those sort of tools to
1:16:24
Speaker 3: make it easier to build websites. And we had to
1:16:26
Speaker 3: sell door to door.
1:16:29
Speaker 1: Because that was the only way.
1:16:31
Speaker 8: Did you hire people or is it just to you
1:16:32
Speaker 8: guys going.
1:16:33
Speaker 3: No, No, We had a team by that time because
1:16:34
Speaker 3: we could hire a team. But I remember talking to
1:16:37
Speaker 3: the Yellow Pages guy once and it was amazing. That
1:16:40
Speaker 3: was the head of the Toronto Star that they owned
1:16:42
Speaker 3: all the.
1:16:43
Speaker 1: Yellow Pages in the Yellow Pages will never die famous last.
1:16:45
Speaker 3: Work literally because we went to talk to him partner.
1:16:50
Speaker 3: We said, we want to part with you and let's
1:16:51
Speaker 3: just be one of your partners to do to put
1:16:54
Speaker 3: the Yellow Pages online. And he picked up the Yellow Pages.
1:16:57
Speaker 3: This book, this big thick book that full of as
1:17:00
Speaker 3: this multi billion dollar Redney stream.
1:17:02
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys were so arrogant and so like
1:17:06
Speaker 1: we are kings of the world and it will never end.
1:17:09
Speaker 3: He picked he picked up this book and grew it
1:17:11
Speaker 3: at me and he said, do you ever think you're
1:17:13
Speaker 3: going to replace this? And I was just literally like,
1:17:20
Speaker 3: I mean my head and my head is like, dude,
1:17:22
Speaker 3: you're already dead.
1:17:28
Speaker 4: The anti Tesla people, you know, guess cars.
1:17:30
Speaker 3: Will never die. Yeah, But I mean, like we we
1:17:36
Speaker 3: saw the growth of the Internet, we saw the use
1:17:37
Speaker 3: of the Yellow Pages, We saw even more our competitors
1:17:40
Speaker 3: and stuff, and no one was using the paper yellow
1:17:43
Speaker 3: Pages if you had the choice, yes, exactly, no one.
1:17:48
Speaker 3: And so so at that point, very few people who
1:17:50
Speaker 3: are on the internet. So it was really a question
1:17:52
Speaker 3: of really is the Internet going to succeed, which we
1:17:55
Speaker 3: were huge believers in, and these guys were not, you know,
1:17:57
Speaker 3: they didn't even clue in.
1:17:59
Speaker 6: Yeah, there was like one one point country after another.
1:18:01
Speaker 6: We say like, listen, we'll just put your l pays online,
1:18:04
Speaker 6: gonna cost very little. You know, you're still own all
1:18:06
Speaker 6: the content and everything. And they're like, just throw us,
1:18:09
Speaker 6: throw us.
1:18:10
Speaker 1: Out of the office. Yeah, you know, like no, and
1:18:13
Speaker 1: how do you even suggest this?
1:18:16
Speaker 3: Extraordinary?
1:18:16
Speaker 1: And we're like, okay, I guess we'll just build it
1:18:19
Speaker 1: and we're Yeah.
1:18:22
Speaker 3: But it's been interesting to watch over the years where
1:18:24
Speaker 3: like in PayPal, the competitors were not uh banks, you know,
1:18:29
Speaker 3: even though that should have been the competitive No, there
1:18:31
Speaker 3: were there were banks that try to compete, but wasn't
1:18:34
Speaker 3: it eBay mostly that was sort of the band.
1:18:37
Speaker 1: Bull point.
1:18:38
Speaker 6: Yeah, that which but it wasn't exactly like PayPal. But
1:18:42
Speaker 6: generally EVA had an issue with trying to get payment
1:18:45
Speaker 6: for stuff like like two.
1:18:47
Speaker 1: People would have to mail checks to each other.
1:18:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's gonna work.
1:18:52
Speaker 6: If you have mail a check and you receive the
1:18:53
Speaker 6: check and how do you know the checks real? Then
1:18:55
Speaker 6: you've got to you know, cash check and take you know,
1:18:59
Speaker 6: two to five day for the money to transfer. So
1:19:03
Speaker 6: it could take two weeks before somebody had confirmed payment
1:19:05
Speaker 6: and then I then they would ship you the item
1:19:08
Speaker 6: and so that the transaction velocity was very low. As
1:19:12
Speaker 6: a result, if you had instant payment, you improved transaction
1:19:16
Speaker 6: velostity dramatically, like factor of you know, maybe three to five.
1:19:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:19:21
Speaker 3: I've just sort of seen that the when you when
1:19:24
Speaker 3: in into industry is disrupted, that you worry about the
1:19:28
Speaker 3: major players. I mean, when we saw a test that
1:19:30
Speaker 3: we were aspiring to be the GM of the twenty
1:19:33
Speaker 3: first century. Four years later, GM went bankrupt. You're like, oh, okay,
1:19:38
Speaker 3: we don't we don't read. We're good, We're good, We're good,
1:19:42
Speaker 3: and uh and and it's you know, whoever is going
1:19:45
Speaker 3: to be the main competitors. You know, we don't know yet,
1:19:47
Speaker 3: but uh, it may not be the entrenched players, may
1:19:52
Speaker 3: be sort of other companies. And so so that happened
1:19:57
Speaker 3: it up two where we we we tried our our
1:20:00
Speaker 3: best to partner with the industry because that seemed like
1:20:03
Speaker 3: the best way to make some money and actually have
1:20:04
Speaker 3: a revenue model. And we ended up finding the newspapers
1:20:07
Speaker 3: to be a better partner because they didn't have the
1:20:09
Speaker 3: Yellow Pages business, and I think they seem we're smarter.
1:20:13
Speaker 3: Their classifized business was getting eaten away by Craigslist. You know,
1:20:18
Speaker 3: before craigslist classifies, was the bread and butter of the newspaper.
1:20:22
Speaker 3: And of course anyone who used Craigslist would never use
1:20:26
Speaker 3: the newspapers. So it was it was those folks seemed
1:20:29
Speaker 3: to have a better Uh, at least some of the
1:20:33
Speaker 3: players had a more more vision of the future, and
1:20:36
Speaker 3: so our business became putting major newspapers in New York
1:20:40
Speaker 3: Times to all of the Philadelphia acquirers, Chicago Tribune or whatever,
1:20:45
Speaker 3: all the main players, all the Alley Times, everyone, and
1:20:48
Speaker 3: then we started going internationally doing the same thing. So
1:20:51
Speaker 3: if you went on to the New York Times website
1:20:53
Speaker 3: and you wanted to search for a restaurant, of course
1:20:55
Speaker 3: have all these reviews. Or if you wanted to search
1:20:57
Speaker 3: for a home, then you could. You could. We tie
1:21:00
Speaker 3: the mls together with maps and directions. So all of
1:21:03
Speaker 3: these services that we now use and take for granted
1:21:06
Speaker 3: that use maps and directions, we we did that all
1:21:10
Speaker 3: in the nineties to find a business model.
1:21:15
Speaker 5: Yeah you do PayPal after zup too, Why do didn't
1:21:19
Speaker 5: you go like straight into sustainable.
1:21:21
Speaker 1: Energy, right, so.
1:21:27
Speaker 6: Kind of recall things that are quite a while. So
1:21:32
Speaker 6: it would have been like ninety eight when Compact offered
1:21:36
Speaker 6: to acquire zip to, and which I think it was
1:21:41
Speaker 6: a good thing to put them to acquire it because
1:21:43
Speaker 6: as I mentioned that, the newspapers actually when the media
1:21:47
Speaker 6: companies had too much control over zip too, so they
1:21:49
Speaker 6: were not we had great technology that was not being
1:21:53
Speaker 6: deployed effectively, and they would just generally be averse to
1:21:57
Speaker 6: anything that could remotely be competitive with their new papers.
1:22:00
Speaker 6: So so we're sort of trapped in this situation and
1:22:07
Speaker 6: they think of Compact came along and bought the company
1:22:10
Speaker 6: in late ninety eight and the deal closed early ninety nine.
1:22:13
Speaker 6: So that as a result that Kim that I had
1:22:17
Speaker 6: some capital twenty million dollars with something out of it.
1:22:21
Speaker 6: And I think the thing that was frustrating to me
1:22:27
Speaker 6: was that we're built incredible technology and it had not
1:22:32
Speaker 6: been used. It was just sort of like very disappointing.
1:22:38
Speaker 6: You know, we put a lot of work into this
1:22:40
Speaker 6: technology and just wasn't being used. So I was like, Okay,
1:22:43
Speaker 6: I'm going to I want to do one more thing
1:22:45
Speaker 6: on the Internet, just to show that we can make
1:22:47
Speaker 6: technology that is, when it's used properly, can be extremely effective.
1:22:53
Speaker 6: So I thought about what what's digital? Essentially, what's what's it?
1:22:57
Speaker 6: What's what exists in the form of information and is
1:23:00
Speaker 6: also not high bandwidth because it in ninety nine people
1:23:05
Speaker 6: still mostly had modems, so you couldn't like video is
1:23:09
Speaker 6: not really feasible in ninety nine, so but money is
1:23:14
Speaker 6: low bandwidth and digital effectively mostly digital. So it's like,
1:23:19
Speaker 6: what can we do to make money work better. And
1:23:25
Speaker 6: the money, in my views, is essentially an information system
1:23:28
Speaker 6: for label allocation, so it has no power in and
1:23:33
Speaker 6: of itself. It's a it's like a database for this
1:23:39
Speaker 6: for guiding people what what as to what they should do.
1:23:44
Speaker 6: And so you can think of banks as a set
1:23:46
Speaker 6: of heterogeneous databases with that that are actually not very secure.
1:23:53
Speaker 6: And certainly the the monetary system, the transfer system of
1:23:57
Speaker 6: checks is not is very insecure. Still isn't secure, so
1:24:00
Speaker 6: our credit cards and and it's it's still mostly batch processing.
1:24:09
Speaker 6: And it was entirely batch processing that day, so it
1:24:12
Speaker 6: was not so payments were money. It was just like
1:24:16
Speaker 6: hitero geneous, high latency, low security collection of databases. That's
1:24:23
Speaker 6: what banks are. And so just from an information three standpoint,
1:24:28
Speaker 6: there should be something that could be much better if
1:24:30
Speaker 6: it could be real time uh secure and you know,
1:24:37
Speaker 6: just very fast. Essentially it's just one real time database.
1:24:48
Speaker 6: So it's like, okay, let's tradable that. So that's that's
1:24:56
Speaker 6: that's what x dot com was.
1:24:58
Speaker 7: And then.
1:25:00
Speaker 6: At the time I also thought what we should try
1:25:02
Speaker 6: to do is just do all the financial things as well,
1:25:05
Speaker 6: not just payments. I still think that's really what PayPal
1:25:09
Speaker 6: should have done, but whatever, it's what areuner the bridge
1:25:12
Speaker 6: at this point. And then there was a company that
1:25:17
Speaker 6: was formed around the same time called Confinity, which was petertialed,
1:25:22
Speaker 6: Max Left and Luke Nosak, David Sachs, Ken Howard and
1:25:27
Speaker 6: neberthos and at x dot com there's also like Jeremy.
1:25:32
Speaker 1: Stuffleman and.
1:25:34
Speaker 6: Who created yelp roll off Botza, who then went on
1:25:39
Speaker 6: to run Sequoia and and found YouTube that was it
1:25:42
Speaker 6: was x dot com.
1:25:43
Speaker 1: So we just had this like.
1:25:46
Speaker 6: Two companies with like a crazy amount of talent. X
1:25:49
Speaker 6: dot Common Confinity and Confinity started as a palm pilot
1:25:52
Speaker 6: cryptography company. Back when you you could communicate via the
1:25:58
Speaker 6: infrared port of a home pilot, Yeah, they had one.
1:26:03
Speaker 6: So it was like, so you could you can basically
1:26:06
Speaker 6: communicate cryptotokens between pompouts using the infrared port and then
1:26:11
Speaker 6: reconcile them on a piece on a PC. And obviously
1:26:14
Speaker 6: that's they evolved to go on the in the payments
1:26:17
Speaker 6: direction as well. And we were both in Palo Alto,
1:26:22
Speaker 6: like literally block away from each other. I think at
1:26:27
Speaker 6: one point we're briefly even in the same building that
1:26:30
Speaker 6: was you know, yeah, so, so we were just competing
1:26:35
Speaker 6: with each other like maniacs and and and then we
1:26:41
Speaker 6: had uh a coffee and University Avenue and said, hey,
1:26:48
Speaker 6: when don't we just combine our efforts or we're just
1:26:50
Speaker 6: gonna bludge each other to death here.
1:26:54
Speaker 1: So we merged Confinity and x dot com.
1:26:59
Speaker 6: And raised million dollars in the space of three weeks
1:27:02
Speaker 6: in March of two thousand. Yeah, and then April of
1:27:07
Speaker 6: the market went into free fall.
1:27:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:27:11
Speaker 6: So yeah, I was like, I remember that that was
1:27:15
Speaker 6: insane and we kind of thought it was going to
1:27:17
Speaker 6: go into free fall, but like, we better get this
1:27:19
Speaker 6: thing done fast or we're both gonna die.
1:27:23
Speaker 1: So and so.
1:27:28
Speaker 6: Xo com was technically the acquire of Confinity, but it
1:27:31
Speaker 6: was a you know, fifty point one and forty nine
1:27:33
Speaker 6: point nine or something like that. And and then there's
1:27:39
Speaker 6: a lot of drama that there was so much drama
1:27:42
Speaker 6: at at x dot com. And the company was called
1:27:45
Speaker 6: x dot com for about a year and then we
1:27:47
Speaker 6: changed the company name to the product name. The product
1:27:50
Speaker 6: the product was PayPal, but all the incorporation documents and everything,
1:27:56
Speaker 6: it's all my incorporation.
1:27:58
Speaker 4: Documents that came up with PayPal name.
1:28:01
Speaker 1: I actually don't know.
1:28:03
Speaker 4: People call you guys the PayPal in mafia. Now, you know,
1:28:07
Speaker 4: deal with that in this book.
1:28:09
Speaker 6: You know, I don't know who did the PayPal. I
1:28:13
Speaker 6: was never a huge fan of PayPal as a name,
1:28:16
Speaker 6: the reason being that I thought it made sense for
1:28:23
Speaker 6: the company to kind of broader, be much broader. Yeah, exactly.
1:28:30
Speaker 6: I mean, if you don't know yourself to payments, then
1:28:32
Speaker 6: necessarily people want to transfer money out of the system.
1:28:36
Speaker 6: And as soon as they transfer money out of the system,
1:28:38
Speaker 6: the efficiency of the database drops dramatically because now you're
1:28:41
Speaker 6: in the traditional banking world. So if you just offer
1:28:45
Speaker 6: all the things that if you just basically address all
1:28:48
Speaker 6: the reasons why people are taking money out of the
1:28:50
Speaker 6: PayPal system, so you have to provide them with checks
1:28:53
Speaker 6: so that you have a bridge to the legacy transaction system.
1:28:56
Speaker 6: You got to provide them with a debit card, provide
1:28:58
Speaker 6: them with the ability to.
1:29:01
Speaker 1: Get a loan, and that kind of thing, and.
1:29:06
Speaker 6: That these were all ancelary to accelerating the velocity and
1:29:10
Speaker 6: accuracy and security of payments. Then if basically payper would
1:29:16
Speaker 6: be all the money is, it would just suck all
1:29:20
Speaker 6: the money out of the banks. And they wouldn't be
1:29:22
Speaker 6: the banks would go away. Yeah, so any plan you're
1:29:28
Speaker 6: going to do with the I wrote, if they're just
1:29:32
Speaker 6: execute the business, you know, the product plan I wrote
1:29:35
Speaker 6: in July two thousands, let's just do that.
1:29:37
Speaker 1: But they I talked to them several times, but they
1:29:40
Speaker 1: didn't do it.
1:29:41
Speaker 4: So why did you? And PayPal kind of part way
1:29:44
Speaker 4: of what was really the drama that led to that,
1:29:46
Speaker 4: you know separation.
1:29:48
Speaker 6: Ultimately, Well, things were very dicey in two thousand. You know,
1:29:53
Speaker 6: companies were dying like all over the place, so obvious
1:29:57
Speaker 6: here of the combined company, and we're doing quite well
1:30:03
Speaker 6: from a growth standpoint. We're like adding one hundred thousand
1:30:06
Speaker 6: users a month type of thing, which back then was
1:30:08
Speaker 6: a lot. But financially things were tough and we needed
1:30:14
Speaker 6: to raise financing around We're also like there's some technical
1:30:18
Speaker 6: questions around what what code architecture would we go with?
1:30:23
Speaker 6: And then there's also a branding question, like I said,
1:30:25
Speaker 6: like I think we should not use PayPal as brand
1:30:27
Speaker 6: because this is not consistent with being where all the
1:30:30
Speaker 6: money is.
1:30:34
Speaker 1: We want to centralize database.
1:30:37
Speaker 6: So so I was kind of against the PayPal branding
1:30:40
Speaker 6: and and I wanted to Basically, I wanted to do
1:30:42
Speaker 6: a bunch of things that seemed extremely risky, and I
1:30:47
Speaker 6: think those things would have would have worked out. But
1:30:51
Speaker 6: at a time when companies are dropping like flies, and
1:30:56
Speaker 6: I'm proposing that we do all these things that sound
1:30:59
Speaker 6: very risky, this is this is just much too scary
1:31:02
Speaker 6: for the rest of the team.
1:31:04
Speaker 4: You seem to be attracted to crazy ideas that other
1:31:07
Speaker 4: people are like that, like, you know, I think the
1:31:10
Speaker 4: Autopilot one is a great example where everyone's kind of
1:31:13
Speaker 4: trying the spatial approach to self driving. You know, they're
1:31:16
Speaker 4: doing way more for ten years nobody cares, and you
1:31:19
Speaker 4: come out and say, hey, we think vision is the
1:31:22
Speaker 4: way forward and deep learning and vision you know, will
1:31:27
Speaker 4: take us all the way there. How do you find like, yeah,
1:31:30
Speaker 4: the courage inside to I mean.
1:31:32
Speaker 10: People have to be coming up with you all the
1:31:34
Speaker 10: time and you know, thinking that you're an idiot or
1:31:37
Speaker 10: it's never going to happen, and you know, how do
1:31:39
Speaker 10: you find that in yourself to like go through all
1:31:42
Speaker 10: that resistance and still be confident in you know, your thesis.
1:31:49
Speaker 6: I mean I try to be hyper rational, so it's
1:31:51
Speaker 6: not you know, it's like if this is if the
1:31:56
Speaker 6: reasoning fits, and you're not violating loads of physics or something,
1:31:59
Speaker 6: then that the thing you should do. So and I
1:32:06
Speaker 6: guess at the other day, if we lost all the money,
1:32:11
Speaker 6: I wouldn't as long as we didn't lose other people's money.
1:32:14
Speaker 6: I guess I just lost lose my money out of mind.
1:32:20
Speaker 6: These things just don't seem that crazy to me, so
1:32:25
Speaker 6: like I think, if
1:32:26
Speaker 1: If Thanks for listening, See you in the next episode.