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Elon Musk old interview back in 2008!!! · Elon Musk Thinking

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