Back in 2013, Old Interview of Elon Musk!!!

Yeah, and I heard a wonderful story of when you were six years old and you started breaking the rules even then. So you were six years old and you were invited by your cousin to a birthday party, but there was only there were two problems with that. One you were grounded, and two it was on the other side of town. So can you explain, tell, tell the audience how you got there?

All right, Well, I mean this was when I was six, so the memory is a little fuzzy at this point. But as I recall, yeah, I was grounded for some reason. I don't know why, but I think I felt that was unjust and and I really wanted to go to this party. My cousin's party, who was five, you know, is a kid's party. So I at first I was going to take my bike. But then and I told my mom this, which is a mistake, and she's she told me some story about how you needed a license

So the first of many rule briefing adventurest mask. So by the time you were twelve, you're already an entrepreneur and making a profit. I understand you earned five hundred dollars equivalent and rand for creating a video game. Can you tell us about that and what the inspiration wash?

Yeah, sure, So I when I was about ten, I walked into a computer store in South Africa and saw an actual computer. I previously had some some early sort of precursors to to the Atari system, and then I got the Atari system, which I'm sure a lot of people here have played. And and but then so you can actually have a computer where you can make your own games. And it was a Commodore VIC twenty. So I was the first computer I bought, and I got some books on how to teach yourself programming, and.

This was like the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

So I was just like, this is super awesome, and uh so start programming games and and then selling games in order to actually buy more games. So a bit a bit of a circular thing. So and more games and better computers and that kind of thing.

Right, So the money wasn't the end goal for you. It was more a means to an end.

Yeah, basically I'd spend money on yeah, better, better computers and dungeons and Dragons, modules and things like that, nerd Master three thousand, basically.

So I understand at that time you were heavily into comics.

I'm curious to know. Did you love iron Man, the comic Iron iron Man?

Yeah?

Did you ever imagine that you would be the inspiration for the movie version?

I did not? That was that was that was pretty That was pretty much. I would say Zerups, I would have said, zerups, and.

Chance, what kind of kid? Were you? Kid?

You can you look back and see yourself where you Were you a bit of a lunar kid bookie?

I certainly I wasn't that much of a loaner, at least not willingly so.

But but I certainly was quite I was very very bookish. I was reading all the time. So I was either reading, working on my computer, reading comics, playing Dungeon Dragons, that kind of thing.

I understand.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that wonderful book by Douglas Adams.

That was a that was a key book for you. What was it about that book that that fired your imagination?

Yeah?

So I guess when I was in the around twelve or thirteen, a head company existential crisis, and I was reading various books on trying to figure out the meaning of life and or like what does it all mean? Because it's seeming quite meaningless.

And then.

We haven't have like some books by Nietzs and Schopenhauer in the house, which you should not read at age fourteen is bad, it's really negative. So so, but but then I read the Hitchhack's Guy the Galaxy, which was like quite positive, I think, and and it sort of highlighted the an important point, which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer, and if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part.

And so.

The if to the agree that we can better understand the universe, then we better know what questions to ask. And then whatever the question is that most approx approximates, what's the meaning of life? You know that that's that's the question we could ultimately get closer to understanding. And so I thought, well, to the agree that we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness and knowledge human knowledge, then that would be a good thing.

Wow, So you're having these deep thoughts of what age ten fourteen?

Yeah, sort of in the puberty, I guess there's right, thirteen thirteen through fifteen probably the most traumatic years.

And so by the time you were seventeen, were you were ready? You were actually left right? I assume you hatched the plan earlier when you were around fifty fourteen fifteen.

I didn't hatch the plan earlier. Actually I tried to hatch several plans which they did not hatch.

But by seventeen you were on a plane from South Africa. You had enough of South Africa, you were ready to seek new pastures.

Now, why was.

It the United States was your destination? Why not Europe or somewhere else in the world.

Well, just whenever I'd read about cool technology, you would tend to be in the United States, you know, or more broadly North America or including Canada. So I kind of wanted to be where the cutting edge of technic algi was.

And of course within the.

United States, Silicon Valley is is the it is where the heart of things is. So although the time I didn't know where to looking value wise, it sounded like some mythical place. So yes, I wanted to come to the to the US. I try to convince my my mother or father, who were divorced, if either one of them would move.

To the United States, then I could then I could get there.

At one point I convinced my father, but then he renegged unfortunately, but you.

Had him convinced and then he changed.

You did say yes, and then and then he changed his mind. Why, I don't know.

I guess he was sort of he was fairly established. He's an engineer, and he's sort of established in South Africa. Didn't want to have to go through that again in another country, right, So you got.

On that plane all by yourself at seventeen.

Uh yeah, so I actually got My mother was born in Canada, and actually her father was a American, but unfortunately she didn't get her American citizenship, so then that broke the link and I couldn't get my American citizenship. But she was born in Canada, so I could get I actually pulled up the forms for her and got her Canadian passport and me too. And then as soon as within three weeks of my getting my Canadian passport, I was in Canada, right.

And then you ended up at University of Pennsylvania. Yeah, I was in physics and business.

Yeah, so I was in Canada for a few years at Queen's University, got a scholarship to go down to University of Pennsylvania because one of the downsides of coming to University of North America was that my parents said they would not pay for college if it was or my father said he would not pay for college unless it was in South Africa. So it was either so I could have free college in Sotoca or find some

Was there that you came up with this idea of three main areas that you felt were most important to humanity. Can you describe how you came upon them? Was it just one day or the flash of inspiration? These are the three areas that are important and I want to concentrate on or how did that? How did that inspiration come to you?

Now?

I think I was thinking about it for a couple of years, and during sort of freshman and sophomore year at Queens and then also at Yupan, and I was trying to think what would most influence the future?

Uh, you know, were the problems that that we have to solve?

And and I actually talked a lot to friends and my housemates and that kind of thing, and dates, which is not maybe not the best thing. Yeah, I actually met met a woman at I dated briefly in college even now it works at Scientific American as a writer. And uh and and she she related that anecdote that uh we were on a date.

I was all I was talking about was electric cars. That was not a bit a winning conversation.

So it was a bit of a monologue.

Was it? Yeah, she said, she said.

The first question I asked her was do you ever think about electric cars?

So you'll learn from that. That wasn't the best shot out life.

It wasn't wasn't great. It has recently it's been more effective.

There you go, that's wonderful. Well, we'll get on to Tesla soon, but I want to I want to go from from University of Pennsylvania. You ended up in Silicon Valley and you've described Silicon Valley as Darwinian.

Can you talk about what it.

Was the most positive sense? Really?

Can you elaborate on what that means and why it had to be Silicon Valley? What what drew you to Silicon Valley?

Well, uh, well, I was at I was at penn and there was a professor who who was chairman of a company in Silicon Valley that was working on advanced capacitors for use in electric cars, potentially for use in electric cars. As it turns out there they're way too expensive. But I thought, well, this is this is really awesome. Because then I asked if I could get a summer job because it was in Silicon Valley and working on technology for electric cars. I thought well, that's that's pretty

But I had a pretty high energy density.

It's sort of roughly equivalent to a lad Asto battery, which for a capacitor is huge.

But you ended up then after that at Stanford.

Yeah.

So then I thought, well, Stanford is in Silicon Valley, sort of epicenter, and so that's where I wanted to come to Stanford, Berkeley and Stanford sort of Sunnier.

So I like to that's going.

I knew, I understand you were at Stanford University for a whole two days before you decided, no, it's time I'm going to do my first startup.

Yeah.

I figured, well, so this is a summer of ninety five and and I've been working on some Internet software. So because the three things I though would depict the world with internet, sustainable energy, and uh space exploration, making life multiplanetary so the but but on the Internet thing, I just couldn't figure out how to make enough money to feed myself, you know, because like if I didn't make make money, then I would like run out of food and eye. So that was that was not good.

That that was my default plan.

But but then I also thought that if I if I did a PhD a Stanford, then I could I would spend several years watching the Internet go through this incredibly rapid growth base, and that would be really difficult to handle. Like it's like you really wanted to be doing something.

Growing.

It sort of really seemed like things were going to take off. Although nobody had made any money on the Internet at the time. In ninety five, there was really nobody was making any money on the Internet, and in fact, even on sand Hill Road, people like watch the Internet.

They were amazingly.

When we try to get funding for a company, and I think it was November or something of ninety five there about October November. More than half of the bench capitalists we met with did not know what the internet.

Was and had not used it.

That's amazing.

Yeah, literally, it's like, isn't that They're literally asking, isn't that something that the government and universities used?

Like uh for now you know. Yeah.

But then then Netscape went public in late ninety five I think it was. And then after that, even though a lot of bench capitals still didn't understand it and still hadn't used it, they somebody had made money on it.

So now that it was on the radar.

Yeah, so when we went to get funding the second time we try to get funding, everyone was interested.

Right.

So this company was zip two, that's.

Right, and terrible name.

Yeah. What what was the reason for that name?

Well, we were just incredibly stupid at the time. I think that's the main reason for that name. And because we got some ad agency because we thought, well, we don't know anything about names, so we'll get some ad agencies to suggest a bunch of options, and then Zip too seemed.

Kind of speedy. I don't know, what the hell, Why the hell we chose that stupid name and it has a digit, It's like, why would you pick it? Because it could be zip t O, could be a zip t w O, it could be zip t o O.

So like people like literally spelled the name every variation, which is bad if you go to U r L and you don't have the other ones. So so ZIP two started off as basically, like I said, we're trying to figure out how to how to make enough money to exist as a company. And so since there wasn't really any advertising money being made, we thought we could

It was very frustrating, right, Whether you.

Did sell that company successfully to Compac, yeah, right, and that allowed you to go on and create egg dot com.

That's right, yeah, exactly.

So the Compact had had ulta vista, so I thought, was combined Altivist and a bunch of other technology companies and see if that would if that would work, which it did not, but but nonetheless they they they were pretty nice guys and bought the company and and that gave me the capital to to do another company. And I want, I want to do another company and the Internet, because I thought we don't really reached the potential that we could have with with zip too, because we had

Because money is digital, it's low bandwidth.

At the time, there was you know, most people were on modems, still on modems.

And because this was late ninety eight early ninety nine, So this was x.

Dot Com was a precursor to PayPal. Basically you merged with Confinity and it became PayPal, major success.

Yeah, so it worked out better than we expected.

Yeah, so yeah, Confinity. So initially Confinity and x com started out from slightly different directions and it converged to the same point with With x the thought was to create integrated seat of financial services, so you could go to one place into all of your financial anything.

And and then as.

A feature, we had the ability to transfer money or securities or anything simply by entering unique identifier, so like a you.

Know, email address or phone number or something like that.

And when we were demo the system, the hard stuff, which was the integration of all the financial services, people would not be interested in, but they'd be really interested in it. In being able to transfer money using an email address. You know, that was actually quite easy, and so we focused our energy on that.

And although it's.

Easy in principle, what gets really hard is adding security whiles still keeping it easy to use. That so because you know, it's like the Willie Loman quote, like why do people why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money is, So why do people rob PayPal for the same reason?

And and so you can, you can dial.

Up the security to a really high level, but then you're going to make it very hard to use. And and so the that that was that was one of the toughest things we wrestled with. And then Confinity originally started as kind of software for Palm pilots and then they had a demonstration application with stability to beam money from one pomp pilot to another using the infrared port. Yeah people remember that one. Yes, that was big at

It's incredible. Did you anticipate that when you started that?

Definitely did not. And it wasn't all good because.

We had some bugs in the software, and you know, even if the bug only occurs one in a thousand times, still I never heard one hundred.

Very angry customers like where my money?

That would be you know, reasonable and reasonable concern that people that have. And then we had customer service on University and Avenue in Palo Alto. There were five people, so when something went wrong customer service phones would basically explode, and so we had many challenges. And then the various financial regulatory agencies were trying to shut us down. VI's in Massacot trying to shut us down. EBA was trying to shut us down. FTC was trying to shut us down.

Wow, it is quite incredible with all that adversity you conquered and you came out with Yeah, that was one hundred million, right.

Yeah, it was a close call. We definitely, I mean, came very close to dying there in two and two thousand and one.

And what was the reason for that success? What would you put it down to in that case? How did you overcome?

Uh?

Well, you know, I think we had a really talented group of people at PayPal, and a lot of those people have actually gone on to start many other companies. Yes, know, YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, yammer. It's like quite a long list actually.

So for you personally, there you were with several hundred million. Were you not tempted just to go on by an island? What was it the drul of you when I'm getting at because I know you didn't. Sure what I'm getting at is, why were you so driven to jump into the next thing? Well, I was Did you take any time off?

I did take a bit of time off because after a PayPal I did reasonably welcome PayPal. It was largest sholder in the company. So and we were required for about a billion and a half in stock, and then the stock doubled, so.

So you know, it did reasonably reason well.

But the idea of like lying on the beach as my main thing, it just sounds like the worst. That sounds horrible to me because I would go bonkers. I would have you know, I would have to be on serious drugs. I mean, right exactly. I mean it's just I'd be super duper bored.

So that I mean I like, I like high intensity.

I mean I like going to beach for a short period of time, but not much longer than like, you know, a few days or something like that.

Right, So let's talk about the scenes of SpaceX.

I understand it started not as the idea of it, let's let's start a rocket ship company.

You had a philanthropic idea.

You were really surprised when you find out that NASA didn't have any plans to go to Mars, and you came up with this idea of let's put a greenhouse on Mars. So can you explain how that whole idea came into being for SpaceX?

Sure?

Well, so when I was thinking of like what I thought would would affect the world, as a student. It wasn't really from the standpoint of those are the things I'll get involved in.

It was kind of more in the abstract, these are the.

Things I think will happen that will affect the world, but but not that I will be involved in them.

As it turns out I have.

But uh, I always thought that we would make much more progress than space and it just it just didn't happen. It was it was really disappointing. So, uh yeah, I was. I was was really quite bothered by it. So you know, when when we went to the Moon, we were supposed to have a base on the Moon, We're supposed to send people to Mars and that stuff just it just didn't happen. We went backwards, we got the Space Shuttle, but the Space Shuttle could only go to low with orbit,

So I thought, well, maybe it was a question of of they're not being enough attention or will to do this. But this, this was was this was a wrong assumption. So I.

So, but that's that's the reason for the greenhouse idea. It was the thought was if, if, if it could be sort of a small philanthropic mission to Mars. You know, so I wasn't I was expecting to lose all all the.

Money that I invested in that. But if we could send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars with with seeds and India hydrated nutrient jail and you hydrated upon landing, and you'd have this great shot of you know, little greenhouse with with little green plants with on on a red background. I thought that would get people excited.

You literally imagined a photograph inspiring.

And you got to sort of imagine the money shot, if you will.

So so yeah, I think I think, you know, green plants and the red background would be bad. And and people tend to get interested and excited about precedents and superlatives. So this would be the furthest that life's ever traveled, the first life on Mars as far as we know.

And and I thought, well, maybe that would result in in a bigger budget for NASA, and and and then we could sort of resume the journey. That was the basic idea.

And I spent several months on this actually and went to Russia three times because I was able to figure out how to get the cost of the spacecraft low and the communications and the the greenhouse and all that to a reasonable number, reasonable meaning several million dollars.

And you have did you actually physically draw the greenhouse of how you manage that?

Yeah? Actually, I hope we've got that somewhere.

That'd be amazing to see.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it looks pretty goofy in retrospect, but but that's the that's the idea that we had, and it's so and I spent several hundred thousand dollars just kind of getting the design worked out and engaging some companies to come up with the design specifications for the subsystems. And then but it then came to buying the rocket, and the problem was that the cost of rockets is really high. And the lowest cost rocket in the US at the time was the Delta too, Bowing's Delta.

Two, and that would have.

Been about fifty million dollars. Yeah, and then you still need to have it like an upper stage from WHI so probably sixty million all in. And that was and I wanted to do two of these missions because I thought if but it just did just one and it didn't work, then that could have it like the opposite of effect, Like, look how dumb it is to.

Do to drite?

Did all this money down the drill or an idiot?

So so I wanted to do too, and I just didn't have enough money to do two complete missions.

So you had a budget of about one hundred million something like that.

Well, I was hoping it would be less than that, but but not more than I mean not more than that. But then, yeah, I guess roughly on that order was about most of be I mean I couldn't I couldn't spend much more than that.

So the Russians didn't help you out.

Had three three quite interesting trips to Russia to try to negotiate purchase of to Russian ICBMs.

Yeah, and did they think you would evil intent?

No, they just thought I was crazy.

But I mean that's not good either if you're buying ICBMs, but minus the nuke, I mean I think that would have been a lot more.

So you didn't talk, Luke, No, I mean I didn't. I got slightly got the feeling that that was on the table if which which was a very alarming.

But but yeah, that was that was those are very weird meetings with the Russian military and whatnot. I mean I think that they thought I was a bit crazy, but then they thought that they read about paypals.

Okay, it was crazy.

He's got money, he did something right.

Yeah, well and more importantly I could pay him right. Yes, So that's that's really I mean there. Yeah, it was remarkably capitalist. Was was my impression of the Russians.

Yeah, right, I have heard that before.

So tell me how what was the turning point from you know, talking with the Russians and then deciding, Okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to set up a company.

What was that turning point for you?

Well, I guess I.

Had I came conclusion that my initial premise was was wrong, that in fact, the there's there's a great deal of will uh you know that there there's there's not such a shortage, but people don't think there's a way, and and that if people thought there was there was a way, or at least something that wouldn't break the federal budget, then that then people would support it, which in retrospect I think is actually kind of obvious. Because the United States is a distillation of.

The human spirit of exploration. People came here from other places.

I mean, it's you know, there's no nation, there's no I mean, there's no nation that that's more a nation.

Of explorers in the United United States. But but people need to believe that it's possible. And it's that it's not you know, it's they're not to give up like healthcare or something important. You know, it's just it's gonna be that that that's that's important.

So so I thought, okay, well, then it's not a question of will, it's it's a question of showing that there's a way. And and the and I started reading quite a bit about rockets to try to understand why they're so so freaking expensive. You know, it's just something you know, where does the sixty million dollars go for the delta too? And that's subsequently, now delta two I think is one hundred, one hundred million dollars or something even some crazy number. And delta two is I mean,

Reasonable rocket work so that that But so I thought, okay that if we can do that, then that would that would really be the key breakthrough for space travel, right, But you also said that therefore we have not succeeded point You've.

Also said that failure was the most likely I would come. Can you talk about failure in that sense and in a broader sense of being an entrepreneur and innovator? Why is failure so important?

Well, I mean, I think I think failure is bad. I don't think it's good.

But if if something is important enough, then you you do it even though the risk of failure is high. And and so I think my advice if somebody once you start a company is they should bearn that the most likely outcome is is that it's not going to work, and they should reconcile themselves to that strong possibility.

And they should only do it if they feel that they're they're they're really compelled to do it, you know, because it's it's it's gonna The way starting company works is like usually the beginning, it's the very beginning, it's kind of fun, and then it's really hellish for for a number of years.

You're talked about chewing glass.

Yeah, there's there's a friend of mine who's successful entrepreneur and started actually his career around the same time as I did. And he has a good, good, good phrase. Name is Billy. He said, yeah, you're starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss. And and you agree with that generally true, Yeah, and and and and if you don't eat the glass, you're not going to be successful.

That's tough medicine. Medicine. So let's move along.

We're going to get down into innovation and motivation shortly, but I want to just go through your whole business career first. So shortly after funding SpaceX, you then got interested in electric vehicles. And I understand you watched the vigils for the death of the EV one when they were all smashed. Talk about that and why you felt, even after founding SpaceX, I have to get involved with Tesla.

Yeah, well, I said, like myntioned electric vehicles goes back a long time too, you know, goes back twenty scene.

Yeah, exactly.

And in fact, the original reason I came to Silking Value was to work on electric vehicle energy storage technology. And I thought that that the big car companies would developed electric cars because.

Obviously the right move and and and and I thought.

That was indicated when General Motives and uh TO announced their General Motives doing the e V one, the electric vehicle one Turner did the Electric GRABH for the original one, and they made those announcements and then and they prot those to market, and I thought, okay, well, this is this is great.

Yeah, we're gonna have electric cars.

GM is gonna obviously do the EV two and three, and then you know, they just get keep.

Getting better and everything would be cool and uh.

And then when when California relaxed its regulations on electric cars, GM recalled all of the e V one'es uh and crushed them into little cubes, you know, which is seem kind of nutty. So in fact, uh, the people didn't want their ev ones recalled, and in fact they tried, if they tried court orders to stop the cars from being recalled, they held a candle lit vigil.

Okay, at the yard where the cars were crushed. I did, I did not.

I did not, Well, certainly, I mean it's it's crazy if I mean, when is the last time you heard about any company customers holding a candle lit vigil for the demise of that that.

Product, particularly a GM product.

I mean, I mean, what bigger wake up call do you need? It's like, it's like, hello, the customers are really upset about this.

They were really preferred if it didn't get recalled, so so that that that kind of blew my mind. So it was like wow, okay.

And then and then we had the advent of lit them on batteries, which really helped helps the It makes you know, that's that's one of the key things for making electric cars.

It's still nothing. And so.

In two thousand and three actually had lunch with one of the other co founders of the company, JB. Strabel, who was actually working I think on like a hydrogen aeroplane or something, and he mentioned to me the T

So in order to sell a car.

In order to create a commercial version of the car, something that a manufacturer could produce and sell people, there was a.

Favoit of work that was required.

But anyway, I kept trying to get AC Propulsion to commercialize the T zero and I said, look, I'm gonna I'll fund the whole effort. You know, you really need to do this, and they just they just sort of refused to do it.

They didn't want to do it. They wanted to make.

A I think the it's what's that they want to make like an electric sign, which in principle sounds good, except that would cost seventy five thousand dollars and nobody wants to buy seventy five thousand dollars on, and and the technology just was not ready that there was just no way to.

Make a good value for money proposition.

What was it that compelled you to say I have to be CEO here and lead this company? Why not say, you know, I'll help you JB get this get this ruling?

Well, I really didn't want to be CEO of two companies if I tried really hard not to be actually, And yeah, so anyway, so ACR Repulsion finally said Okay. I actually told ac Repulsion, look, if you're not going to do this, I'm going to create a company to do this. And they said, well, there's some other guys who are also interested in doing that, and you guys should combine efforts and and create a company. And that's

Shouldn't be a feling.

By the way, if anyone's thinking that's a good idea, it's really terrible idea.

But then again, you know, going back to your trajectory here, not only did you take ON two, you took on three. You had an epiphany at Burning Man, I understand, and decided.

Not necessarily what you should pursue, and you came up with the idea.

Yeah, it's uh, well, you know, the solar is kind of part of the whole sustainable energy thing. So sustainable energy you have to have sustainable means of producing and consuming energy. And so even if you have electric cars, you have to have the other side of the equation, say, how do you produce energy in a sustainable way? And I think solar is the obvious primary means of sustainable energy generation.

In fact, the Earth is almost entirely sole power today.

That the only reason we're not a frozen ice bowl at three degrees Calvin is because of the Sun. And the Sun is responsible for all precipitation, It's responsible for the vast majority of the ecosystem.

Apart from sort of chemotrophs the bond of the ocean.

So there's just a tiny amount of energy that people that people.

Consume to power civilization.

It's actually a very tiny amount of energy relative to the amount of nage that the Sun sends in our general direction. And so in order to deal with that, we couldn't in fact, how the entire world was still of power quite easily.

This is maybe not super obvious to people, but so was.

That the epiphany you had at Burning Man? Was it?

I knew that long and long. I knew that in college, But what what.

Was the key vision that came to you at Burning Man? We all want to imagine.

There vision that.

Uh no, it was it was more the the.

I wouldn't say it was a particular perphony. It was more that I was at Burning Man with with with.

My cousins or to my cousins.

Uh, Peter, he are awesome guys, and they and they were sort of trying to think what should they do after there.

After their first startup.

So they did company called ever Dream, which did large scale management of computers. So if you've got like sixty thousand computers, it's kind of hard to manage them. So they wrote they created software that enables companies to do that, and that company actually got sold to Dell.

So they were looking for a new venture, looking for your ideas.

Well, I wouldn't say the initially looking for my ideas, but I actually was trying to convince them that they should do solou and.

Because I just thought I just thought it was an.

Area that needed people like them here, really good got entrepreneurs. So and since I was like somewhat over committed, I thought, yeah, I thought well, and I said like, look, if if you guys will do a solo company, I'll find you fight all the funny and you know whatever, guidance, I can, I will help, I can provide, I do that. And that's and I thought it was really important that there'd be you know, good entrepreneurs like them in in sol solar because it just wasn't wasn't doing very well as

The logistics part.

Yeah, it's it's kind of like you've got to re roof millions of buildings, right, and then figure out how the great interconnects work and then manage all those systems. Like, so if you've got hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of systems, eventually you've got to manage all these distributed systems.

Fashion ice right, And that's that's kind of what they did. And then it's an awesome job.

It was just like I basically would show up at the board meetings to hear, what's the good.

News this time? You know, it's like, really, you know, we had like.

Maybe a couple of bad news board meetings, well late two thousand and eight, there were some bad news board board meetings, but for the most part, apart from a few a few times when the macroeconomic conditions were really terrible, they just did an amazing job with you know, almost no help for me.

So you've been able to leave in their good hands.

Yeah, that's that is the vast majority of the credit for for success in that company.

Awesome.

So I'd like to move on to innovation and motivation. There's been a lot of talk lately about the fact that innovation is leveling off. We're not making the dramatic increases or improvements and innovation like we did when the plane was invented.

You do you agree with that?

And No, I don't agree with that. I don't think that's true. I think we've we've seen well, and I'm not sure what time period that is exactly, but we've seen huge improvements in the Internet and new new things. I mean, you know, in recent years, Twitter and Facebook being being pretty huge when people kind of thought the Internet was done. And you know, I think that there are some of the things that we're doing, like like you know, electric cars or a new thing.

And I do think this is pretty significant breakthroughs.

I mean, in genomics, we're getting better and better at decoding genomes and and being able to write genetics. I think that's going to be a huge, huge area. I think there's likely going to be some breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. And I suspect we will even see the flying car.

All right, Is that is that going to be an ill and Musk production. No, you're gonna let someone else do that.

Yeah, Well, I think someone else. I think someone else is doing that, all right, Okay.

That's another conversation. Do you feel the government is standing in the way of innovation at all?

Well, sometimes the government.

I don't think the government tends to stand the way of innovation, but sometimes it can overregulate industries to the point where innovation becomes very difficult, right, I mean in the the order industry used to be a great hotbed of innovation at the beginning of the twentieth century, but but now there's so many regulations that are intended to protect consumers. I mean, the body of regulation for cars

The indicators like that a car would have. You know, you've got like these little lights like.

Or whatever.

Yeah, like all these little little things, there's like a whole bunch of them, and we can't have anything else in that space, like a, well, how would if we have one space and render a different graphic.

Oh no, because people are expecting to see him that space. Like nobody is expecting to see him that space.

Yeah, so you feel you can argue with these regulations, you just have to Well you.

Can argue with them, but not with great success, and you can't actually get these things changed. But it takes ages. Like one of the things we're trying.

To get is like like why should you have side mirrors if you can have say little video cameras, tiny video cameras and have them display an image inside the car, But there are all these regulations saying you have to have side mers And I went and met with the Secretary of Transport, like can you change this regulation? Still nothing has happened. That was like two years ago, you know.

So you're banging your head against a wall here in a little bit.

It's not easy to get these regulations changed.

So talking to.

Government, President Obama is obviously trying to do what he can. If you had five minutes with President Obama, what would you advise him for one, stimulating the economy and entrepreneurship and creating jobs. Is there one thing that if you could successfully get through that would be a big stimulus to think?

Well, I think actually, I think the reality of being president is that you're actually like the captain of a very huge ship and have a small rudder because because obviously, if I mean, if there was a button that a president could push that said economic prosperity, you'd be like, they're hitting that button real fast.

Imagine the speed of light by how fast they mentioned they press that button, because that would be that's called it, like the reelection button. So so so I'm not sure how much president can really do. But but I think I think, you know, I'm generally a fan of like minimal government interference in the economy, Like the government should be kind of a like the referee but not the player, and there should be too many referees.

But but but.

There is an exception, which is when there's uh an unpriced externality, such as the CO two capacity of the oceans and atmosphere. So when you have an unpriced externality, then the normal market mechanisms do not work, and then govern is government's role to to intervene in a way that's sensible. And the best word intervene is to is to put it is to assign a proper price to whatever the common good is that's being consumed.

And then I know you're saying there should be a tax on gas.

They should be attack on carbon.

You know, if if the bad thing is carbon accumulation in the atmosphere, then there needs to be at taxed on on that, and then we can that will and then you can get rid of all subsidies and all everything else. And it seems like logical that you should tax things that are most likely to be bad rather than you know, like that's why we tax cigarettes and

Bad things, and then adjust that that tax of that bad.

Thing according to whatever's going to result in the behavior that we think is beneficial for the future. I mean, I think currently that you know what we're doing right now, which is mining and burning trillions of tons of hydrocarbons that that used to be buried very deep underground, and now we're seeking them in the atmosphere and running this crazy chemical experiment on the atmosphere.

And then you've got the oil and gas companies.

Which have ungodly amounts of money, and you can't expect them to just roll over and die like.

They don't do that. So actually what they're much preferred to.

Do is spend you know, enormous amounts of money lobbying and running focused ad campaigns and that kind of thing.

To preserve their situation. You know, it's a lot. It's a lot like tobacco companies in the old days. I mean, they used to run these.

Ads with doctors, like a guy with a doctor, you know, whether the pretending he's a doctor, you know, essentially applying that smoking is good for you, and like having pregnant mothers on ads smoking.

You have a message for the climate change skeptics and and the big oil people.

Well supports climate change skeptic. I mean, like I'm you know, I like to.

I believe in the scientific method, and one should be one should have a healthy skepticism of things in general. And you know, if you're first things from a scientific standpoint, you always look at things probabilistically, not definitively. And so I think a lot of times if somebody is a skeptic in the science community, what they're really saying is that they're not sure that it's one hundred percent certain that that this is the case. But that's that's that's

Is it greater than one percent? Is it even one percent? If it is even one percent, why are we running this experiment?

Called it a Russian roulette. We're playing Russian roulette with the atmosphere.

We're playing Russian roulette. And then and and as each year goes by, we're learning more rounds in the chamber.

It's not it's not wise.

So so that's and and what makes it super insane is that we're going to run out of oil anyway. Like It's not like there's some infinite oil supply, We're going to run out of it, so we know we have to get to a sustainable means of of transportation no matter what, So why even run the experiment?

So Will's dumbest experiment.

Yeah, so let's move on.

To focus on Silicon Valley. Steve Jobs is it wasn't? Is a wonderful Silicon Valley icon. Is he someone that you've admired and what have you learned from Steve's life and work?

Well, certainly someone I've admired. Well, I did try to talk to him once at a party, and it was super rude to me. But I don't think it was me.

I think it's you know, I think you weren't the first, the.

First, no, but but yeah, and I was actually there with like Larry Page's an old friend of them. I've known Larry since before he got venture funding for Google. And Larry was the guy that introduced me to Steve Jobs. So it's not as like I'm going like entugging on his coat, like, you know, please talk to me. But it was introduced by Larry Page. Is not bad, but I mean he obviously he was an incredible guy and

Is there is there that magic that you try and emulate?

Uh No, I think Steve Jobs is way cooler than than I am.

So okay, So.

I'd like to get inside your head a little bit about you know, when you come up with an idea, do you doodle it, you know, in a pad of paper or do you get your iPad out and and take notes? I mean, when you come up with something new, you know, and new rocket design or whatever it is, how does that manifest itself?

Could we see you being creative?

I mean it's more cliche, but it's happens a lot in the shower. I don't know what it is about showers.

Exactly. Get the camera like, no, I'm just I do I just kind of stand there in the shower.

Do you have long showers?

Sounds wrong, but yeah I do. There's no running men epiphanies if that those are those are huge. So yeah, I think that's yeah.

And and and then there there are sometimes like late at nights if I've been thinking about something, then I can't sleep and I'll be.

Up for you know, for several hours.

I think about sort of sitting around the house and thinking about things, and occasionally I'll sketch something or send myself an email or something like that.

Right, so we have a.

Question from the audience. Who inspires you or do you have a mentor?

Well, I don't have a mentor per se, although I try to.

I try to get feedback from as many people as possible, and so I have I have like friends, and I asked them to you know, what they think of this, that and the other thing. And you know, as mentioned, you know, Larry's a good Larry Page is a good friend of mine, value his advice a lot, and have

Let's listen. It's like some you know, on on on flogs they do that.

Yeah, Hi, do you deal with negative feedback?

Because you've got some tough criticism, especially with SpaceX, you had incumbents like Neil Armstrong even speaking out and saying this is wrong. We don't want you know, commercial companies in space. It's not a place for commerce.

So how did you deal with that?

And how do you deal with me there in general? Because you've had a lot.

Yeah, that was kind of troubling because you know, growing up, Neil Laanstow is kind of a hero, so it's like this kind of sucks too.

Yeah, the back, that's a bit of a blow. Yeah.

So yeah, I mean I think in his case, he was somewhat manipulated, you know, by other interests. I don't think he caught White knew what he was saying in those in those congressional hearings.

So yeah, okay, and.

Talk about you know, it's one thing to have these wonderful ideas in the shower of burning Man, but there's another thing to build, motivate and retain a team of excellent people. Can you talk about some tips and some things you've learned that obviously.

Work for you?

Yeah, Well, I mean, think about a company. A company is a group of people that are organized to create a product or service. That's a sort of company is So in order to create such a thing, you have to convince others to join you in your effort, and and and so they have to be convinced that that that it's a sensible thing, that it's like that there's at least some some good, some reasonable chance of success, and if there is success, that the reward will be commensurate with the effort involved.

And you know.

So, So I think that's getting people to believe in what you're doing, uh, and in in you is is important. So in the beginning there will be there will be a few people who do who believe in you or what you're doing. And but then over time, as you may progress, that the evidence will build and more and

Yeah, if that makes sense. Good.

Okay, So you're running your CEO of two companies, your chairman of Solar City, talk about time management.

How on earth do you do this?

Well?

Do you get any sleep?

Sometimes?

Not enough sleep is really great because because if I find if I don't get enough sleep.

Then I'm quite grumpy. I mean, obviously I think most people that way.

And and also like I try to sort of figure out what's the right amount of sleep because I found I could have I could drop at a certain threshold a sleep and although I'd be awake more hours and I could sustain it, I would get less done because.

Mental acuity would be affected.

So I found generally the right number for me is around six to six and a half hours on average for night.

That's not too bad. And any other tips on average?

Any other tips on just managing to run two companies simultaneously. I mean, do you do you find I mean, I know you're up here on Monday Tuesday? Is it all Tesla when you're up in Silicon Valley and all SpaceX Wednesday Thursday.

Having a sort of.

Having a smartphone is incredibly helpful because that means you can do email during inter social periods like if you're.

In a car, you're walking in the bathroom, everywhere.

You can do email practically when you're awake, and so that's really helpful to have email for SpaceX and Tesla integrated on my phone.

And then and then interest, you have to apply a lot of hours to actual working, actually working. So the way I generally do it is I'll be.

Working at SpaceX on Monday and then Monday night, flight to the area, spend Tuesday and Wednesday at the Barrier, then at Tesla, and then fly back on Wednesday night, spend.

Thursday and Friday at SpaceX.

In the last several months, then I would fly back here on a Saturday and either spend Saturday and Sunday at Tesla or spend Saturday at Tesla and Sunday at SpaceX.

And where and where do the boys fit in? You have five sons?

Yeah?

What did they tag along with dad on some of these?

They? I do drag them along in a lot of things. Actually they're remarkably unimpressed by.

I wish they would be sort of more interested, But I mean they're only the twins are eight in the triplets for six, so maybe they'll get more more interested later.

But do you see one day grooming one of them or several of them to take over your companies?

Well, I mean, I think if if they're inclined to, I mean, if they're really interested in working at Tesla or SpaceX.

Then I, you know, help them do that.

I'm not sure i'd want to necessarily try to insert them into the CEO role at some point.

You know.

It's kind of like if if if the rest of the team and the board kind of felt that they were the right person, then that would be that would

And I'm still mostly of that incline in that direction.

But after seeing what happened with Ford and GM and Chrysler, where GM and Chrysler went went bankrupt but Ford did not, and Ford seemed to make better long term choices than the other two companies, and that's in part because of the influence of the Ford family. And I thought, well, okay, there may be some merit in having some longer term family ownership, at least at least a portion of it.

There's proper long term things. And like I'm you know, look at what happened also in Silicon Valley with with HP and I think it's quite quite quite sad, and and that that that to some degrees because there was.

Much diminished, uh, influenced by the Hewlett and Packard families. I think they should have prevailed in in their you know where they were opposed to the merger that took place at one point, and I think they were right.

Actually, I'm keeping and looking to the future for SpaceX. Is there an I P O plan for this year?

No, there's no idea of plan. Let's say, running a public company does does have a strong so you're not in a hurry.

No, I mean, in the case of Tesla and SpaceX, we had to raise capital, and and we had kind of complex equity structure that needed to be resolved by by going public, and and so so I thought we kind of needed to do that in those two cases. We don't have to do that in SpaceX. I think there's a good chance well, at some point in the future. But but SpaceX's objectives are super long term, and the

Right, very long term.

Yes, that's an important one. So you do have other projects on the back burner. You've talked about the hyper loop, a way of getting people from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco on under half an hour, and the electric supersonic airplane. Yeah, which of those two are bubbling up that we might hear more about in their future.

Well, I did promise that I'd.

Do some paper on the on the hyperloop idea, and things got a little a little hectic towards the end last year because it had I had these I committed to to make these milestones at Tesla to to the public markets, and I had to stay true to that obligation, which required just just an insane level of work and attention.

And uh.

And then we also had the Solar City i PO, which was a very difficult i PO to get done. And that IPIO occurred just by the skin of its teeth, and there was so so such a tough one.

We you just determined it had to be in December.

Well, if it wasn't in December, it would mean pushing it out, you know, quite a bit. And and the problem is that we'd already pushed it out quite a bit. So if we didn't go public, we'd have to do a private.

Round and then and it just the whole thing wouldn't feel right. You know. It's like you're sitting at the it's like your spirit, you know, at the at the altar, and you don't do the do the wedding.

It's like it's a bit awkward, to say the least. So we really needed, we really needed to do it. And and and I think if we hadn't done if you would have looked at it as a failure, and it would have been good because there's just been too many failures in the solar or too many not enough success let's say in the solar arena.

They needed to be sort of, we need to choke up with success and.

A rare piece of sunshine for the solar ironically, for.

A solar industry does not have a lot of that.

Yes, so is time on for only for the last question. You've come a long way since you were that six year old little boy breaking the rules. You turn forty two this year, right, what is on the cards? Or do you where do you see yourself in ten years time, twenty years time, forty years time? Because you famously said you want to die on Mars just not unimpact.

Right exactly?

Tell us about that dream?

Yeah, well, I actually ask by journalists do you want to die on Wis and I said yes, but wait, no impact just too clear.

This is that's one of the possibilities. So yeah, so, uh, I guess.

I mean I'd like to be able to go to Mars while I'm so able to manage the journey regionally.

Well, so I think, like, I don't have to be like seventy five and go to Mas.

You don't take your zimmer frame with you, right, you know, it.

Could be, at least in the beginning, could be, you know, mildly arduous. So I wanted to, I'd like to, I'd like to get there.

I don't know. I mean, ideally in my fifties that would be. That'll be kind of cool.

So you see that happening, and then well.

I mean, I aspire to make that happen. And I can see the potential for that happening. And I'm not saying it will happen, but I think it can happen. I'll try to make it happen, right, ladies and gentlemen,