Part 1: Elon Musk Story - Tesla Podcast!

Latest interview of Elon muss Tasmanian.

Hi, all right, great, and then we got galile A Russell from hyper Change what out third Row?

And then we got Viv from Who's Falcon Heavy?

Hey?

Great? All right, Omar, do you want to introduce our guest.

Please welcome the inventor of the car fart, Elon miss.

Thank you, thank you. Please put that on my grapestone.

I love it so yeah.

It's kind of crazy that we're actually all here, and thank.

You so much for doing This're welcome.

We'll all test the customers, fans, and it's really good that is finally happening. I remember that I was looking at your Wikipedia tweet that it's like this bizarre fictionalized version of reality, and I replied to him, wait, why don't you come on a podcast and like tell your fictionalize version of reality?

Sure, exactly, tell my.

Fictionalized and You're like, okay, sure, And I was kind of like taken by surprise by that. And you know the way you engage listen to your customers online, It's like I've never seen anything like that from you know, CEO of a public company or any executive. So can you tell us a little bit where that came from. Why you communicate directly instead.

Of like having this PR strategy that.

Most companies have.

Sure, well, I mean it started out. I actually had one of the very very first Twitter accounts, like when it was like less than ten thousand people, and then everyone was tweeting at me like what kind of lat they had it Starbucks, Like this seems like the silliest thing ever. So I'd leaded my Twitter account and then someone else took it over and started tweeting in my name. Yeah, and then a couple of friends of mine, Wellie and Jason Calcaana said they both said, hey, you should really

Did you have to pay them? No?

No, they they they I'm not sure who it was, but it was for some reason. I got my account back great, and and then it was just I don't know some of you. It's like just sort of I just started tweeting for fine really and my early tweets are quite crazy.

Uh.

As I was trying to explain, like it has the arc of insanity is short and that is not very steep because it started off insane, and so if it's still insane, it's you know, it hasn't changed that much. So yeah, and I don't know, it seemed it seemed kind of fun too, you know. Like I said before, it's like, you know, some people use their hair to express myself.

I use Twitter. Why did you like Twitter? Some? I mean you could use platforms, yeah, exactly.

Well, like I don't trust Facebook obviously, you know, and and and then Instagram is fine, but it's i think, not exactly my style. It's hard to convey sort of intellectual arguments on Instagram. It's hot on Twitter too, but

Yeah, cryptos cameras are really I understand that they've been taken advantage of Vincent recently. I know really Yeah, there's like ten Vincent's out there.

All right, but they totally they can copy everything and just like changed one my.

Avadars and then the picture and then they just post like right.

Below yeah your tweet. Yeah yeah wow yeah, and they blocked me to We fight them all all the time.

We're always like reporting them, like every day we report like ten people.

Yeah, yeah, I have so many like yeah, exactly, a conversations of Twitter, like come on, can you just like I think it would take like three or four customer service people to just look look at this. It's cryptos can block it, and it should be easy.

It should be easy. Like my wife Figan Shelley, I think you'd like to tweet it. The other day she got banned for like replying to one of your tweets and quoting like the video inside of it, and then she got suspended for like a day.

Or something, and I was like, what the heck is going on? Yeah, So it's just weird how the algorithm works.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of manipulation. But you're going back to the Wikipedia page. You know, it's kind of interesting just what a decade you've had. I remember I was reading somebody's article. I think they interviewed you in two thousand and nine or something like that, and they said, you know, if you had met Elon Musk in two thousand and nine, right after the recession, they're like struggling with the roadster. You know, you never would have thought

Yeah, well, I think I mentioned that that I kept getting referred to as an investor in like the munch things, and it's like, but I actually don't invest really except in companies that I help create. So I only have the only publicly traded share that I have at all is Tesla. I have no diversity on publicly traded share so and yeah, that's right, quite unusual. So, uh, you know what's everyone diverse by agree? And then the only stock that I have of significance outside of Tesla is

That's the main thing.

But there's like a fundamental sort of quick question of like consumption versus capital allocation. This is probably gonna get me to travel, But the paradigm of say communism versus capitalism, I think is fundamentally sort of orthogonal to the reality of actual economics in in some ways. So what you actually care about is like the responsiveness of the feedback loops to the maximizing happiness of the population. And if if more resources are controlled by entities that have poor

Forever this is so then, so that's something that they let up the rules.

And then you know, GM recalled the e V one and crushed them in a junk yard, which is against the wishes the owner.

They all lined up to buy them, and they wouldn't let them buy that.

I mean, Chris Paine did this great documentary on it, and it's like the you know, the owners of the the ev one, which why there wasn't actually that great of a car, but they still wanted the electric car so bad that they held a candle vigil at the junkyard where their cars were crushed. Like it like it was like a like a prisoner being executed or something like that. That was literally like when is the last time you even heard of that for a product?

Right?

You know, GM is stops the product. I mean what I mean, listen, man, They're not doing that for any other GM product. You thought, I'm doing the evo. It's kind of time times hard to get through these guys, you know. So anyway, I think that's a very important thing. So generally, where you could see like these oligopolies forming or duopolies and then they get effective of price fixing and then they cut back in the R and D.

You're still working on the candy company Still candy?

Is that boring candy?

Boring candy? He's gonna be boring.

I haven't seen a candy yet that's good enough to send out. But and it's yeah, but I think I think it it's it's there's there's like three companies or something that control the candy in the world pretty much. It's crazy and dog food, Yeah, there's somebody constructed like this. It's this crazy conglomerate and and it's like and it's like dog food and baby food and candy, and it's like all you know.

Rendering, Yeah, hundreds of brands.

Yeah, you think you're buying from different companies, but it all funnels up to like three companies or something like that.

Don't send the rendering food to the candy company.

Yeah, a big candy.

So you want to have like a good competitive forcing functions so that you have to make the product better.

Or you'll lose.

Like, if you don't make the product better and and and improve the product for the end consumer, then then that company should have relatively less prosperity comparative company it makes better products. Now, the car industry you know, is actually pretty competitive, so that's good. And then the good thing about it competitive company industry, then if if you make a product that's better, it's going to do better in the marketplace, definitely.

So this is Gene Wilders Whole House.

Yeah, that's amazing, it's lovely. Thanks for having us here as well. Thanks you really special.

Yeah, it's a good it's a cool spot and it's got a soldo glass roof.

Yeah, portion too, right, we didn't notice it, but you checked it out the second time.

I'm waiting for my three. So I'm waiting for a version three.

Well, whatever is they're going to put on, I don't care human motions, right, yeah, looking forward to it.

Yeah, we saw it at the store in Torrents. Actually they've got in the stores now. It looks really good.

Well that it's actually design such that you don't notice it.

So he's like this, look it's old.

This is like it's an old house, I know, probably fifty years old something like that, and it's quite quirky. So if you put something on that was like it didn't blend in that it would it would not look right.

It would be pretty straightent. And this had a black comp shingle roof.

So I was like, Okay, let's see if we can actually have it weave in and still feel natural, look good. And yeah, and I think it's it's sort of achieved that goal. But yeah, this is a lovely quirky little house. I'll show you around afterwards. It's got all those of weird things.

It's exactly what is it, Francloyd right now? I don't think so.

I think it was just built in increments over time by probably several people, but that they would have just knocked it down and built a giant house here.

So it's like, so glad I didn't. Yeah, it's super cool.

Really So gene Wild is one of my favorite actorms actually, so it's great.

What was some movies?

So, so when you come up with a product like the solar glass roof, I think a lot of people misunderstand that, like your goal is to bring these crazy technologies to market and really create a change in the world, and so I think it's fascinating that you do it through companies, and it seems like the fastest way to create that feedback loop and to really like get go

Yeah, that is I think there's lots of good things people can do for the climate, but just generally anything that is moving towards sustainable energy, whether it's sustainable.

Energy, create generation through solar or with an electric vehicle.

Actually just think just things like better installation in a house just is just really effective for energy consumption. But but fun is more fun, it's ingratiating. That's mom on the motion. I actually got him a little folloween, a little mistage mob in the Martian, you know, the helmet with it looks super cute.

You got enough funny.

So did you always know, like you know, business was the way you wanted to kind of attract attack these problems versus say, you know, maybe a nonprofit or you know, working as a college professor or something. I don't know.

Uh, well, when I was in in high school, I thought I would most likely be doing physics at a particle accelerator. So that's what I was if physics and computers. I mean, I got distinctions in two areas in physics and computer science and those who are yeah, some of my two best subjects. And and then I thought, okay, well that I want to want to figure out what's the nature of the universe, and so you know, go try to working with people banging particles together and see

We're living some meaningless existence. And then.

I made the mistake of reading Nieture Inchoprenur and and.

I'm like, well, don't do that. Not a be a little older. And actually lately these days are s rear it. It's like, you know, it's actually he's not that bad. He's got issues, got issues. I have a question about it, but you know, it's so.

But there are the hitchbacks, guys to the galaxy Douglas Adams, which was which is like quite really, quite a good book in philosophy, I think, And I was like, Okay, we don't really know what the answer is obviously, so but the universe, the universe is the answer, and that really, what are the questions we should be asking to better

What it's all about.

And so we should sort of take the set of actions that are most likely to result in its understanding. What questions to ask about the nature of the universe. So that so therefore, we must propagate human civilization on Earth as far into the future as possible and become a multiplanet species to gain extend the scope and scale of consciousness and increase the problem lifespan of consciousness, which is going to be I think probably a lot of machine consciousness as well.

In the future.

And that's the best we can do it, basically, you know, And yeah, that's the best we can do. So, you know, and think about the various problems that we're facing or

That's okay. So now you have access to all the books instantly.

And if you can be in a remote like you know, mountaintop, jungle location or something and have access to all of humanity information, if you've got a link to the internet, this is a fundamental, profound change. So that's one thing. I was on the Internet early because of you know, the physics community. That was pretty normal, although it was interface was you know, almost entirely text and hard to use.

Like what's the opportunity, Like why is that something that's inevitable.

Or well, you know, I think for for sure, as far as say getting rid of diseases or propensity to various diseases, then that's gonna be like the first thing that you'd want to edit out, you know. So it's like, if you've got like your you know, a situation where you're definitely gonna die of some kind of cancer at age fifty five, I prefer to have that edit it out.

Yeah, definitely, So I think, you know, edit that out.

You know, there's the Gatacus sort of extreme thing where it's not really edited out, but it's like it's edited in for various enhancements and that kind of thing, which probably will come too.

But I'm saying, you.

Know, arguing for against, I'm just saying this more likely to come than not down the road.

Yeah, so then and then aim really major one.

So these are all big motivational factors to keep our consciousness going.

And it's sustainable, yes, yes, sustainable energy. So sustainable energy actually was something that I thought it was important before the vital environmental implications became as obvious as they are, because if you mine and burn hydrocarbons, then you're gonna run out of them, because it's it's not like it's not like mining sort of say metals for example, if you if you know that we recycle steel and aluminum, and because that's just it's it's it's.

Not a change of energy state.

Whereas if you if you take fossil fuels, you're taking some from a high energy state converting it to a lower energy state like CO two, which is extremely stable.

You know.

So whereas we will never run out of metals, not a problem, we will run out of mind hydrocobbins. And then necessarily, if we have got billions, ultimately twillions of tons of hydrocobbins that were very deep underground, in solid liquid gas form whatever, but they're deep underground, you should remove them from deep underground to the oceans and the atmosphere.

You will have a change in.

The chemistry of the of the surface obviously, and then there's just a certain probably associated with well, how bad will that be? And the range of possibilities goes from wildly bad to extremely bad. But then why would you run that experiment? That seems like the crazy, especially since we have to go to sustainable energy anyway, why would you run that experiment? This is the maddest thing I've

I think it will get done.

And then the if, over time, as you raise the price on common you can actually I think encourage sequestration technologies over time, and and and there'll be a lot of innovation in that regard and now that's the way we to do it.

So you had these realizations about you know, areas of big value and you went and started zip to you sold it, got you know, twenty million cash. You were the largest shareholder at PA of Papal at the time eBay acquired it. I think, you know, you got one hundred sixty million or something like that. You know, you have enough money basically for an entire lifetime. Why go and put your money into SpaceX, which is a huge, you know, risky operation or Tesla. Why not just kind of you know, relax.

Sure what?

So yeah, basically, you know, I graduated from from from Penn with basically physics and economics and then that we're act a road trip to to Stamford with with Robin rand who is in my class and now it works at Tesesla.

Actually yeah, he grew up in Shanghai, so yeah, this was a very smart guy.

He ended up continuing at Stanford and I ended up going on Deferma to complate into the semester. But I was going to be studying material science and the physics of high in age dentistic capacitors for use electric vehicles. So the intent was I was going to go, Okay, I'm want to work on energy storage solutions for electric vehicles, and I'd worked at a company at Cold Pinnacle Research for a couple of summers that did high energy density capacitors.

I think with the.

Advent of high energy lithium batteries, a capacitor is not not the right path.

What was your thinking back then though, that made you think you could be useful for evis?

I want to use advanced chip making equipment to make capacitors that were precise at a molecular level, so at the you know, just a level of precision that that was sort of unheard of in in capacitors. Like capacitors, energy is a function of its area or and a separation distance. So if you have if you can have very tiny separation distance, and you can and you can inhibit quantum tunneling, like so how do you things get

So is it off the table alter capacity?

It's unnecessary? Interesting, it's unnecessary, It's it's I think I think it's I think it's probably is physically possible, but it's it's unnecessary at this point.

I mean, I know a lot of people were talking about Maxwell and they had been working on some stuff with capacitors.

The funny thing is that when I was doing the my intentions that this uh mass capacity company called Pink Research, which was in Less Godess. We talked a lot about Maxwell and Maxwell is also trying to kags to Capacitor.

Is no Tesla a required Maxwell?

Yeah, Wow, we're looking forward to that investorday.

Yeah, that's kind of a big deal. That's great. Great to know.

Maxwell has a bunch of technologies that are that where if they're applied in the right way, I think can be have a very big.

Impact, Like the dry electrode stuff that every one of them. That's a big deal.

Yeah, for sure, much much bigger deal than it may seem. Yeah, and there's a few other things with the space that it takes up for the ovens that you know, for the current technology, you can save all that that real estate space.

Now that's one aspect. And the cost reduction, the weight savings, I mean, there's so many pluses.

Right, Yes, and there's many things that but I left wait until you know whatever battery day. Sure, hope in a few months, but I think we've had some pretty exciting things to share.

So Galley's very exciting.

Yeah, it seems like the pace of the innovation of the battery things just taken off like since you guys have more capital and being able to like have the Giga factory be vertically integrated. It seems like know of their car company is making that many batteries, so they're not even thinking about what comes next.

But they're not even you know, man, not even come cool at all. I can two hundred and one mile not not either.

That's a joke, Yeah, no, it's really, it's true. The other countries just really want to outsourced battery technology, not even not even making the like this.

Battery module and cell.

But they're they're obviously outs hosting the cells, but even out sourcing the modules in the packs. Yeah, you know, and it's like they're really not thinking about fundamental chemistry improvements. And there's some pretty deep wizardry at TELSA.

On this front.

I should say a bit about like like electric vehicles, and it was sustainable energy in general.

I said it was.

It was pretty I think obvious to not not just me, to me, to a lot of people even go back thirty years or or longer, that we must have a sustainable energy solution. In fact, it's it's toto logical, if it's un if it's if it's not sustainable, we must at some point find an alternative to it. And so even if there were no environmental impact to the sort of fossil fuel economy, then we would run out of them and then we would have economic collapse and well,

Because they'd be like, what is wrong with you?

It's encouraging encouraging them, Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it's like, we should have a sure of a base on the Moon, we should have sent people to Mars. None of that's occurred. You know, it's gonna that We've got to make that happen. Yeah, So it's a bit on the sustainability front. It was really, like I said, not so much initially, not so much from an environmental standpoint, but from the necessity of replacing a finite resource in order to ensure that civilization could

Now everybody's doing it right now, like.

And their mom, the mom is doing it, and we will all like to congratulate about the take off.

Actually three one, yeah.

Yeah, it's and I would like to know, like why China is the best country to build a first foreign Giga factory.

China is the biggest consumer cars in the world, so it's.

So that that that alone would be enough to do it.

I think also there was a lot of uncertainty about the tariffs, and and you know, it's like potentially would be unable to sell effectively in China if we did not have a factory locally, or at least unable to sell at prices that weren't extremely high. But those are really the two two main reasons.

I think that.

But I think there's also a third important reason that that there's just so much talent and drive in China that I think it's a good place to do a lot of things. And the evidence is there in the incredible progress in the factory, which was built with very very high quality and very short period of time, and that the car is coming out of of Shanghai are already very high quality.

I can't tell. And the run rate is amazing.

And I love that they used the Chinese badge as well. It's like a simple pride and you know made made in China.

So yeah, it's cool, it's super cool.

How did Tesla manage to get the first wholly owned foreign car company in China? I mean a factory?

Uh well, I've went to China many times and they kept saying that we would have to do this, you know, majority local venture. And I said that, well, we had to partner with someone, and say, well, oh, you know, we're a little late to the dance here, you know, so who do we partner with? You know, there's nobody, nobody left, and uh and also we're just a little company, so you know, we're you know, like because they should get married, like we're young.

That's a good example.

But yeah, you know, and then so then you know, but and then also is pointing out like you know, there's so many Chinese companies that are going to you know, that are establishing factories or in the US, and there's like Verity Future and that kind of thing, and that's known by them. And so I mean, to be fair, it should be allowed that a marine car company should be able to own its factory in China as well. And so we talked to him over and over of years and they eventually said Okay, well.

We'll change law.

They changed law, but now those other companies can do it as well, so it's not just limited to Tesla.

And how much of that production hell like learnings have really enabled because one of the I don't want to like to bring up Capex, but one of my favorite things is the stats and the shareholder letter. It's so much cheaper, not only faster, but it seems like that you have learned so much from this the Fremont factory, and that really enabled like kind of a turbo charged build for Shanghai.

Yeah, the.

I think the big difference is is like we are way less dumb than we were, so the the fullishness of capital expenditures was very high and it's less high.

Know, and then.

The the Shanghai factory, we designed out all of or as much of the foolishness as we could think of that exists at Fremont and at Nevada. So we just made a lot of decisions that weren't smart and and we designed those out so such the production line is

So you guys said in the production letter that you just started battery production in Shanghai too, And I heard that you guys were getting cells from cattle and l GCM. Are the cells basically kind of like a commodity part that you can assemble into your battery packs there or you know, does it make a difference. How do you see that long term?

I believe these cells are not yet from LG We do expect to use locally, locally produced cells, but I'm.

Like, I don't know, it's a week clear.

I don't always know exactly what's going on everywhere in the fifty thousand person company. So some of the things, like most most most of the things I say, will be crippets of maybea occasionally something that's not as to that my knowledge, we're not yet using Algae camp cells. We are using Panasonic cells made in Nevada.

But LGAE CAM can make pretty much the same cells as Panasonic.

Yes, but pretty much is not the same as the same. So there's still a few bugs to work out with the LGA camp cells before we can use them in our module and battery pack production system. The CTL cells, the CL situation will be more of an integrated module then it will be a cell. And that's so that it's it's not just it's not super easy to replace these things. But yeah, we'll be We do expect to use CTL. We do expect to use Algae. Currently we're

Wow.

So we were talking about a lot of Tesla stuff, but we kind of wanted to ask you about your personal history because we were saying you were saying how there's some misconceptions you would like to make straight. And you know, Ashley Vance wrote a book about you. I just read May's loved the book, and it was really wonderful. I loved it, and I learned a little bit more history about your family and you. What are some of the misconceptions that you would like to correct?

You know, most of this is just and it ended up being kind of water under the bridge that people didn't notice that much. Yeah, I mean there's a sort of some stories in there where it sounds like I like fired people all of a sudden and arbitrarily, which was not the case.

There.

You know, it just Ashley asked somebody who who didn't know what was going on, and then that person was suddenly not there.

And they didn't know why.

Yeah, but I yeah, I definitely do not fire talented people. And yeah, you know, unless there's no option. So yeah, and absolutely not not without warning or like.

Keep hearing you say, we like it sounds like you're always thinking of everybody. I see you as a very selfless person. I mean seriously, I mean, yeah, it's like from the age of twelve, it sounds like you've been thinking about how to help humanity.

Yeah, I mean I'm not trying to be sort of like some you know, the sort of savior or something like that. You know, but it's really just that if it just seems like there, it's just I don't know, it feels like the obvious things to do. I can't like, I'm not sure why you do anything else. We want to maximize happiness to the population and propagating to the future as far as possible and understand the nature of reality, and from that, I think everything else follows.

I saw you on Twitter like talking about how like people are having this rumor that you've been wealthy your whole life and that would be like the only reason who became successful and you've debunked that, And can you ask share more about your upbringing and what led you to go into North America.

Sure, I was in South Africa and it seemed like wherever there was like a lot of the advanced technology in the world was being produced in America and Solucton Valley especially, So I wanted to be where I could sort of have an impact on technology, so that's or be involved in the creation of new technology. So that's what brought me to go to at first Canada because I could get citizenship in Canada through my mom, and then ultimately to the US.

But yeah, I just left Slavco. When I was seventeen and.

Land in Montreal, I had like about two thousand dollars Canadian.

Uh yeah.

I started staying in a youth hustle for a few days, and then there was a you could buy a ticket to across the country for hard bucks and stopped along the way, and so I put that and just took it greyhound across Canada and sold these like little towns.

Well we were getting I didn't have much.

I had like a backpack again suitcase books, but that the bus company, the Greyhound, unloaded it in one of the cities and then the bus left without my stuff.

So I literally had nothing. All your books but you're closed to.

Actually, weirdly, I think I might have had the books thing, but I closed that prior you need it, Yeah, because I needed. I was just sitting in the bus station reading, waiting for the bus to get ready, and I think I have the books but not not.

But no clothing.

So anyway, but I managed to get to Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and then my, my, it's your cousins cousin's son, Yeah, has a whaed farm there, and I worked on the wheat farm for about six weeks and turned eighteen and Saskatchewan.

It's just a ton of called swift current.

So that was summertime, right it is June, Yeah, June twenty eighth, So because I've been there in the winter and it's like minus forty yeah, yeah, you don't want to be traveling.

Yeah did you ice kate? Did you try ice skating?

No? There was it was quite warm.

Well, I mean in the winter.

Stay for there in the winter. I was just I was there for about six weeks. Oh, you're lucky you survived. That's good. Yeah.

I was old there literally working on the wheat farm, did a bond raising and they cleared out the wheat binds, you know, the grain, grain salos, that kind of thing, and I just worked the vegetable patch basically just doing various things.

Would your mind just thinking of what you're what you're going to do after that?

Yeah, t figure what I do next. I don't know what to do.

So then, but I ended up getting back on the bus and went to Vancouver and I had a half uncle there who was kind of in the lumber industry. He like made lumber, like lumber equipment.

Sounds like the Northwest.

Yeah, yeah, basically throwing up chains, throwing logs and working on the slumber mill and cleaning out the where they where they boil the pulp and just like create crazy so boiler rooms and that that might be the hardest job I've had, actually, because you had to like crawl through this little tunnel and it has mat suit and then with shovel with and then shovel the sort of steaming sand and mulch out of the boilers.

To clean him out.

And you had to like there's only one entrance to exit, which is like a little tunnel. If you're classrophobic, you could be real bad. And then you could shovel the sand and the mulch through the tunnel and it actually blocked the tunnel, and then somebody else would reach in and shovel it out from the outside. So it just big enough long enough if you have a trovel with a long handle, one person on the inside can shovel it far enough that someone on the outside can shovel

Oh wow, and the safeties just a man looking out for you.

There were just two people kind of paired up. So if like one person's collap and you go to call somebody, but it'd be really hard to drag somebody out. I have to say that it does not seem safe because if the tunnel gets blocked, trying to get then and block that tunnel would be very difficult in a short period of time. So, but it was the highest painting

It fire your clothes and were gone.

Well they gave you they did you give you a have hazmat suits?

Yeah?

How long did you have to did you do that job for? It was like four days, it was it was then it was done.

Yeah, you said it was like a short term thing, clean green fins, continding that the boilers the ball.

Rooms, so what was next? We were in boiler rooms and.

Then yeah, so basically.

Yeah, I mean literally it was like a lump of dragons, chainselwing logs and just during the lumber or lumber stuff basically for a few months there and then applied for college, going to Queen's University and Kingston.

And was there for a couple of years.

And then some of that's just that I should apply to Jupan, and I didn't think I'd be able to go because I've paid for my own way through university just which is actually not that hard in Canada because the tuition system.

Yeah, the tuitions had yourselves that I is in Canada.

So so with you know, with basically some if you sort of worked during the summer semester and take out some omens and get some scholarships, you can pretty much go to any college in Canada, I think. But I met someone who was at Yupan and they said you should at least apply, and I applied and they actually gave me like quite a big scholarship, so that that allowed me to go there, and so that I did the physics and economics there and uh and and then.

That that's what led to the road trip to Stafford with Robin ran.

And and and then I was during that that summer that I was was like, Okay, if I can either spend several years kind of doing a PhD and know that I care about the PhD actually, but I just need a lab. But I could either spend a bunch of years working in a lab and maybe it would maybe the technology would pan out or maybe it wouldn't, but the Internet would was definitely about to go super

It's just me so.

And I only had a few thousand dollars and my brother joined and he brought like five thousand dollars, which was led. Yeah, at least for the first few months, there was literally only one computer. So the website when the website wasn't working. It was because I was compiling code and and even again an interat connection was pretty hard, but there was an Internet service provider on the flow blows.

So so you've lived in there.

Yeah, I think I've read that in Mays book. You showered at wymc A then, right, that's right. Yeah, it's smart though, I mean you were thrifty to what you had to do.

We just like had no no money, so we're gonna do you know, what did people think about zip tou generally? Was it like seen as a crazy idea or like do people even understand the Internet? Back then, most people didn't understand the Internet.

Most people didn't know Even on sand Hill Road, like we tried pitching people to invest in an inter company.

Most of the vcs we pitched too had never used the Internet.

Do you remember some of the VC firms you went to on sandial.

I remember most of time we wouldn't take a meeting, and if they didn't take a meeting, there were pretty bored and not say like who's who's made money on the Internet. No, like no one, okay, but the seed change occurred when Escape went public.

Yeah.

So the first thing I tried to do was not to start a company. I tried to get a job in Netscape, but they didn't reply to me. Oh no, oh man, So I just I tried. I tried hanging out in the lobby at Escape. I don't know who to talk to. I was really too shy to talk to you when I don't know. So it's like, Okay, I can't get a job at the only internet company that you know that that does Internet software, So then I'll try writing software.

So that's.

Kind of what happened there. Yeah, and then like I said, my brother came down and joined. This is like well like late ninety five.

And then.

In January ninety five, I think it was the.

There was there was a lot more interest in the internet stuff following the newscape I p O and that's the software software was more impressive, I guess.

So then we then more more. David aw invested so they're VC from on sand Hill Road and they.

They invested I think it was like three million dollars for effectively sixty percent of the company.

Wow, which we thought was crazy.

They're like, well, these get Learn gives us the money for nothing, they must be mad. Yeah, so they that this this seems like like crazy that they're to give so much money for a company that consisted the time of about five people, like literally I think five people.

At the time.

So but anyway, it worked out well for them in the end, so we hired a lot more people were both out the service, and they also ended up writing a bunch of software to bring the newspapers online. So Night Ritter, New York Times Company, Hurst well became investors and customers, and at one points of two which responsible for a significant section of the New York Times company website. Yeah, so I got to know the media industry pretty well.

Not use it, you know.

So it's like it's okay, we've got the best technology, but it's it's not being deployed properly. So but unfortunately compback came along and they compat compact It acquired Digital Equipment, and Digital Equipment had owned Aulti Vesta, which at the time was probably the best the search best search engine.

Ago that it was like owned by Verizon or something.

Yeah, and there was Ala.

Yeah, it was a crazy story. They you know, they failed to ocquord Google twice. You know, Microsoft offered them like forty billion or something and they turned.

It down and then Alibaba saved them out of nowhere.

Yeah, the Alibaba steak was worth more than the whole whole company I went.

By, like, yeah, huge amount. It was basically a proxy for Alibaba shares training.

Yeah exactly. But at one point, I mean at that time, like if you get back.

To say ninety eight, ninety nine, yeah, who seemed like an unstoppable juggernaut, Like literally like this company, will you know? It's a behemoth. Nobody could possibly defeat them. But anyway, and where's com back today?

Yeah?

So, but that was their idea, which is at least, if executed well, could have made sense.

Kimball, Yeah, what do you what are you guys doing?

We're recording a podcast?

Yeah, how do you want me to join?

Yeah?

So what do you remember about it?

Too? Well? Remember?

Yeah? So, but then the Internet came along with came this huge thing. I mean it was always it was always there, but it became a big deal. And then Elan was working on uh, working in Silicon Valley, and as I remember it, you know, I never heard a meeting where some of the Yellow Pages companies were thinking of doing sort of online yellow Pages, And.

No, where would I why would I have been? This is a long time ago.

You called me up and you said we should do you think you can do a better job, so we think we can do it.

Maybe you made that up to try and get Kimball interested.

How would I be in a meeting with Yellow Pages company.

I have no idea, that's what I remember Leafless.

I don't even know any of Yellow Persons.

Yeah, I agree with you now. But so it was like I think April of nineteen ninety five we started working on it, and the I guess the idea was fairly simple to take mapping and apply it to the Internet, and there were a few other companies trying to do it, but no one with the very cool technology of sort of what was called vector based mapping, which is which is what we all use today, where the map is actually alive, you know, not just a picture.

I was very ahead of its time.

I think we were the first. I know there were other people putting maps on the Internet, but I think we were the first to put vector based mapping, which is what the kind of technology used today on the Internet, and orginal directions. So it was cool. I remember my brother and I pressing go on his server at our office and took about sixty seconds for the first door to door directions to come up on the screen. And even sixty seconds was amazing. You're like, this is incredible.

That was unusual.

Yes, just like, yeah, well you cheated if you're using Java applets.

Yeah, this is when Java sucked and it was barely.

Yeah, this was like probably the most I think we even got some sort of recognition because it was the most advanced Java application on Java at the time because it was so ridiculously hot.

It was.

It was a really crappy technology at the time, but this this was done on it.

The thing is that if you if you downloaded the job outplet, we could we could transmit the vector data, not just a betmap. And this is what when everyone's on a modem, so something's on like you know, twenty covets motem or you know, trying to download a map image to take forever, whereas if you had downloading the vector data, is that locally rendered using the Java applet was super was relatively speaking, super fast.

That's what made it cool.

Sparta, I mean yeah, even like vector maps are even Google Maps using like raster maps a few years ago, like it seems like very out of its time.

Well, we were the first, I believe. I believe the two of us were the first humans to see the maps and little directions on the Internet, which I think is pretty cool, very cool cool.

Yeah, Garman came out. When did Garman first launch?

Well, they were an Internet based right, so you could you could. Actually I don't think Garman was even a player at this point. It was Navtek was the only place that we were. That's where we got the data from. Yeah, and they were building it for for Hurts Never Lost, which came out a few years lady. You know those things that no one uses in the GPS systems, really really bad technology. But the actual mapping data was amazing, and so we took that and applied it to the Internet.

So how did you guys get the engineering chops to pull this off? Because it sounds like you were so young you didn't really have any help and then you built this like cutting edge piece of technology.

Did you need to teach yourselves from I don't know what time, what age, but publisher for the.

Like blast Star game, right, yeah, when it was twelve.

Did you write any other cool stuff back then? Yeah?

I wrote a bunch of games. Yeah, and then like occasionally software for people like asked for software.

You know, you also worked for a video game company.

Yeah, our funily it was called rocket Science. Yeah, that's funny.

By the way, we took a SpaceX to yesterday.

It was insane. Thank you for that. That was amazing. Yeah, it was so good.

It's like Batman's layer in there.

It's really it is amazing.

But it gives your perspective on what Tesla's doing because the technology is so advanced and that there's you know, interchange of information there. Like the I know they used to incannel fuse right, was from SpaceX. When they couldn't get the power output right, it kept burning up the fuse in the in the performance models. So yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, it's pretty cool to see the SpaceX tech being applied to Tesla. I think I think there's a joint there's one joint employee between SpaceX and Tesla, and it's real. It's the materials is it the materials engineer?

What about you want.

In addition to el because they're just not that many humans on the planet that know how to do this stuff.

Well, it sounded like back in the old days it was was it just elam doing the coding or.

I mean I did a little for like HTML friend, not recently but no, there was there was no money, so you can employ it.

Yeah, so I strolled the software and you worked through the night.

Right, you just never according to his book, he never slept. I don't know.

I mean we we lived in a little office. I think this address was four to seventy Sherman Way in Palo Alto. It was probably Lea. Yeah, it was probably like fifteen feet wide by thirty feet long, with a

Yeah, recycled through the menu and Jack in the Box because what it was like just a few blocks away from and it was up in twenty four hours, over twenty four hours, and tried to get to you know, dinner at Coalbelta after ten a zero.

Yeah.

Yeah, So did they know you very well Jack in the Box.

Well they didn't really, they did know. And I remember one time I got a milk chick and I was so tired. I was like four in the morning and just needed to get some sugar for the rest of the night. And there was something in it, and I remember just flicking it out and just pertaining it didn't exist, kept drinking my milkshake. It was it was like that or that kind of like not in the zone to go back into Jack argue about a milkshake, but I don't want to not drink the milkshake.

And probably reason that food was like so cheap is that they had some people I think that had of food poisoning.

Right around that time when they got fit into a food poisoning scare.

Yeah, so that there, it was just very cheap to eat there, and I figured, like, you know, they probably you know, have taken some action because that after the food poisoning, so hopefully, Yeah.

There's just like eat a little bit of it, just tastes funny. Stop eating if it tastes funny.

You run out of things to eat because after like the seventeenth chicken feet at Peta, you like can't do it.

The yacha boll, remember that is that one good? It's actually it veried, but it was it was edible. It was so bad.

Which one one? The chariochy baal teriochy ball wasn't bad. There was the sort of sour dough grilled grilled cheese thing that was wasn't bad.

Yeah, those were the good old days, right, I mean it was honestly good days.

I mean we just we were just hoping that people would let us stay in the country.

We weren't really that word about what we were eating.

We were just doing everything we could to to get to get someone to support the company. We didn't really understand. I didn't understand the venture capital that much. So we were doing a seed round and angel around and doing our best to talk to everyone and anyone we could find. We had a very good friend with us, Greg Curry, who now passed away, who was older than us by about ten years I think, And yeah, it was a wonderful mentor helped us out and put a little money

Yeah, and then we did like part of it or something.

But I think once we had the Java Java Map, which was really quite impressive. I mean, if you've never seen if you're never you've never seen Google maps or Java maps before. It really is a remarkable thing to see. We started to go to we got it. We got some audiences with some venture capitalists, and it just went from we were starving, we had no car. Well, the car we had it broken, the will fell off, the wheel fell off, the wheel fell off. Yeah, what kind

Yeah, the one that my mom mest some pictures of.

I think there's I think there's still a there's a there's a car of in the in the road at page Mill and night alchemmed. Literally the wal came off, will fell off, and and and the guy literally in the air section just drove it without the wheel to the to the silence.

It's pretty much time for the junk yard at that point, because the whole car is falling apart. So yeah, it's like the point which the wheel falls off, it's time to go to the junkyard.

In the morning. No, that was that was way more.

That was way later because we already had the deal, but we were we were not I don't know if you were, but I was not legally in America. So I was illegally there.

I was legally there, but but I was mentioning student work.

At a student work you you were you were doing you were supposed to be doing a PhD in Stanford.

And yeah, I decided not to do so. And it was like I was allowed to do work sort of supporting whatever, you know, I don't know.

I tried to get a visa, but there's just there's just not no visa you can get to do a startup.

Unfortunately, nobody was paying you anything either, and so so we ended up.

We got a deal from from from More David out and uh, this really high well respected DC firm, and we had to break the news to them that that that we take the bus. We took the bus to get to to the offices. We don't have a car, and we don't have an apartment, and were illegal.

No, no, no, you're illegal.

And so I was legal, but my visa was going to run out in two years, okay, yeah, but I was definita.

We needed to get it sorted. And so, uh they were great. I mean they're the lead investor's wife was from Canada. They knew the whole challenge of being an immigrant and we had Canadian passports, and so uh. They they funded the company and they gave us some money to each buy a car, and they gave us a salary so could rent an apartment, and they I got

So I.

Flew out there planning to fly back on Sunday and the meeting was on Monday. And I get to the airport on Sunday and the border control they they called me out. They're like, you're you're you're going down to work. You're not going down for for for travel. I was like, no, no, no, I'm going out to work. I explained, Actually no, I didn't. I said I'm not going to work because I think

Go ahead, wow'z I.

I got on the late night flight from Buffalo to San Francisco and we made the meeting in the morning.

So yeah, I mean, technically we're not going out of work because that would have required meant you of being paid something.

Yeah.

I wasn't actually paid anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, technically we weren't. Actually you're not actually breaking the law. We're not breaking the law because we we were not being paid anything. Yeah. I should have told them that the Border Control.

Anyway, it was very getting paid for something. No, no, yeah, you're right exactly. We were not not being paid exactly. But yeah.

So so then they approved the deal that Monday, and we started buildings up too, you know. And it wasn't a business model for you know, back in those days, well it was.

It was kind of like a pre like YELP is like business model is similar to sort of yell But it was at a time when most businesses didn't didn't know what the internet was so and most people didn't haven't email address or yeah, we went online flinging to.

Them what a website was. The internet was kind of this cool thing. People were using Netscape browser and I think by the end of it, we got eighteen thousand businesses to be on our service, pay pain to be like with websites and everything, you know a lot of the things that you can do today, like automatically build websites. We built a lot of those sort of tools to make it easier to build websites. And we had to sell door to door.

Because that was the only way.

Did you hire people or is it just to you guys going.

No, No, We had a team by that time because we could hire a team. But I remember talking to the Yellow Pages guy once and it was amazing. That was the head of the Toronto Star that they owned all the.

Yellow Pages in the Yellow Pages will never die famous last.

Work literally because we went to talk to him partner. We said, we want to part with you and let's just be one of your partners to do to put the Yellow Pages online. And he picked up the Yellow Pages. This book, this big thick book that full of as this multi billion dollar Redney stream.

I mean, these guys were so arrogant and so like we are kings of the world and it will never end.

He picked he picked up this book and grew it at me and he said, do you ever think you're going to replace this? And I was just literally like, I mean my head and my head is like, dude, you're already dead.

The anti Tesla people, you know, guess cars.

Will never die. Yeah, But I mean, like we we saw the growth of the Internet, we saw the use of the Yellow Pages, We saw even more our competitors and stuff, and no one was using the paper yellow Pages if you had the choice, yes, exactly, no one. And so so at that point, very few people who are on the internet. So it was really a question of really is the Internet going to succeed, which we were huge believers in, and these guys were not, you know, they didn't even clue in.

Yeah, there was like one one point country after another. We say like, listen, we'll just put your l pays online, gonna cost very little. You know, you're still own all the content and everything. And they're like, just throw us, throw us.

Out of the office. Yeah, you know, like no, and how do you even suggest this?

Extraordinary?

And we're like, okay, I guess we'll just build it and we're Yeah.

But it's been interesting to watch over the years where like in PayPal, the competitors were not uh banks, you know, even though that should have been the competitive No, there were there were banks that try to compete, but wasn't it eBay mostly that was sort of the band.

Bull point.

Yeah, that which but it wasn't exactly like PayPal. But generally EVA had an issue with trying to get payment for stuff like like two.

People would have to mail checks to each other.

Yeah, that's gonna work.

If you have mail a check and you receive the check and how do you know the checks real? Then you've got to you know, cash check and take you know, two to five day for the money to transfer. So it could take two weeks before somebody had confirmed payment and then I then they would ship you the item and so that the transaction velocity was very low. As a result, if you had instant payment, you improved transaction velostity dramatically, like factor of you know, maybe three to five.

Yeah.

I've just sort of seen that the when you when in into industry is disrupted, that you worry about the major players. I mean, when we saw a test that we were aspiring to be the GM of the twenty first century. Four years later, GM went bankrupt. You're like, oh, okay, we don't we don't read. We're good, We're good, We're good, and uh and and it's you know, whoever is going to be the main competitors. You know, we don't know yet, but uh, it may not be the entrenched players, may

Yeah you do PayPal after zup too, Why do didn't you go like straight into sustainable.

Energy, right, so.

Kind of recall things that are quite a while. So it would have been like ninety eight when Compact offered to acquire zip to, and which I think it was a good thing to put them to acquire it because as I mentioned that, the newspapers actually when the media companies had too much control over zip too, so they were not we had great technology that was not being deployed effectively, and they would just generally be averse to anything that could remotely be competitive with their new papers.

And then.

At the time I also thought what we should try to do is just do all the financial things as well, not just payments. I still think that's really what PayPal should have done, but whatever, it's what areuner the bridge at this point. And then there was a company that was formed around the same time called Confinity, which was petertialed, Max Left and Luke Nosak, David Sachs, Ken Howard and neberthos and at x dot com there's also like Jeremy.

Stuffleman and.

Who created yelp roll off Botza, who then went on to run Sequoia and and found YouTube that was it was x dot com.

So we just had this like.

Two companies with like a crazy amount of talent. X dot Common Confinity and Confinity started as a palm pilot cryptography company. Back when you you could communicate via the infrared port of a home pilot, Yeah, they had one. So it was like, so you could you can basically communicate cryptotokens between pompouts using the infrared port and then reconcile them on a piece on a PC. And obviously that's they evolved to go on the in the payments direction as well. And we were both in Palo Alto,

So we merged Confinity and x dot com.

And raised million dollars in the space of three weeks in March of two thousand. Yeah, and then April of the market went into free fall.

Yeah.

So yeah, I was like, I remember that that was insane and we kind of thought it was going to go into free fall, but like, we better get this thing done fast or we're both gonna die.

So and so.

Xo com was technically the acquire of Confinity, but it was a you know, fifty point one and forty nine point nine or something like that. And and then there's a lot of drama that there was so much drama at at x dot com. And the company was called x dot com for about a year and then we changed the company name to the product name. The product the product was PayPal, but all the incorporation documents and everything, it's all my incorporation.

Documents that came up with PayPal name.

I actually don't know.

People call you guys the PayPal in mafia. Now, you know, deal with that in this book.

You know, I don't know who did the PayPal. I was never a huge fan of PayPal as a name, the reason being that I thought it made sense for the company to kind of broader, be much broader. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you don't know yourself to payments, then necessarily people want to transfer money out of the system. And as soon as they transfer money out of the system, the efficiency of the database drops dramatically because now you're

Get a loan, and that kind of thing, and.

That these were all ancelary to accelerating the velocity and accuracy and security of payments. Then if basically payper would be all the money is, it would just suck all the money out of the banks. And they wouldn't be the banks would go away. Yeah, so any plan you're going to do with the I wrote, if they're just execute the business, you know, the product plan I wrote in July two thousands, let's just do that.

But they I talked to them several times, but they didn't do it.

So why did you? And PayPal kind of part way of what was really the drama that led to that, you know separation.

Ultimately, Well, things were very dicey in two thousand. You know, companies were dying like all over the place, so obvious here of the combined company, and we're doing quite well from a growth standpoint. We're like adding one hundred thousand users a month type of thing, which back then was a lot. But financially things were tough and we needed to raise financing around We're also like there's some technical questions around what what code architecture would we go with?

We want to centralize database.

So so I was kind of against the PayPal branding and and I wanted to Basically, I wanted to do a bunch of things that seemed extremely risky, and I think those things would have would have worked out. But at a time when companies are dropping like flies, and I'm proposing that we do all these things that sound very risky, this is this is just much too scary for the rest of the team.

You seem to be attracted to crazy ideas that other people are like that, like, you know, I think the Autopilot one is a great example where everyone's kind of trying the spatial approach to self driving. You know, they're doing way more for ten years nobody cares, and you come out and say, hey, we think vision is the way forward and deep learning and vision you know, will take us all the way there. How do you find like, yeah, the courage inside to I mean.

People have to be coming up with you all the time and you know, thinking that you're an idiot or it's never going to happen, and you know, how do you find that in yourself to like go through all that resistance and still be confident in you know, your thesis.

I mean I try to be hyper rational, so it's not you know, it's like if this is if the reasoning fits, and you're not violating loads of physics or something, then that the thing you should do. So and I guess at the other day, if we lost all the money, I wouldn't as long as we didn't lose other people's money. I guess I just lost lose my money out of mind. These things just don't seem that crazy to me, so like I think, if

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