hi I'm Elon musk um I'm the
co-founder of tesla SpaceX
uh PayPal and zip2 I certainly didn't
expect to be
to be uh for any of these things to
happen honestly
yeah I just you know I know I wanted to
be involved in technology
um and uh, in fact, the only reason i
started a company back in 95 an internet
company was because
i couldn't get it there were only a few
internet companies and i couldn't get a
job at any of them
i tried to get a job at netscape um and
uh
sent my resume and i tried hanging out
in the lobby but i was too shy to talk
to anyone
and and then i was like okay well i
guess I'll have to start a company
because I can't get a job anywhere
you know there are American heroes who
don't like this idea
Neil Armstrong gene cernan have both
testified
against commercial space flight and the
way that you're developing it
and i wonder what you think of that
i was very sad to see that because those
guys are
yeah you know those guys are heroes of
mine so it's really tough
when you had that third failure in a row
did you think i need to pack this in
never
why not i don't ever give up technically
what i thought was well i'll take half
the money from paypal
and if i lose half of it that's okay
but then of course the companies
encounter difficulties and then
have a choice of the either like let the
company die
or put you know all the money
into the companies and so
i really didn't want the companies to
die so i put all the money in the
companies
yeah and then i had to borrow money for
friends to pay living expenses
and then i think the final thing i would
encourage you to do is
now is the time to take risk as you get
older your obligations
increase so and once you have a family
you start taking risk not just for
yourself but for your family as well it
gets much harder
to do things that might not work out
um so now is the time to do that
before you before you have those
obligations so i would encourage you to
take risks now and do something well
first of all i'd say starting a business
is not for everyone you know
so uh generally starting a business
i'd say number one is have a high pain
threshold
that's it um there's a friend of mine
who's got a good saying which is that
starting a company is like eating glass
and staring into the abyss
okay that's um that's generally what
happens
because um when you first start a
company there's lots of optimism
and things that things are great and
then so happiness at first is high
then you encounter all sorts of issues
uh and happiness will steadily decline
and then you'll go through a whole world
of hurt you'll if you succeed
and in most cases you will not succeed
and tesla almost didn't succeed came
very close to failure
um then if you succeed then
after a long time you will finally get
back to happiness
a lot of times uh you know entrepreneur
will
come up with something which is only
slightly better and it's
it's not can't just be slightly better
it's got to be a lot better
when trying different things you've got
to have some acceptance of failure
as you're alluding to earlier failure
must be an option if failure is not an
option it's going to result in extremely
conservative choices
and you may not may get something even
worse than
lack of innovation things may go
backwards
[Music]
you've said that this has been the
toughest year for you the most sort of
passing year for you
like why well i mean tesla really faced
the severe
uh threat threat of death due to the
model 3 production ramp
essentially the company was bleeding
money like crazy and and just
if if we didn't solve these problems in
a very short period of time uh we would
die
uh and it was extremely difficult to
solve them how close to death did you
come
we are within single digit weeks
22 hours a day or like what how many
hours yeah seven days a week
sleeping in the factory uh i worked
every day from the i worked in the oaks
in the paint shop
general assembly body shop you ever
worry about yourself imploding like it's
just too much
absolutely no one should
put this many hours into work
this is not good and people should not
work this hard i'm not
they should not do this this is very
painful
painful in what sense it's because my
ears my brain
and my heart so it's
this is not recommended for anyone i
just did it because
if i didn't do it then tesla
your chances would die if you're trying
to figure out what others love but you
don't love it it's
really hard to make that great so when
you work on something
if you fall in love with it that's
that's a good sign
and then don't worry about if others do
if you do others will do you see
apple building a car and that may be
being a threat to you
well i would encourage
more participation um by whoever it is
to create electric vehicles
um it's it's quite hard to do um
but i think uh companies like apple will
probably make a compelling electric car
it seems like the obvious thing to do
well there's a ton of failures along the
way that's for sure
um like so
as i said for spacex the first three
launches failed
and uh we actually were just barely able
to scrape
together enough parts and money to do
the
the fourth launch that fourth launch had
failed we would have been dead
so multiple failures along the way um
i tried very hard to get the right
expertise in for
for spacex i tried hard to to find a
great
chief engineer for the rocket but it not
the good chief engineers wouldn't join
and the bad ones well there was no point
in hiring them so i ended up being chief
engineer of the rocket
so if i could have found somebody better
than we would have maybe had
less than three failures all you want to
do particularly if you're starting a
company you need to work super hard
so what what does super hard mean well
when my brother and i were starting our
first company uh
instead of getting an apartment we just
rented us a small office
and we slept on the couch and we
we showered at the the ymca and uh we're
so hot up we had just
one computer so the website was up
during the day
uh and i was coding at night seven days
a week
all the time there are times when things
don't go well
and then uh that's quite dispersing for
sure
and so then it's difficult to proceed
with the same level of enthusiasm
um but um
but i do think like i do think the
things that we're doing are
you know pretty important to the future
um and if we don't succeed then we'll be
certainly pointed to
as a reason why people shouldn't even
try for these things
work hard like i mean every waking hour
that's that's the
the thing i would i would say if you
particularly if you're starting a
company
um and i mean if you do simple math say
like okay if somebody else is working
50 hours and you're working 100 you'll
get twice as done
as much done in the course of a year as
the other company
if you're if you're in a race um is it
don't worry about what how the other
what the other runners are doing just
wrong you can train yourself to
to pay attention to the tiny details i
think almost anyone can
although it it this is a very much
double-edged sword because then you see
all the little details and then little
things drive you crazy
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