← Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
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- [00:01]
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When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there's no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [00:31]
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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Today's discussion is SpaceX trillionaires winners and losers. So. So here's the discussion with SpaceX and I was just reminded of this monumental event by one of our close colleagues, Jeremy Core, who was talking to me about buying some SpaceX shares. And I think the thing about SpaceX that I think is so interesting is the, is the different pieces of this from a social standpoint, of this will make Elon Musk a trillionaire, at least reportedly a trillionaire, which will be the first trillionaire in the world. Other than maybe inflation adjusted kings from thousands of years ago. It'll be the first true trillionaire. And I think that's fascinating in terms of what it means from a social standpoint in terms of how people think about this. On one hand, here's a person who has developed space travel, electronic vehicles, Starlink and so many other kinds of things. And we've got a sort of an economy that rewards people that are this crazy, off the charts ambitious and the ability to have a vision and be successful. So, so God bless them. On the other hand, you've got this incredible society where people feel like there's somebody that's worth so much more than them. And even if that person's created so much wealth, it creates so much irritation amongst other people that just don't have the kind of wealth or that kind of money. And of course, compared to Elon Musk, none of us have money, none of us have anything like that or that kind of situation. So it's a fascinating sort of social economic situation. When a person gets that rich, should he be rewarded for what he built and the ideas he had, the vision he had, or is it just not fair? It just doesn't work and people's opinions on that are all over the place. I'm probably more libertarian and think it is what it is. He creates a ton of wealth, we want to encourage that and so be it. And it doesn't mean we tax the heck out of him or try and steal that money from him or take that money from him, we sort of reward it. But everybody's got different opinions on this, whether there's some ratio of wealth of the wealthiest person to the poorest people that we should be paying attention to. I do know that even if he created it all, it creates tremendous societal tension amongst people that are, that are struggling or comparatively struggling. Now the competitive viewpoint of the world is I remember being at a law firm, still in a law firm, and even if you made great money compared to the rest of the world, if you made $3 less than the person down the hall from you, you could still be irritated. And that's part of how money works, I think. Now when I get past this to winners and losers, there's some big winners in this thing. The people that invested in SpaceX earlier winners I saw the investment banking fees will be several hundred million dollars. I saw Goldman, I think made a hundred million dollars today. Some other investment bankers made $500 million today. So there'll be some big winners in this. The early investors, the people that can exit and then there'll be losers like myself. And when I say hoosers like myself, I say that somewhat jokingly, but a couple different times over the last decade, somebody had come to me and said, do you want to buy some SpaceX shares? At one point we were this close to doing so and the party that we're buying them with got, got nixed out of it, or at least we were told they got nixed out of it so we couldn't buy SpaceX shares. I don't know if they kept them or they bought them, I have no idea. But we didn't get them. Finally, somehow or another, indirectly, through another investment vehicle, we'll own some SpaceX shares. I have no idea whether that's going to be $3 worth of shares or $300,000 worth of shares or more or less, I just have no idea because it was part of a pool of money that was put into a hedge fund that will get. And we won't get the shares for six months because they're locked up for six months. So by the time we get them, the boom might be all the, all the way off the rose. And so I might get almost nothing for the SpaceX shares that I own. But. But I do think the whole discussion of SpaceX, the ability for one person to be so wealthy but who has created so much value compared to the general populist perspective on it, I'm sure this whole thing with SpaceX will cause a tizzy from Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the guy in New York, Zoran Mondami and so many others. And that guy in California, the crazy guy, Ro Khanna. No offense to anybody's politics, but it also caused lots of discussion on the other side as well. But a fascinating thing to watch. And thank you to Jeremy Corn and Grace Keller for today's inspiration for the episode. Again, SpaceX trillionaires winners and Losers. I count myself as probably one of the losers here, but it is what it is. Life goes on. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Thank you.
- [05:18]
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When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or to stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.