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

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Back in 2013, Old Interview of Elon Musk!!!"

Podcast: Elon Musk Thinking
Host: Astronaut Man
Date: October 14, 2025
Note: This episode features an archival interview with Elon Musk, capturing his journey and philosophy up to the early 2010s.

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Overview

This episode delivers an in-depth, career-spanning conversation with Elon Musk, recounting formative childhood stories, his path from South Africa to Silicon Valley, the founding of Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, and candid insights into innovation, risk, leadership, and Musk’s visions for humanity's future—on Earth and beyond. The tone is introspective, humorous, and deeply personal, providing a rare window into Musk’s mindset during a pivotal era.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Early Life and Unconventional Beginnings

• Childhood Rebellion:

  • At age six, Musk defied being grounded by walking 10-12 miles across town to attend his cousin’s birthday party, leading his mother to "freak out" and Musk to hide in a tree.
    • “I just started walking to my cousin’s house. I think it took me about four hours... then climbed a tree and refused to come down.” – Elon Musk [01:45]

• Early Entrepreneurship & Coding:

  • By 12, Musk was selling video games he programmed himself to afford better computers and games.
    • “The money wasn’t the end goal for you. It was more a means to an end.” – Interviewer [03:43]
    • “Yeah, basically I’d spend money on, yeah, better computers and Dungeons and Dragons modules and things like that. Nerdmaster 3000, basically.” – Musk [03:49]

Intellectual Curiosity and Existential Questions

• Influential Books:
  • Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy profoundly shaped Musk’s outlook, teaching that asking the right questions is essential to finding meaningful answers.
    • “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.” – Musk [05:31]
  • Musk’s adolescence was marked by an existential crisis, reading Nietzsche and Schopenhauer (not recommended for teens), offset by the optimism of Hitchhiker’s Guide.
    • “You should not read at age 14. It's bad. It's really negative.” [05:15]

The Move to North America

• Pursuit of Innovation:
  • Musk was drawn to North America, especially Silicon Valley, as the hub of technological progress.
    • “Whenever I’d read about cool technology, it would tend to be in the United States…” – Musk [07:16]
• Family Dynamics:
  • Overcame logistical (and parental) challenges to immigrate; leveraging his mother’s Canadian birth to secure Canadian citizenship as a “backdoor” to the US.

Early Ventures: Zip2 and PayPal

• Zip2:
  • Musk founded Zip2 to help newspapers and media companies move online—a fact underappreciated at the time as most didn’t “know what the Internet was.”
  • Name regrets: “We were just incredibly stupid at the time…I don’t know why the hell we chose that stupid name.” [16:07]
• PayPal/X.com:
  • X.com evolved into PayPal after focusing on the “easy” feature of money transfer via email, integrating security while maintaining usability.
    • “Why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money is. So why do people rob PayPal? Same reason.” – Musk [20:45]
    • “Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.” [36:00]
• Overcoming Adversity:
  • Regulatory hurdles, bugs, and competition threatened PayPal’s survival.
    • “Visa and MasterCard were trying to shut us down. EBay was trying to shut us down. FTC was trying to shut us down. There were a lot of battles there.” [23:24]

Post-PayPal: The Relentless Drive

• No Desire for Leisure:
  • “The idea of like lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. That sounds horrible to me.” – Musk [25:13]

SpaceX: Vision and Reality

• The Mars Greenhouse Concept:
  • Musk’s original plan was a philanthropic Mars mission, hoping to inspire the public space program with images of life on Mars.
    • “Green plants in red background would be that [the ‘money shot’].” – Musk [28:09]
• Rethinking Rocketry:
  • Concluded rockets’ high cost was surmountable, especially if made reusable.
    • “If one could make them reusable like airplanes, then the cost of rocketry would drop dramatically.” [34:35]
• On Failure:
  • “Failure is bad...But if something’s important enough, then you do it even though the risk of failure is high.” – Musk [35:12]
• Entrepreneurial Advice:
  • “The most likely outcome is that it’s not going to work. And they should reconcile themselves to that strong possibility.” [35:15]

Tesla & Renewable Energy

• Motivation for EVs:
  • Childhood obsession with electric cars, disbelief when GM crushed their EV1s.
    • “What bigger wake up call do you need? The customers are really upset about this...That kind of blew my mind.” [38:45]
• Tesla Formation & Reluctance to Lead:
  • Musk reluctantly became Tesla’s CEO, trying to avoid running two startups.
    • “The idea of being CEO of two startups at the same time was not appealing and shouldn’t be appealing…really terrible idea.” [42:56]
• SolarCity Genesis:
  • Encouraged cousins to create a solar company: “If you guys will do a solar company, I’ll...provide all the funding and whatever guidance help I can provide.” [45:47]
• The Real Bottleneck:
  • Saw logistics—installing and managing distributed solar, not panel efficiency—as the main challenge.

Innovation, Regulation, and Government

• Perception of Innovation:
  • Disagrees that innovation has plateaued; cites AI, genomics, electric cars.
    • “We will even see the flying car.” – Musk [49:39]
• Regulation as a Barrier:
  • Overregulation stifles car innovation, such as side mirror requirements.
    • “It’s just crazy how much regulation there is, down to what the headlamps are supposed to be like.” [51:00]
• Minimalist Government with Intervention for Externalities:
  • Advocate for carbon taxes as a corrective measure for climate change.
    • “You want to err on the side of taxing things that are probably bad and not tax things that are good.” [54:13]
    • “We’re playing Russian roulette [with the atmosphere]...And as each year goes by, we’re loading more rounds in the chamber.” [57:12]

Leadership, Team-Building, and Personal Discipline

• Dealing with Criticism:
  • On Neil Armstrong’s public skepticism: “That was kind of troubling...Neil Armstrong was kind of a hero...it kind of sucks.” [61:53]
• Team Motivation:
  • Essential to create compelling evidence and vision early.
    • “Try to get to that point as soon as possible and then iterate to make it as real as possible as fast as possible.” [63:27]
• Time Management:
  • Tight structuring of weeks between SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity; perpetual connectivity via smartphones; sleep disciplined to 6–6.5 hours. [64:29–65:07]
• Children and Legacy:
  • Open to his sons joining the companies if earned, values long-term family stewardship as with Ford. [66:59–68:55]

The Future: IPOs, Hyperloop, and Mars

• IPO Reluctance:
  • Concerned about public markets’ short-termism endangering long-term visions (like going to Mars). [69:33–70:25]
• Side Projects:
  • Hyperloop whitepaper delayed by Tesla milestones and SolarCity IPO pressures; sees multiple ambitious innovations converging in future. [70:45–71:27]
• Mars Aspiration:
  • Remains committed to leading (and personally joining) the effort to colonize Mars; “I want to die on Mars, just not on impact.” [72:52]
  • “I’d like to be able to go to Mars while I’m still able to manage the journey reasonably well. So, I think…ideally in my 50s.” [73:39]

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Notable Quotes

• “Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.” – Musk [36:00]
• “If something’s important enough, then you do it even though the risk of failure is high.” – Musk [35:12]
• “We’re playing Russian roulette [with the atmosphere]...as each year goes by, we’re loading more rounds in the chamber.” – Musk [57:12]
• “The idea of like lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst.” – Musk [25:13]
• “No, I think Steve Jobs is way cooler than I am.” – Musk [59:05]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Childhood Rebellion / Early Tech (00:55–04:00)
• Philosophy, Reading, and Existential Crisis (05:08–06:34)
• Immigration to North America (07:16–09:00)
• Founding Zip2, PayPal, and Lessons in Naming & Scaling (15:00–18:07)
• SpaceX Origin & Greenhouse on Mars Plan (25:42–34:57)
• On Failure and Entrepreneurship (35:12–36:22)
• Tesla, Electric Cars & GM EV1 Story (37:05–39:00)
• SolarCity and the True Challenge of Solar (44:17–47:31)
• Innovation, Regulation, and Government’s Role (48:54–54:13)
• Climate Change and Russian Roulette (56:13–57:12)
• Leadership, Feedback, and Criticism (61:28–62:03)
• Time Management & Family/Life Balance (64:29–66:59)
• On IPOs & Long-Term Projects (69:16–70:25)
• Hyperloop & Personal Future (70:39–73:49)
• Final Reflections: The Mars Dream (72:40–74:07)

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Memorable Moments

• Nerdmaster 3000: Musk’s self-deprecating label for his computer/game spending as a teen.
• Burning Man Epiphanies: The origin of SolarCity and the nature of “shower thoughts.”
• Meeting with Steve Jobs: Amusingly snubbed even after being introduced by Larry Page.
• Electric Car Dating Fail: Musk’s first college date: “Do you ever think about electric cars?” [11:19]
• Climbing a Tree Rather Than Facing Mom: Musk’s creative escape from childhood discipline.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a rare, candid look at Elon Musk’s early mindset, blending humor, deep thought, vulnerabilities, and relentless drive. For listeners seeking to understand the why behind Musk’s boundary-pushing ambitions—and the personal grit required to pursue them—this interview is both inspiring and informative.

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Transcript

[Dutch Company Representative]

Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24,7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

[Interviewer]

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 the audience how you got there?

[Elon Musk]

All right. Well, I mean, this was when I was six, so the memory's a little fuzzy at this point. But as I recall, yeah, I was grounded for some reason. I didn't know why, but I think I felt it was unjust and I really wanted to go to this party, my cousin's party, who was five, a kid's party. So at first I was going to take my bike, but then, and I told my mom this, which is a mistake, and she told me some story about how you needed a license for a bike and the police would stop me. So I wasn't 100% sure if that was true or not, but I thought I'd better walk just in case. So, yeah, I sort of thought I knew the way, but it was clear across town. So I don't know, it was 10 or 12 miles away. It's really quite far, further than I realized, actually. And so I just started walking to my cousin's house. I think it took me about four hours. And just as my mom was leaving that party with my brother and sister, she saw me walking down the road and freaked out. And then I saw, she saw me. So I then sprinted to my cousin's house and I was just about two blocks away and then climbed a tree and refused to come down.

[Interviewer]

So the first of many rule breaking adventures for Elon Musk. So by the time you were 12, you're already an entrepreneur and making a profit. I understand. You, you earned $500 equivalent in rand for creating a video game. Can you tell us about that and what the inspiration was?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, sure. So when I was about 10, I walked into a computer store in South Africa and saw an actual computer. I previously had some early sort of precursors to the Atari system, and then I got the Atari system, which I'm sure a lot of people here have played, and. But then I saw you could actually have a computer where you could make your own games. And it was a Commodore VIC 20. So that 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. So I started programming games and then selling games in order to actually buy more games. Sort of a circular thing and more games and better computers and that kind of thing.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, basically I'd spend money on, yeah, better computers and Dungeons and Dragons modules and things like that. Nerdmaster 3000, basically.

[Interviewer]

So I understand at that time you were heavily into comics. I'm curious to know, did you love Iron man, the comic Iron Man?

[Elon Musk]

I did kind of like Iron man. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

I did not. That was pretty much, I would say zero percent. I would have said zero percent chance.

[Interviewer]

What kind of kid wear you? I mean, can you. Can you look back and see yourself? Were you a bit of a loner kid, bookish kid?

[Elon Musk]

I wasn't all that much of a loner, at least not willingly, but I certainly was quite. I was 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.

[Interviewer]

I understand Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that wonderful book by Douglas Adams. That was a key book for you. What was it about that book that fired your imagination?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. So I guess when I was around 12 or 13, I had a company, existential crisis, and I was reading various books on trying to figure out the meaning of life and what does it all mean? Because it starts seeming quite meaningless. And then we happened to have some books by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in the house, which you should not read at age 14. It's bad. It's really negative. But then I read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is quite positive, I think, and. And it sort of highlighted 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 to the degree that we can better understand the universe, then we better know what questions to ask. And then whatever the question is that most approximates what's the meaning of life? You know, that's the question we could ultimately get closer to understanding. And so I thought, well, to the degree that we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness and knowledge, human knowledge, then that would be a good thing.

[Interviewer]

Wow. So you're having these deep thoughts at what age? 10, 14?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, sort of in the puberty, I guess, 13 through 15, probably the most traumatic years.

[Interviewer]

And so by the time you were 17, you were actually left. Right. I assume you hatched the plan earlier when you were around 14, 15.

[Elon Musk]

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

[Interviewer]

But by 17, 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?

[Elon Musk]

Well, just whenever I'd read about cool technology, it would tend to be in the United States, you know, or more broadly, North America, including Canada. So I kind of wanted to be where the cutting edge of technology was. And of course within the United States, Silicon Valley is where the heart of things is. So although at the time I didn't know where Silicon Valley wise, it sounded like some mythical place really. So, yes, I wanted to come to the U.S. i tried to convince my mother or father, who were divorced, if either one of them would move to the United States, then I could get there. At one point I convinced my father, but then he reneged, unfortunately.

[Interviewer]

So you had him convinced and then.

[Elon Musk]

He changed his mind? He did say yes, and then he changed his mind.

[Interviewer]

Why?

[Elon Musk]

I don't know. I guess he was fairly established. He's an engineer. He's sort of established in South Africa and didn't want to have to go through that again in another country.

[Interviewer]

Right, so you got on that plane all by yourself at 17?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, so I actually got. My mother was born in Canada and actually her father was 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 filled up the forms for her and got her a Canadian passport. And me too. And then as soon as, within three weeks of getting my Canadian passport, I was in Canada.

[Interviewer]

And then you ended up at University of Pennsylvania. He did a degree in physics and business.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, so I was in Canada for a few years at Queens University. Got a scholarship to Go down to University of Pennsylvania because one of the downsides of coming to university in 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 South Africa or find some way to pay it here. And fortunately I got a scholarship at UPenn and so did dual undergraduate business and business at UPenn Wharton.

[Dutch Company Representative]

Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24,7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

[Interviewer]

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 you had a flash of inspiration? These are the three areas that are important and I want to concentrate on. Or how did that inspiration come to you?

[Elon Musk]

I think I was thinking about it for a couple years during sort of freshman and sophomore year at Queen's and then also at UPenn. And I was trying to think what would most influence the future? What are the problems 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 was maybe not the best thing. Actually met a woman I dated briefly in college who now works at Scientific American as a writer. And she related the anecdote that we went on a date. All I was talking about was electric cars. That was not a winning conversation.

[Interviewer]

So it was a bit of a monologue, was it?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. She said the first question I asked her was do you ever think about electric cars? She never does.

[Interviewer]

So you learn from that. That wasn't the best shout out line.

[Elon Musk]

It wasn't great. Recently it's been more effective.

[Interviewer]

There you go. I know this man. That's wonderful. We'll get onto Tesla soon. But I want to go 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?

[Elon Musk]

The most positive sense? Really?

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

Well, I was at Penn and there was a professor who was chairman of a company in Silicon Valley that was working on advanced capacitors for use in electric cars, or potentially for use in electric cars, as it turns out. They're way too expensive. But. But I thought, well, this is really awesome because 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 pretty much as good as it gets. So I got a summer job here, was in Los Gatos actually at Pinnacle Research doing electrolytic Ultra Fasters which were. But they had a. The problem was that they used a ruthenium tantalum oxide and there was I think only a few tons of ruthenium mined in the world, so not very scalable. And they'd sell it to you by the sort of milligram. So there's a problem. But it had a pretty high energy density. It's sort of roughly equivalent to a lead acid battery, which for a capacitor is huge.

[Interviewer]

But you ended up then after that at Stanford.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, so then I thought, well, Stanford is in Silicon Valley, sort of epicenter. And so that's where I wanted to come here, Stanford at Berkeley. And Stanford's sort of sunnier, so I like to.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, I figured. Well, so this is the summer of 95 and I've been working on some Internet software because the three things I thought would depict the world were the Internet, sustainable energy and space exploration, making life multi planetary. So. But on the Internet thing I just couldn't figure out how to make enough money to feed myself because if I didn't make money then I would run out of food and die. So that was not good.

[Interviewer]

Basic needs.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, literally. So whereas if I was a student then I could be a teaching assistant and do various things and do research on electric vehicle tech technologies. That was my default plan. But. But then I also thought that if I, if I did a PhD at Stanford, then I could, I would spend several years watching the Internet go through this incredibly rapid growth phase and that would be really difficult to, to handle. Like it's like you really wanted to be doing something.

[Interviewer]

So you saw the wave growing, sort.

[Elon Musk]

Of really seemed like things were going to take off. Although nobody had made any money on the Internet at the time, in 95 there was really, nobody was making any money on the Internet. And in fact, even on Sand Hill Road, people were like, what's the Internet? They were. Amazingly, when we tried to get funding for a company, and I think it was November or something of 95 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.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, literally. It's like, isn't that they're literally asking, isn't that something that the government and universities use? Like, for now, yeah. But then Netscape went public in late 95, I think it was. And then after that, even though a lot of venture capitalists still didn't understand it and still hadn't used it, somebody had made money on it. So now that it was on their radar. Yeah. So when we went to get funding the second time we tried to get funding, everyone was interested.

[Interviewer]

Right. So this company was Zip2.

[Elon Musk]

That's right. Terrible name.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What was the reason for that name?

[Elon Musk]

Well, we were just incredibly stupid at the time. I think that's the main reason for that name. 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 two sips seem kind of speedy. I don't know why the hell we chose that stupid name. And it has a digit in it. It's like, why would you pick it? Because it could be zip T O, it could be zip T wo it could be zip T O O. So like, people, like, literally spelled the name, every variation, which is bad if you got a URL and you don't have the other ones. So Zip2 started off as basically, like I said, we're trying to figure out how to make enough money to exist as a company. So since there wasn't really any advertising money being made, we thought we could help existing companies get online, bring their stuff online. So we developed software that helped bring a lot of newspapers and media companies online, because a lot of them just didn't. They also didn't know what the Internet was.

[Interviewer]

Big customers, didn't you?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. And even the ones that were aware of the Internet didn't have a software team, so they weren't very good at developing functionality. And so we had as investors and customers the New York Times Company, Knight, Ridder, Hearst. And so we were able to get them to pay us to develop software for them to bring them online. So online publishing stuff. And we did maps and directions and yellow pages and white Pages and various other things. And we developed quite sophisticated technology, actually, but it wasn't actually being employed super well by the media companies. We would suggest ways to use it, and then it would not be used as effectively as it could be. It was very frustrating.

[Interviewer]

But you did sell that company successfully to Compaq. Yeah, right. And that allowed you to go on and create X.com?

[Elon Musk]

That'S right. Yeah, exactly. So Compaq had AltaVista. So their thought was to combine AltaVista and a bunch of other technology companies and see if that would work, which it did not. But nonetheless, they were pretty nice guys and bought the company. And that gave me the capital to. To do another company, and I wanted to do another company in the Internet because I thought we hadn't really reached the potential that we could have with Zip2 because we had really sophisticated software. Our software was sort of at least comparable to what Yahoo or Excite or others had. In fact, I mean, I thought in some ways it was better. So. But it wasn't because it was all filtered through these partners. It wasn't getting properly used. So I thought we'll. I want to do something that could be more. A more significant contribution to the Internet.

[Dutch Company Representative]

Time is precious, and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24. 7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

[Elon Musk]

And so the initial thought was with financial services, because money is digital, it's low bandwidth, at the time there was, you know, most people were on modems, full on modems. And because this was late 98, early 99.

[Interviewer]

So this was. X.com was a precursor to PayPal, basically.

[Elon Musk]

That's right. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You merged with Confinity and it became PayPal. Major success.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. So it worked out better than we expected. Yeah. So, yeah, Confinity. So initially Confinity and Exacom started out with from slightly different directions and then converge to the same point with X. The thought was to create integrated set of financial services so you could go to one place and do all of your financial anything. And then as a feature, we had the ability to transfer money or securities or anything simply by entering a unique IDENTIFIER So like email address or phone number or something like that. And when we 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 being able to transfer money using an email address. 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 while still keeping it easy to use. So because, you know, it's like the Willy Lehman quote, like, why do people. Why do you rob banks? Because that's where the money is. So why do people rob PayPal? Same reason. And so you can dial up the security to a really high level, but then you're going to make it very hard to use. And so that was one of the toughest things we wrestled with. And then Confinity originally started as kind of software for PalmPilot, and then they had a demonstration application which was the ability to beam money from one Palm Pilot to another using the infrared port. People remember that one?

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Elon Musk]

That was big at one point. And then they had a website sort of parallel to that, because once you'd beamed the infrared tokens, you had to still then synchronize your PalmPilot and do the transfer via the website. But then people weren't that interested in the PalmPilot stuff, but they were interested in the website. So we kind of converged at the same point and we're quite close together, so we decided to merge the companies. And in January or so of 2000, it was a very turbulent period, and the growth in the company was pretty crazy. At the end of the first four or five weeks, we had 100,000 customers.

[Interviewer]

That's incredible.

[Elon Musk]

Incredible growth.

[Interviewer]

Did you anticipate that when you started out?

[Elon Musk]

Definitely did not. And it wasn't all good because we had some bugs in the software. And even if the bug only occurs one in a thousand times still, and.

[Interviewer]

You have a hundred thousand customers, you.

[Elon Musk]

Have 100 very angry customers, like, where's my money? That would be a reasonable concern that people would have. And then we had customer service on University Avenue in Palo Alto. There were five people. So when something went wrong, customer service phones would basically explode.

[Interviewer]

Oh, my goodness.

[Elon Musk]

So we had many challenges. And then the various financial regulatory agencies were trying to shut us down. Visa and MasterCard were trying to shut us down. EBay was trying to shut us down. FTC was trying to shut us down. There were a lot of battles there.

[Interviewer]

Wow. It's quite incredible with all that adversity you conquered and you came out with 100 million. Right?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, it was a close call. We definitely came very close to dying there in 2000 and 2001.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

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. YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, Yammer. It's like quite a long list, actually.

[Interviewer]

So for you personally, there you were with several hundred million. Were you not tempted just to go and buy an island? What was it that drove you? What I'm getting at. Because I know you didn't. What I'm getting at is why were you so driven to jump into the next thing?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I was.

[Interviewer]

Did you take any time off?

[Elon Musk]

I did take a bit of time off because after PayPal, I did reasonably well for PayPal. I was the largest shareholder in the company, so. And we were acquired for about a billion and a half in stock and then the stock doubled, so, you know, did reasonably, reasonably well. But the idea of like lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. That sounds horrible to me.

[Interviewer]

Just a boredom factor.

[Elon Musk]

I would go bonkers. I would, you know, I would have to be on serious drugs, I mean.

[Interviewer]

Or serious pina coladas.

[Elon Musk]

Right, Exactly. I mean, it's just I'd be super duper bored. So, I mean, I like high intensity. I mean, I like going to the beach for a short period of time, but not much longer than like, you know, a few days or something like that.

[Interviewer]

Right. So let's talk about the seeds of SpaceX. I understand it started not as the idea of a. Let's, let's start a rocket ship company. You had a philanthropic idea. You were really surprised when you found out that NASA didn't have any plans, 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?

[Elon Musk]

Sure. Well, so when I was thinking of what I thought 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 things I think will happen that will affect the world, but not that I will be involved in them, as it turns out, I have. But I always thought that we would make much more progress in space, and it just didn't happen. It was really disappointing. So, yeah, I was really quite bothered by it. So when we went to the moon, we were supposed to have a base on the moon, we were 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 Earth orbit where Saturn V could go to the moon. Now the Space shuttle is gone. And so that just seemed like a really bad thing. So I thought, well, maybe it was a question of there not being enough attention or will to do this, but this was a wrong assumption. But that's the reason for the greenhouse idea. The thought was if there could be sort of a small philanthropic mission to Mars. So I was expecting to lose all the money that I invested in that. But if we could send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars with seeds in dehydrated nutrient gel and you hydrated upon landing, and you'd have this great shot of a little greenhouse with little green plants on a red background, I thought that would get people excited.

[Interviewer]

So you literally imagined a photograph. Inspiring.

[Elon Musk]

You gotta sort of imagine the money shot, if you will. So, yeah, I think green plants in red background would be that. 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 I thought, well, maybe that would result in, in a bigger budget for NASA and then we could sort of resume the journey. That was the basic idea. 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 greenhouse and all that to a reasonable number. Reasonable meaning several million dollars.

[Interviewer]

Did you actually physically draw out a greenhouse of how you imagine?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, yeah, actually, I hope we've got that somewhere.

[Interviewer]

That'd be amazing to see.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it looks pretty goofy in retrospect, but that's the idea that we had. And I spent several hundred thousand dollars just kind of getting the design worked out and engaging some companies to come up with design specifications for the subsystems. But then it 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 2, Boeing's Delta 2. And that would have been about $50 million. Yeah. And then you'd still need to have an upper stage from wise, so probably 60 million all in. And I wanted to do two of these missions because I thought if just one and it didn't work, then that could have the opposite effect. Like, look how dumb it is to do. To write a.

[Interviewer]

Look at all this money down the drain.

[Elon Musk]

What an idiot. So I wanted to do two, and I just didn't have enough money to do two complete missions.

[Interviewer]

Right. So you had a budget of about 100 million, something like that?

[Elon Musk]

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

[Interviewer]

So the Russians didn't help you out?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. Three. Three quite interesting trips to Russia to try to negotiate purchase of two Russian ICBMs. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And did they think you had evil intent?

[Elon Musk]

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.

[Interviewer]

So you didn't talk nuke still?

[Elon Musk]

No, I mean, I didn't. I mean, I slightly got the feeling that that was on the table if I. Which was very alarming. But, yeah, that was. Those were very weird meetings with the. The Russian military and whatnot. I mean, I think they thought I was a bit crazy, but then they read about PayPal and said, okay, he was crazy, but he's got money.

[Interviewer]

He did something. Right.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, well, and more importantly, I could fail him.

[Interviewer]

Right. Yes.

[Elon Musk]

So that's really. I mean, yeah, it was remarkably capitalist, was my impression of the Russians.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, right. I have heard that before. So tell me, 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?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I guess I came to the conclusion that my initial premise was wrong. That, in fact, there's a great deal of will, you know, there's not such a shortage. But people don't think there's a way. And that if people thought there was a way, or at least something that wouldn't break the federal budget, 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's more a nation of explorers than the United States. But people need to believe that it's possible and that it's not. You know, they don't have to give up like health care or something important. It's got to be, that's important. So I thought, okay, well then it's not a question of will, it's a question of showing that there's a way. And I started reading quite a bit about rockets to try to understand why they're so friggin expensive. You know, is there something, you know, where does this, the $60 million go for the Delta II and that subsequently. Now Delta II I think is $100 million or something, even some crazy number. And Delta 2 is, I mean that's a relatively small rocket. So if you go to like a really, you know, one of the bigger rockets, it's anywhere from 200 to $400 million. Anyway, so I came to the conclusion that there wasn't really a good reason for rockets to be so expensive and that there could be a lot less. Even in expendable format there could be less. And that if one could make them reusable like airplanes, then the cost of rocketry would drop dramatically. Cost of space travel would drop dramatically because the, the cost of the fuel was maybe anywhere from 0.2 to 0.5% of the cost of the rocket. You know, it's kind of like a plane. I mean, how much does the cost of the fuel in the plane versus the plane itself? It's at least a two order of magnitude difference. But nobody had really been been able to make a reusable rocket work. So that I thought, okay, if we can do that, then that would really be the key breakthrough for space travel.

[Interviewer]

Right, but you also said that so.

[Elon Musk]

Far we have not succeeded.

[Interviewer]

I should point out you also said that failure was the most likely outcome. Can you talk about failure in that sense and in a broader sense of being an entrepreneur and an innovator? Why is failure so important?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I think failure is bad. I don't think it's good. But if something's important enough, then you do it even though the risk of failure is high. And so I think my advice if somebody wants to start a company is they should bear in mind that the most likely outcome 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 are really compelled to do it. Because the way starting a company works is like usually in the beginning, the very beginning, it's kind of fun and then it's really hellish for A number.

[Interviewer]

Of years you talked about chewing glass.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, there's, there's a friend of mine who's a successful entrepreneur and started actually his career around the same time as I did. And he has a good phrase, his name's Bully. He said, yeah, starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.

[Interviewer]

And you agree with that?

[Elon Musk]

Generally true, yeah. And if you don't eat the glass, you're not going to be successful.

[Interviewer]

Tough 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 founding SpaceX, you then got interested in electric vehicles. And I understand you watched the vigils for the death of the EV1 when they were all smashed. Talk about that and why you felt Even after founding SpaceX I have to get involved with Tesla.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, well, as I said, my interest in electric vehicles goes back a long time to, goes back 25 years ago.

[Interviewer]

The dating scene.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, exactly. And in fact, the original reason I came to Silicon Valley was to work on electric vehicle energy storage technology. And I thought that the big car companies would develop electric cars because obviously the right move. And I thought that was vindicated when General Motors and Toyota announced their General Motors was doing the EV1 electric vehicle one. Toyota did the electric RAV4, the original one, and they made those announcements and they brought those to market. And I thought, okay, well, this is great. We're going to have electric cars. GM is going to obviously do the EV2 and 3 and then just keep getting better and everything would be cool. And then when California relaxed its regulations on electric cars, GM recalled all of the EV1s and crushed them into little cubes, which seemed kind of nutty. In fact, the people didn't want their EV1s recalled. And in fact, they tried court orders to stop the cars from being recalled. They held a candlelit vigil. Okay. At the yard where the cars were crushed.

[Interviewer]

Did you attend that vigil?

[Elon Musk]

No, I did not. I did not.

[Interviewer]

You moved by it?

[Elon Musk]

Well, certainly. I mean, it's crazy. I mean, when is the last time you heard about any company customers holding a candlelit vigil for the demise of that product, particularly AGM product? I mean, I mean, what bigger wake up call do you need? It's like, hello? The customers are really upset about this. They were really preferred if it didn't get recalled. So that kind of blew my mind. So I was like, wow, ok. And then we had the advent of lithium ion batteries, which really helps the that's one of the key things for making electric cars work. Still nothing. And so in 2003 actually had lunch with one of the other co founders of the company, JB Straubel, who was actually working I think on like a hydrogen airplane or something. And he mentioned to me the T0 car that was done by AC Propulsion. AC Propulsion I think consists of some of whom had actually been on the EV1 program. And they took a gasoline sports car, kind of a kit car and outfitted it with lithium ion batteries, sort of consumer grade cells and they created a car which is essentially the precursor of the Roadster. And in fact it had very similar specifications. So sub zero, a sub four second zero to 60 miles an hour, 250 mile range and also a two seater sort of sports car. But it was quite primitive. It didn't have a roof, one thing at all. And in fact I don't know if it had doors, but it didn't have any safety systems, no airbags, it wasn't homologated, so you couldn't sell it. So in order to sell that car, in order to create a commercial version of the car, something that a manufacturer could produce and sell to people, there was a fair bit of work that was required. But anyway, I kept trying to get AC propulsion to commercialize the T0 and I said, look, I'm going to, I'll fund the whole effort. 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. What's that? They want to make like an electric Scion, which in principle sounds good, except that it would have cost $75,000 and nobody wants to buy a $75,000 Scion. And the technology just was not ready. There was just no way to, to make a good value for money proposition with something like a CEO.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

Well, I really didn't want to be CEO of two companies. I tried really hard not to be actually. And yeah, so anyway, so AC 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 create a company. And that's basically how Tesla came together. And then we had like a Lot of drama and. But I mean, I had, since I was the, you know, I provided like 95% of the money, so I could have been the CEO from day one. But I really, you know, the idea of being CEO of two startups at the same time was not appealing and shouldn't be appealing, by the way, if anyone's thinking that's a good idea, really terrible idea.

[Interviewer]

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 you have.

[Elon Musk]

To watch those epiphanies. Burning man, not necessarily what you should pursue.

[Interviewer]

And you came up with the idea.

[Elon Musk]

Well, 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. 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 solar powered today. The only reason we're not a frozen ice ball at 3 degrees Kelvin 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 chemotrophs, the bottom of the ocean.

[Interviewer]

So.

[Elon Musk]

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 energy that the sun sends in our general direction. And so in order to deal with that, we couldn't in fact, power the entire world with solar power quite easily. This is maybe not super obvious to people.

[Interviewer]

So was that the epiphany you had at Burning Man? Was it a. No.

[Elon Musk]

I knew that long, long. I knew that in college.

[Interviewer]

But what was the key vision that came to you at Burning Man? We all want to imagine you're there.

[Elon Musk]

No, it was more. I wouldn't say it was a particular epiphany. It was more that I was at Burning man with my cousins or two of my cousins, Lyndon and Peter Linden and Peter Rive, who are awesome guys. And they were sort of trying to think, what should they do after their first startup? So they did a company called Everdream, which did large scale management of computers. So if you've got like 60,000 computers, it's kind of hard to manage them. So they created software that enables companies to do that. And that company actually got sold to Dell.

[Interviewer]

So they were looking for a new venture. And Looking for your ideas?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I wouldn't say they were initially looking for my ideas, but I actually was trying to convince them that they should do solar because I just thought it was an area that needed people like them who are really good entrepreneurs. And since I was like somewhat over committed, I thought, to say the least, yeah, I thought well. And I said look, if you guys will do a solar company, I'll find you, provide all the funding and whatever guidance help I can provide. I'd do that. That's. And I thought it was really important that there be good entrepreneurs like them in solar because just wasn't doing very well as an industry, so. And I thought people were kind of focusing on, not the, they weren't focusing on the right problem. Everybody sort of thought that the, the panel was the problem, but actually it's a problem, but it's not the most important problem. And the panel is somewhat commoditized at this point. So it's. Making standard efficiency solar panels is about as hard as making drywall. It's really easy. In fact, I'd say drywall is probably harder. But what is a thorny problem is trying to figure out how to get solar on tens of thousands, eventually hundreds of thousands of rooftops.

[Interviewer]

Right. The logistics part, yeah, it's kind of.

[Elon Musk]

Like you got to re roof millions of buildings and then figure out how the grid interconnects work and then manage all those systems. So if you've got hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of systems, eventually you've got to manage all these distributed systems. You have this really complex distributed utility effectively, which I think actually plays to their strengths in creating their price strength in creating really scalable software for managing hundreds of thousands of computers in a distributed fashion. And that's kind of what they did and did 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 2008 there were some bad news board meetings. But for the most part, apart from a few times when the macroeconomic conditions were really terrible, they just did an amazing job with almost no help from me.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, they deserve the vast majority of the credit for, for the success of that company.

[Interviewer]

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 in innovation like we did when the plane was invented. Do you agree with that?

[Elon Musk]

No, I don't agree with that. I don't think that's true. I think we've seen. Well, and I'm not sure what time period that is exactly. Exactly. But we've seen huge improvements in the Internet and new things. I mean, in recent years, Twitter and Facebook being pretty huge, when people kind of thought the Internet was done. And I think there are some of the things that we're doing, like electric cars are a new thing. And I do think there's some pretty significant breakthroughs. I mean, in genomics, we're getting better and better at decoding genomes and being able to write genetics. I think that's going to be a huge, huge area. I think there's likely to be some breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. And I suspect we will even see the flying car.

[Interviewer]

All right. Is that going to be an Elon Musk production? No. You're going to let someone else do that?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, well, I think someone else. I think someone else is doing that.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

Well, sometimes the government. I don't think the government intends to stand in the way of innovation, but sometimes it can overregulate industries to the point where innovation becomes very difficult. The auto industry used to be a great hotbed of innovation at the beginning of the 20th century, but now there's so many regulations that are intended to protect consumers. I mean, the body regulation for cars could fill this room. It's just crazy how much regulation there is, down to what the headlamps are supposed to be be like. And they even specify some of the elements of the user interface on the dashboard. And some of these are completely anachronistic because they're relating back to the days when you had, like, a little light that would illuminate an image. So, like, we have to reserve space on the instrument panel, the model S, for where all of the. The indicators that a car would have. You know, you've got like these little.

[Interviewer]

Lights, like, check engine or whatever.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. Like all these little things. There's like a whole bunch of them. And we can't have anything else in that space. Like, well, how about if we have one space and render a different graphic? Like, oh, no. Because people are expecting to see it in that space. Like, nobody is expecting to see it in that space.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So you feel you can argue with these regulations? You Just have to.

[Elon Musk]

Well, you can argue with them, but not with great success. And you can actually get these things changed. But it takes ages. One of the things we're trying to get is 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 mirrors. And I went and met with the Secretary of Transport, like, can you change this regulation? Still nothing has happened. That was two years ago.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

It's not easy to get these regulations changed.

[Interviewer]

So talking of 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 he could successfully get through, that would be a big stimulus, do you think?

[Elon Musk]

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 obviously 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, full steam ahead.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

You could measure the speed of light by how fast they measured. They press that button because that would be. That's called like, the reelection button. So I'm not sure how much the president can really do, but I think, you know, I'm generally a fan of, like, minimal government interference in the economy. Like, the government should be kind of like the referee, but not the player. And there shouldn't be too many referees. But there is an exception, which is when there's an unpriced externality, such as the CO2 capacity of the oceans and atmosphere. So when you have an unpriced externality, then the normal market mechanisms do not work. And then it's government's role to intervene in a way that's sensible. And the best way to intervene is to put. Is to assign a proper price to whatever the common good is that's being consumed.

[Interviewer]

So you're saying there should be a.

[Elon Musk]

Tax on gas, there should be a tax on carbon. If the bad thing is carbon accumulation in the atmosphere, then there needs to be a tax on that. And then we can. That will. And then you can get rid of all subsidies and everything else. And it seems like logical that you should tax things that are most likely to be bad, rather than. That's why we tax cigarettes and alcohol, because those are probably bad for you certainly. Cigarettes are. So you want to err on the side of taxing things that are probably bad and not tax things that are good. And so I think given that there is a need to gather tax for the, you know, to pay for the federal government, we should shift the tax burden to bad things and then adjust that tax of that bad thing according to whatever is going to result in the behavior that we think is beneficial for the future. I think currently what we're doing right now, which is mining and burning trillions of tons of hydrocarbons that used to be buried very deep underground, and now we're sinking 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 much prefer to do is spend enormous amounts of money lobbying and running bogus ad campaigns and that kind of thing to preserve their situation. You know, 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, pretending he's a doctor, you know, essentially implying that smoking is good for you and like having pregnant mothers on ads, smoking.

[Interviewer]

Do you have a message for the climate change skeptics and the big oil people?

[Elon Musk]

Well, as far as 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 first things from a scientific standpoint, you always look at things probabilistically, not definitively. And so I think a lot of times if somebody's a skeptic in the science community, what they're really saying is that they're not sure that it's 100% certain that this is the case. But that's not the point. The point is that it's. Look at it from the other side. What do you think the percentage chance is of this being catastrophic for some meaningful percentage of the Earth's population? Is it greater than 1%? Is it even 1%? If it is even 1%, why are we running this experiment?

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

We're playing Russian roulette. And as each year goes by, we're loading more rounds in the chamber. It's not wise. So that's. And what makes it super insane is the. That we're going to run out of oil anyway. 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 transportation no matter what. So why even run the experiment? It's the world's dumbest experiment.

[Interviewer]

So let's move on to focus on Silicon Valley. Steve Jobs was and is a wonderful Silicon Valley icon. Is he someone that you've admired and what have you learned from Steve's life and work?

[Elon Musk]

Well, he's certainly someone I've admired. Well, I did try to talk to him once at a party and he was super rude to me, but I don't think it was me. I think it was of pop the questions.

[Interviewer]

I think you weren't the first.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, not the first, no, but yeah. And I was actually there with like, Larry Page is an old friend of mine. 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, tugging on his coat, like, please talk to me. So it was introduced by Larry Page. It's not bad. But I mean, he obviously was an incredible guy and made fantastic products that, you know, and I don't know, there was like a certain. The guy had a certain magic about him, you know, sort of. That was kind of. That was really inspiring. So, I mean, I think that's really great.

[Interviewer]

Is there that magic that you try and emulate?

[Elon Musk]

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

[Interviewer]

Okay, so I'd like to get inside your head a little bit about when you come up with an idea. Do you doodle it on a pad of paper or do you get your iPad out and take notes when you come up with something new, a new rocket design or whatever it is, how does that manifest itself? Could we see you being creative?

[Elon Musk]

I mean, it's somewhat cliched, but it happens a lot in the shower. I don't know what it is about showers. Yeah, exactly. Get the camera. Like, yay. No, I do. I just kind of stand there in the shower.

[Interviewer]

So you have long showers?

[Elon Musk]

I do, actually, but, yeah, I do.

[Interviewer]

So there's no iPad.

[Elon Musk]

Not to mention the Burning man epiphanies. Those are huge. So, yeah, I think that's. Yeah. And then there are some times, like late at night, if I've been thinking about something, then I can't sleep and I'll be up for, you know, for several Hours thinking about, sort of pacing around the house and thinking about things. And occasionally I'll sketch something or send myself an email or something like that.

[Interviewer]

Right. So we have a question from the audience. Who inspires you, or do you have a mentor?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I don't have a mentor per se, although I try to get feedback from as many people as possible. So I have friends and I ask them what they think of that. And the other thing. And you know, as mentioned, Larry's a good. Larry Page is a good friend of mine. Value his advice a lot. And I have many other good friends. And so I think it's good to solicit feedback and particularly negative feedback, actually, because, you know, obviously people don't love the idea of giving you negative feedback unless it's like some, you know, on blogs they do that.

[Interviewer]

That. Yeah. How do you deal with negative feedback? Because you 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 commercial companies in space. It's not a place for commerce. So how did you deal with that and how do you deal with naysayers in general? Because you've had a lot.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, that was kind of troubling because growing up, Neil Armstrong was kind of a hero. So it's like, it kind of sucks.

[Interviewer]

To knife in the back.

[Elon Musk]

That's a bit of a blow.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Elon Musk]

So, yeah, but I think in his case, he was somewhat manipulated by other interests. I don't think he quite knew what he was saying in those congressional hearings. So. Yeah, right.

[Interviewer]

Okay. And talk about, you know, it's one thing to have these wonderful ideas in the shower at Burning man, but it'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?

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. Well, I mean, if you think about a company, a company is a group of people that are organized to create a product or service. That's what a company is. So in order to. To create such a thing, you have to convince others to join you in your effort. And so they have to be convinced that it's a sensible thing, that there's at least some reasonable chance of success. And if there is success, that the reward will be commensurate with the effort involved. And so I think that's getting people to believe in what you're doing and in you is important. So in the beginning, there will be few people who believe in you or in what you're doing. But then over time, as you make progress, the evidence will build and more and more people will believe in what you're doing. So I think it's a good idea when creating a company to have a demonstration or if it's a product, to have a good mock up or even if it's software, to have good demo wear or to be able to sketch something so people can really envision what it's about. Try to get to that point as, as soon, soon as possible and then iterate to make it as real as possible as fast as possible. Yeah, I don't know if that makes sense.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so you're running, you're CEO of two companies, you're chairman of SolarCity. Talk about time management. How on earth do you do this? Do you get any sleep?

[Elon Musk]

Sometimes not enough sleep is really great because I find if I don't get enough sleep, then I'm quite grumpy. Obviously I think most people are that way. And also I try to sort of figure out what's the right amount of sleep because I found I could drop below a certain threshold of 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 per night.

[Interviewer]

That's not too bad.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

Having a sort of having a smartphone is incredibly helpful because that means you can do email during interstitial periods. Like 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 just 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, fly to the Bay Area, then Tuesday and Wednesday at the Bay Area, 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.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Do they tag along with dad on some of these?

[Elon Musk]

I do drag them along in a lot of things. Actually. They're remarkably unimpressed by. I wish they were sort of more interested, but I mean, the twins are eight and the triplets are six, so maybe they'll get more interested later.

[Interviewer]

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

[Elon Musk]

Well, I mean, I think 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 the rest of the team and the board kind of felt that they were the right person, then that would be fine. But I wouldn't want people to feel like I kind of installed my kid there. And I don't think that would be good for either the companies or the kid really. But I have, I was actually at one point of a school thought that it's best to give away kind of like 99% or more of one's assets, kind of like the Buffett school of thought. 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 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 a portion of it. So it acts as a positive influence. This is still something I'm thinking about, but acting as a positive influence in the long term. So the company kind of does proper long term things. Look at what happened also in Silicon Valley with hp. I mean, I think it's quite sad. And that to some degree is because there was much diminished influence by the Hewlett and Packard families. I think they should have prevailed in their. They were opposed to the merger that took place at one point and I think they were right.

[Interviewer]

Actually, I'm looking to the future for SpaceX. Is there an IPO plan for this year?

[Elon Musk]

No, there's no IPO plan. Let's say running a public company does have its drawbacks.

[Interviewer]

So you're not in a hurry?

[Elon Musk]

No, I mean in the case of Tesla and SpaceX, we had to raise capital and we had kind of a complex equity structure that needed to be resolved by going Public. And 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 we will at some point in the future. But SpaceX's objectives are super long term and the market is not. So I'm a bit worried that if we did go public, certainly if we went public too soon, that market pressure would force us to do short term things and abandon kind of long term projects.

[Interviewer]

Like going to Mars, right?

[Elon Musk]

Going to Mars. Very long term, yes.

[Interviewer]

That's an important one. So you do have other projects on the back burner. You've talked about the hyperloop, a way of getting people from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco in under half an hour and the electric supersonic airplane.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Which of those two are bubbling up that we might hear more about in the near future?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I did promise that I'd do some paper on the hyperloop idea and things got a little hectic towards the end of last year because I had committed to make these milestones at Tesla to the public markets and I had to stay true to that obligation, which required just an insane level of work and attention. And then we also had the SolarCity IPO, which was a very difficult IPO to get done. And that IPO occurred just by the skin of its teeth. I mean, it was so such a tough one.

[Interviewer]

We just determined it had to be in design. December.

[Elon Musk]

Well, if it wasn't in December, it would mean pushing it out, you know, quite a bit. 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 wedding. It's like, must be awkward.

[Interviewer]

To say the least.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah. So we really need, we really needed to do it and I think if we hadn't done it, people would have looked at it as a failure and it wouldn't 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 chalk up a success.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It was a rare piece of sunshine.

[Elon Musk]

For the solar, ironically, for a solar industry does not have a lot of that.

[Interviewer]

Yes. So it's time, unfortunately, for the last question. You've come a long way since you were that six year old little boy breaking the rules. You turned 42 this year.

[Elon Musk]

Right.

[Interviewer]

What is on the cards? Where do you see yourself in 10 years time? 20 years time? 40. 40 years time. Because you famously said you want to die on Mars, just not on impact.

[Elon Musk]

Right, exactly.

[Interviewer]

Tell us about that dream.

[Elon Musk]

Yeah, well, actually I was asked by a journalist, do you want to die on Mars? And I said yes. But wait, not on impact, just to be clear. That's one of the possibilities. So, yeah, so I guess, I mean, I'd like to be able to go to Mars while I'm still able to manage the journey reasonably well. So I think like I don't want to be like 75 and go to Mars.

[Interviewer]

You don't want to take your zimmer frame with you.

[Elon Musk]

Right. You know, it could be, at least in the beginning, it could be, you know, mildly arduous. So wanted to, I'd like to get there, I don't know, I mean, ideally in my 50s. That would be kind of cool.

[Interviewer]

So you see that happening in the next.

[Elon Musk]

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, I think it can happen. I'll try to make it happen.

[Interviewer]

Great. Ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk.