Foundation 20 // Elon Musk

welcome to foundation a show where we profile some of the world's most interesting entrepreneurs for more episodes check out foundation kr today we're talking to Elon Musk a founder at Tesla SpaceX and PayPal let's go talk to so let's start the beginning where'd you grow up I was born in South Africa Olivia I was 17 and then truck moved by myself trigger the whole story oh I've got here okay very beginning sure so yeah it's born in Pretoria South Africa lived it lived in Johannesburg and Durban as well I was able to travel to a few countries growing up within Africa and around the world went to the US when I was I don't know tannish or something like that and I read a lot of comics and books and stuff and or seams and stuff and things on technology and always seemed like when there's cool technology or things happening it was kind of in United States so my goal as a kid was to try to get to get to America basically what were your favorite comics well I write I read every comic in the store and I like obviously the the Batman Superman stuff I mean the green lanten Iron Man I got a Nazi Iron Man first cousin people think uh but I did think that was pretty cool one and but I read everything like Doctor Strange you know just if there was a comic on the rack I read it awesome yeah and when did you decide to get into computers of Technology did you started coding or was it is it just a lot a lot of construction can you still hear okay okay so you start yeah so when I was about 10 years old I was I went into store in South Africa and saw a Commodore vic-20 and Miss Piggy I was nine years old and isomeric summer at that time and I thought this is like you know the most awesome thing I'd ever seen and you could like make this write computer programs and make games and I played you know Atari and other things for other games consoles when I was like maybe six or seven the idea of being able to like create game stuff it was really exciting and so I got that was my first computer is the Commodore vic-20 I think it had like 8 K of memory and then what led you into entrepreneurship was it something that you always knew that you want to be an entrepreneur and start to start something on your own or did you stumble into it yeah I know I wouldn't say that I always knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur I I actually wasn't sure what I wanted to be to do growing up and I think at one point I thought well I like inventing stuff or creating things would be a cool thing to do but I wasn't really sure if that meant starting a company or whether that meant working for a company that made cool stuff and in fact when I first came up to Silicon Valley it was through a degress sighs at Stanford in applied physics material science and then I I saw this in 95 I kind of thought the internet would be something that would change the world in a major way and I want to be part of it and actually what I what I first try to do was I try to get a job at Netscape so I wouldn't actually try to start a company I try to get a job at Netscape and then let him work out now I didn't get any I didn't get any reply so I I am I mean I had a physics and economics degree or physics and business degree from Wharton and I was doing grad studies and apply pest control science and I I guess that you know I didn't have a computer science degree or or several years working at a software company for whatever reason I didn't get a reply from this gap and I actually tried hanging out in the lobby but I was I was too shy to talk to anyone so it's just like studying the lobby and I and then I could walk in did you have your resume with you or was it yeah actually it was pretty embarrassing I was just sort of standing there trying to see if there's someone I could talk to and then I just couldn't I couldn't it was I was too scared to talk to anyone so that left amazing so then you went on to do what from that point I so now I just I was writing software that summer and it got to the start of the quarter for Stanford I had to make a decision so I decided gone deferment so I figure if I start a company and it doesn't work then I can always go back to grad school sure it's just you know talk to the chairman of the department and he let me go on deferment and I said I'll probably be back in six months and he said probably never going to hear from me again and he was correct I've never spoke to him since so so yeah so sort of company with my brother and a friend of mine Greg Curry who and and the three of us created zip to which where the initial idea was to create software that could help bring the media companies online so we helped in a small way bring companies like that like New York Times Hearst Knight Ridder and and so forth bring them online because they weren't actually always online people don't realize that well you the the CEO at the time or did you give that role to someone else yeah I started off being the CEO so CEO for probably the first year and then but but after we got VC funding the venture capitalists wanted to hire a professional CEO is that frustrating or were you were you like I just this is over my head I'm ready to give up this role to someone else I at the time I thought it was a good idea because I don't really know what I was doing and I figured they would hire someone who'd be awake really good and that person would increase the chances of success the company and so that seemed like a good thing and then I could work on software and kind of product direction and that's that's what I like doing so that seemed like a great thing in retrospect I think that that wasn't the best thing because that the person that was hired in my opinion was actually not that great so so I think yeah I mean I think quite frankly the company succeeded in spite of that person not because of them what you know starting a company for the first time is very challenging for a lot of people they don't even know where to begin you must have run into a lot of I mean we all made mistakes is starting our first company as far as hiring like you said the people you bring in like CEO the replaced you yeah did you surround yourself with mentors how did you who did you look to for advice I read a lot of books and talked to lots of people I didn't have any any one person who was a mentor but I I always look for feedback from from people around me and feedback from historical context so you know which is books basically mm-hm so that's any any book stand out is something that was like something that you really relied upon or well they're just general business books or I don't read actually very many journal business books but I I like two biographies and autobiographies I think those are pretty helpful so I like and actually some really business solo like something like Franklin's both his autobiography and say the biography that's recently been written by a buyer or not that recently but in I guess five or ten years ago in and written the biography by Isaacson on on the frankness really good and you can sort of see how he kind of cuz he was an entrepreneur I mean he sort of started from nothing actually just like a runaway kid basically and created his running business and sort of how he went about doing that and and then over time go sit at science and politics so that I would say certainly he's one of the people I most admire like in Franklin is pretty awesome but they're not I think it's also worth reading books on scientists and engineers Tesla obviously you hear about that Tesla Museum that they're having yeah I actually contributed some funding to to save the land oh that's great yeah awesome yeah that's a very cool thing to oatmeal did yeah but it was pretty cool I like I like the way that they put it too it looks like let's have a go dentist Museum yeah tourism so so forward a little bit you know you obviously did PayPal that was very successful and then at some point in time you're like I'm gonna do something crazy something that's never been done before with Tesla and the space related stuff into yeah why take on such huge very ambitious type projects I mean did you have ever have a feeling like this might not work oh yeah absolutely well so this kind of goes back to college where I start to figure out what are the things that would most affect the future of humanity and the things that I thought would most affect future would be that with the Internet sustainable energy which is both production and consumption and so effectively Seoul the cities like production Tesla's consumption in a sustainable way and then also space exploration and specifically making life multiplanetary now I didn't expect at the time to be involved in all those areas but those just areas that I thought would would most affect the future and as it turned out I've been fortunate enough to be involved in those areas but that's the thread that connects them it's like it's kind of my best guess at what would most likely affect the future it had been the biggest way and and we're not when I first thought about doing something in space but the thing I was going to do was actually going to be a kind of philanthropic mission to to Mars to land a small greenhouse in the surface of Mars which was seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel that you hydrate upon landing you have this little greenhouse on on Mars and you have this great shot of green plants on a red background and the public tester spent risk respond to precedents and superlatives so I thought that would people get people really excited about setting life to Mars and and my expectation when that project would be 100 percent loss because you know I wouldn't expect maybe you can make a little bit back on advertising or sponsorship or something but but it would be essentially a complete lungs so starting at a rocket company was necessarily be have a greater what likely outcome than 0% financial return right but at the beginning of starting SpaceX I thought that the most likely outcome was failure and how about Tesla Motors I walk me through your process of wine one something like that yeah so in terms of an electric car company the at first I thought that there would be no need to do an electric car company startup because California regulations basically forced General Motors to create the bulbs or rather the ev1 I should say so so when General has had the ev1 I thought hey this is great biggest car company the world is making electric car told the ev1 that would apply if is going to be an e b234 right you know and they killed that project off that right they did yeah and that was very unwise I mean it's sort of really short-sighted I think action I mean retrospect that seems perhaps obvious but at the time not only that they canceled the project they forcibly removed the eveyone's that they've given out and which they only gave out on lease they removed them from from customers against their wishes took the cars and crushed them in a yard so that they could never be used a game and the the customers whose cars had been taken away that tried legal action to try to I try to sue General Motors to keep their car they actually had a candlelit vigil at the at the yard where the cause got crushed and it's like you know wins last time there's a candle at vigil for for a product that's pretty ridiculous right and let alone a General Motors product I mean you have to be the passion the limitation right if you yeah actually pretty pretty tone-deaf to - you don't need to run a customer's you don't need to do a customer survey to figure out that that that at least some number of people what the cars if they are treating it like somebody's being sent as a dad only you know and yeah so when I saw that I was like holy crap you know something this is not going to happen and so that will there really needs to be a new car company that comes in and shows that it can be done and the key thing that needed to be done was to show that you can make an electric car that was good-looking high performance long range and and then if you made such a car that people would buy it that they didn't have some fundamental affinity for gasoline so that's um what do you get started you have the capital to obviously put into something on your adventure but you know you're sitting there and you're like okay I want to do this like yeah but my initial subway well my initial thought was that I did not want to run to create an electric car company and run it myself because of running SpaceX and the idea of running two companies that's a lot of work and you know just like imagine if somebody had to pretty demanding jobs and they're not oh you had one really demand job now you got to do two of them it's you know it kind of takes the fun away and you know it's makes a pretty pretty arduous yeah the social life goes away there's something else so something's got to give yeah so my initial thought was okay I'll I'll hire some people and work work with a team and I'll work I'll just sort of work on the park design and so make it overall strategy or something but I'll leave the day-to-day operations to a CEO that I'd hire so unfortunately that didn't work out I actually tried hiring a couple of CEOs and I guess I don't know I couldn't find the right person and and so Inuk then came to 2008 I was kind of co-ceo from 2007 in 2007 2000 eight while while trying to bring up you know as some other people up to speed and then when the market fell apart this is the financial market elrod and the Connery called Parton in 2008 and I had a choice of like basically commit all of my remaining resources to Tesla or it's going to die for sure and I thought okay if I'm going to do that then I got a bike the bullets and run the company because it's just too much at stake you know if got all your chips on on the table you've got to play the hand yourself yeah why do you why do other car companies just really suck like a lot of their designs are horrible but they're not going to consumers there's no like your to seem like obviously bad I mean oh yeah they seem obviously almost I look at them and you're the first company I feel has that kind of Apple ask a design aesthetic you know like right why do other car companies just make horrible looking cars the outside blows my mind I don't know how to it because it just seems like you know you can take a body panel and you can stamp it with that shape with this shape or that shape and yet they chose they choose to do the bad shape but it costs the same either way right I mean there are some things that cost a little more in terms of the quality materials and the you know you're getting things really to fit accurately and so the few things that cost more of a lot of it doesn't you can make an ugly expensive car you can making you know a good-looking expensive car and actually the same goes oh I think you can make a affordable good-looking car or or an ugly looking car and I think the cost differences are really actually relatively small and I mean I I don't know it just I think maybe there's some of logic all-comers just trapped in there within their own history did you do like did you have focus groups where you decide on the decision or was it very much I like the way that looks let's go with that no it's just literally just a series of weekly iterations with with the design team hmm ah so just there every every Friday afternoon I meet with the fronts and the design team and we go over the every nuance of the car every every bumper every curve every little tiny piece of the car what's right what's wrong and then that has to be filtered against you know the engineering needs and the economic needs and regulatory requirements so it's a really there's a lot of constraints yeah and you can't just make a car any old shape you want and still achieve it meet all the regulatory requirements b5 stock crash safe and all that sir I just requires a lot of iterative activity and caring about every millimeter of the car and that's that's or results a good product so I know we have limited time I want to jump towards the future talk to me about this Hyperloop I think um yeah so the the Hyperloop III I need to set aside some time to actually write down some of the details and I want to make sure that I don't say something completely stupid so hey some I'm I'm spending time with the both the SpaceX aerodynamics team and the Tesla rep nameks team just to make sure that whatever whatever I put out there really will work we're talking train here or is this just an alternative something that we haven't thought of before yeah I think it's it's genuinely it would genuinely be a new mode of transport hmm since I'm maybe a I think the one way to think of it is like it's it's kind of like a ground-based Concord Wow like if you could make something go as fast as a Concord on the ground how would you do that right would you require rails in that sense or I mean is it just you'll see no actually I think rails I'm not needed awesome yeah so I mean do you have a lot of ideas like this is where you have a schedule or ideas then you know - time to implement yeah I think so is it something where where do you come up with your best ideas are you on vacation are you kind of just like in the middle of the night you wake up and start drawing things down or oh you know this sounds really cliche but like the shower is probably like you know wake up and go shower in the morning and I think actually what's really happened is kind of stuff is populated in the subconscious right and it's not really occurring the shower but you're kind of getting the results of last night's you know computation basically right and then sometimes it's it's a late at night if I can't sleep and there's something bothering me then it'll occur then and it went one one key idea for a super sonic vertical takeoff and landing electric plane it could to me at Burning Man a lot of good ideas came out of burning yeah exactly absolutely so suddenly it's a very very creative place so so yes yes that's a shower Burning Man awesome one last question I always ask of everyone that I interview for the new entrepreneurs are just getting started out there what's one piece of advice that you would always recommend to an entrepreneur something that you've learned over the years that they can take with them in their new venture and then something you'd completely avoid like something that you really screwed up on that you'd never do again um okay sure so I think in terms of advice I think it's very important to to seek out to actively seek out and listen very carefully to negative feedback and this is something that people tend to avoid because it's painful yeah but but I think this is a very common mistake is to to not actively seek out and listen to negative feed but do you do that you go into forums you go into Twitter like what are your areas where you go to look for feedback on let's say the Tesla well it's like everyone I talk to is in fact when when friends get a product I say look I don't tell me what you like tell me what you don't like right and and because otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn't like right this kid is going to say oh I love this and that and then and leave out the this is the stuff I don't like list because he wants to be your friend one you know it doesn't want to offend you so so you really need to to sort of coax negative feedback and you should you know that if somebody's your is your friend or at least not your enemy and they're giving you negative feedback then that may be wrong but it's coming from a good place and sometimes even your enemies could be a good negative feedback yeah only so so I think that's important pihl's just feel like positive feedback like water off a duck's back that's like you know really underweight that and overweight negative feedback and then I think it's also important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy so the normal way that we conduct our lives is we we we reason by analogy it's we're doing this because it's like something else that was done or it's like what other people are doing me to type ideas yeah it's like yeah slight iteration yeah on a theme and and and it's because it's it's it's kind of mentally easier to reason by analogy rather than from first principles but by first principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world and what that really means is you kind of boil things down to the most fundamental truths and and say okay what do we sure is true or sure as possible is true and then reason up from there that takes a lot more mental energy you an example that like what's one thing that you've done that on that you feels work for you sure so somebody could say in fact people do that battery packs are really expensive and that's just the way they'll always be because that's the way they've been in the past you're like well no that's that's pretty dumb you know because if if you apply that reasoning to anything new that then you wouldn't be able to ever get to that new thing right so you know it's like you can't say oh you know horses nobody wants a car because horses are great and we're used to them and they can eat grass there's lots of grass all over the place and you know there's not like a there's no gasoline if you booking by so people are never going to it never get ever going to get parts right the people did say that and and for batteries they would say oh it's going to cost you know the historically its cost six $600 $600 per kilowatt hour and so it's not going to be much better than that in the future and you say no okay what what are the batteries made of so the first principles would be say okay what are the material constituents of the batteries what is the spot market value of the material constituents so you can say okay it's got cobalt nickel aluminum carbon and some polymers for separation and steel can so break that down on a material basis and say okay what if we bought that in london metal exchange what would each of those things cost like oh jeez it's like eighty dollars per kilowatt hour so clearly you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell and you can have batteries that are much much cheaper than anyone realizes is that your big challenge at Tesla is is battery yeah it's it's the single biggest item but it's right now it is not it's not it's not any kind of obstacle to us it did a whole bunch of little issues that are kind of trivial that are challenges when you're making a new product because there are several thousand unique in the car 90% of them are fine 5% them are slightly problematic 3% of 4% are problematic and 1% are extremely problematic but you cannot ship a car that is 99% complete it's not like software you can just stable functionality but with a car you know you can't ship it without like a steering wheel or like without backseat or something like that yeah well thanks for being on the show you're a huge inspiration to a lot of entrepreneurs out there so I know they're gonna enjoy this and thanks for having us in your factory here going awesome so it's good thanks thanks coming back

Channel: Kevin Rose

Views: 389,309

Rating: 4.9493933 out of 5

Keywords: elon musk, kevin rose, foundation

Id: L-s_3b5fRd8

Length: 26min 43sec (1603 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/flipsideCREATIONS]

Small Empires with Alexis Ohanian is good as well.

http://www.theverge.com/video/small-empires

[u/THEDUBSGUY]

The funny thing about Kevin Rose is that while everyone gives him crap for having the 'lame version of reddit' he actually made more money off of it than the 'reddit CEO's' have so far...

Good find op!

[u/Farva85]

I was just going to post these - I just finished watching Hosain Rahman. I've been watching them for about 2 weeks now when I have spare time. It's awesome listening to all the different backgrounds of varies founders/CEO's in the tech world. Thanks for posting them for others to see.

[u/[deleted]]

that tesla factory is gorgeous, test drove one yesterday; so much fun!

[u/vikingabroad]

If you like that interview, this website (this guy) has a lot of similar interviews. It has been a while since I've been there, but some of them are really insightful. www.mixergy.com

[u/rdelamora1]

I dont think theres anything wrong with his speaking skills. He might speak slowly because he thinks about what he says and doesnt just blurt out anything that comes to mind.

[u/[deleted]]

Foundation is fantastic. Jack Dorsey(sp?) is by-far the best.

[u/thespanishmuffin]

He's great. Could you see how excited he is about the hyper loop? He had this biggest smile. I'm Excited to see what he has in store.