[Music] I've had a long career in multiple Industries if you if you list my sins I sound like the worst person on Earth but if you put those against the things I've done right it it makes much more sense the value of beting inspiration is very much underrated no question um but I want to be I'm not trying to be anyone's savior uh that is not the I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad for me it's simply this this is something that is important to get done and we we should
just keep doing it or die trying and I I don't need a source of strength so quitting is not even like um it's not of my nature and I I don't care about optimism or pessimism that we're going to get it done Tesla was under the most Relentless short seller attack in the history of the stock market Tesla was the most shorted stock in the history of stock markets so you know this was affecting our ability to hire people it was affecting our ability to sell cars yeah it was terrible um they wanted Tesla to
die so bad they could taste it well most of them have paid the price yes where are they now just work like hell I mean you just have to put in you know 80 hour 80 to 100 hour weeks every week all those things improve the odds of success so so my people say tell me like what can you do to encourage entrepreneurs to start companies I'm like if you need encouragement don't start a company we basically messed up almost every aspect of the model 3 production line from Sals to to packs to Motors uh
body line the paint shop uh final assembly um everything everything was messed up I I lived in the Fremont and and Nevada factories uh for for 3 years fixing the that production line running around like a maniac through every part of that factory living with the team I slept on the floor so that so the the team who was going through a hard time could see me on the floor uh that they knew that I was not in some Ivory Tower what what have a pain they experienced I was I had it more I mean
there wasn't any other way to make it work there 3 years of Hell 2017 18 and 19 were three years the longest period of excruciating pain in my life there wasn't any other way and we barely made it and we're on the Ragged edge of mroy the entire time do you feel that that this this challenge of figuring out the the new way of manufacturing you you actually have an edge now that it's different that you figured out how to do this at this point I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive
on [Applause] Earth tell you I can tell you how every damn part part that car is made I'm not afraid of dying I think it will come as a relief so although you may not be able to see the vision of Space X come true in your life well I'd like to live long enough to see that being at a net worth of 230 billion roughly being perceived as the richest person do you know John Law I don't know John Law used to be the richest person on Earth 300 years ago okay he was a
a poker player a gambler he was the biggest art collector on Earth so a lot of superlatives wow in the end he went bankrupt what it's a pretty far to fall did you ever thought about that option that something could go wrong and that you could one day lose everything I mean there's been many times where I expected to lose everything not you know uh I mean who thoughts a car company and a rocket company expecting them to succeed certainly not me I thought they both had less than a 10% chance of success like if
I go bankrupt fine I whatever I don't care so many people from uh so many young people actually from across the globe if you have an advice to them young people globally who want to be like Elon Musk what's your advice on them I think that probably they shouldn't want to be you it it I think it sounds better than it is okay yeah it's uh not as much fun being me as you'd think there definitely it could be worse for sure yeah I mean it's really hard starting a company I mean you have to
basically be prepared to work constantly um you know from when you wake up to when you when you go to sleep um you have to be willing to deal with um a lot of difficult problems and thorny problems um you have to be uh willing to deal with an enormous amount of stress um and you just got to push yourself super super hard I wouldn't recommend it for most people try to be useful um you do things that are useful to your fellow human beings to the world it's very hard to be useful very hard
um you know are you contributing more than you consume you know like uh try to have a positive net contribution to society um I think that's the thing to aim for you know not not to try to be sort of a leader for just for the sake of being a leader or whatever um a lot of times the people you want as leaders are other people who don't want to be leaders so if you can live a useful life that is a good life a life with having lived I would I would encourage people to
use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life SpaceX Tesla neural link foring company are philanthropy if you say philanthropy is love of humanity um they are philanthropy they Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy this is a love of of full anthropy SpaceX is trying to ensure the long-term survival of humanity with multiplan species This is Love of humanity um you know neuralink is is help solve uh brain injuries and uh existential risk with AI love of humanity Waring company is trying to solve traffic which is Health most people and uh that also
this of humanity I'd encourage people to read a of books just read basically try to ingest as much information as you can uh and try to also just develop a good general knowledge um so so you at least have like a rough lay of the land of the the knowledge landscape um like try to learn a little bit about a lot of things um cuz you might not know what you're really interested how would you know what you're really interested in if you at least aren't like doing it peripheral exp exploration of broadly of of
the knowledge landscape and you talk to people from different walks of life and different uh Industries and professions and skills and OCC occupations like just try you learn as much as possible man search for meaning isn't the whole thing a search for meaning is yeah what's the meaning of life and all you know but just generally like I said I I would encourage people to read broadly um in many different subject areas and and and then try to find something where there's an overlap of your talents and and what you're interested in so people may
may be good at something but or they may have SK skill at a particular thing but they don't like doing it mhm um so you want to try to find a thing where you have you're that's a good a good uh combination of of your of the things that you're inherently good at but you also like doing when you had that third failure in a row mhm did you think I need to pack this in never why not I don't ever give up I mean I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated essentially like the
longer you do anything the the more mistakes that that that you will make cumulatively which if you sum up those mistakes will sound like uh I'm the worst predictor ever but for example for Tesla vehicle growth uh I I said I think we do 50 % and we've we've done 80% yes uh so uh but they don't mention that one uh so I mean I'm not sure what my exact track record is on predictions they're more optimistic than pessimistic but they're not all optimistic um some of them uh are exceeded uh probably more or later
um but they they they do come true it's very rare that they do not come true I mean I don't aim to disrupt for the sake of disrupting you know um it's it's more like like there's um thinking about what set of actions what set of actions are most likely to lead to a better future and so you know in order one of the things obviously in order to for Humanity to have a compelling future for civilization is that we must have a clear path to a sustainable energy future that's one of the things that
I think everyone I think would agree with I'm not someone who who tend to sort of demonize oil and gas to be clear um this is necessary uh right now or or or civilization could not function so I do think we actually need um and actually at this time I think we actually need uh more oil and gas not less um but but simultaneously uh moving as fast as we can to a sustainable uh energy uh economy I was living in the in the in the factory in Fremont um and and the one in in
Nevada for 3 years straight that was my primary residence not kidding literally did you keep the couch I I actually stepped well stepped on a couch at one point on a in a tent on the roof um and then but for a while there I was just sleeping uh under my desk which is out in the open in the factory um and put an important reason and I was damn uncomfortable sleeping on that floor and I always when I woke up I'd smell like metal dust yeah but actually I stopped using the couch in the
in cuz there's a little conference room in a couch there I stopped using the couch and I just leftt on the floor under my desk so the so during shift change the entire team could see me and that's important because like you know the and the team like if if if if they think that the the sort of their leader is is off somewhere having a good time you know drinking my Ties on a tropical island the thing is that since the team could see me sleeping on the floor um during shift change with just
not with nothing um they knew I was there and that made a huge difference and then they gave it their role what kind of characteristics does an entrepreneur need or have to be someone like you well I think certainly uh you need to be very driven and have a high pain threshold Elon you are reported by Forbes and everyone else as now you know the world's richest person that's not a sovereign you know I think it's fair to say that uh if somebody is like the king or de facto uh king of a country they're
wealthier than I am so but but it's just harder to measure but what people do so so $300 billion I mean your your net worth on any given day is rising or falling by several billion dollars how insane how insane is that yeah I mean does that how do you how do you handle that psychologically very there aren't many people in the world who have to and think about that I I actually don't think about that too much but the the the the thing that is actually uh more more difficult and and that does make
sleeping difficult is that um you know every good hour uh or even minute of thinking about uh Tesla and and SpaceX has such a big effect on the company that I really try to work as as as much as possible uh you know to to the edge of Sanity basically uh because the you know Tesla is getting to the point where uh probably will get to the point later this year where every good every high quality minute of thinking um is a million dollars to to impact on on Tesla one of the biggest mistakes people
generally make and I'm guilty of it too is wishful thinking you know like you want something to be true even if it isn't true um and so you ignore the things that uh you you ignore the real truth because of what you want to be true um this is a very difficult trap to avoid um and like I said suddenly one that I find myself in having problems with but if you just take that approach of you're always to some degree wrong and your goal is to be less wrong um so a challenge for entrepreneurs
is to say well what's the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking sticking to them versus pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have Merit and it's it's that is a that is a really difficult thing to to tell can you tell the difference between those two things you know so you need to be sort of very rigorous um in your self self analysis you guys are the The Magicians of the 21st century you know um don't like anything holds you back uh imagination is is the limit um and um go out there
and create some magic what Elon has to say about how he takes risks I literally just try to use a scientific method frankly and uh you know consider the um you know what what is the importance of the outcome and what uh what what is one risking in in order to achieve that outcome and uh but like I said if the outcome is important enough even if the probability of success is low one must I think still still do it AB in my view um you know some things are very important and to in order
to have a good future and if we don't do them well then we're in big trouble and so I and then then how much of a risk really is it because if we don't take those actions we won't have a good future um and I think the riskiest thing would be no action put a lot of stock and certainly have a lot of respect for someone who puts in an honest day's work uh to do useful things and and just generally to have like a not a zero some mindset um or or a like have
have more of a grow the pie mindset like the if if you sort of say like when when you see people like perhaps um including some very smart people kind of taking an attitude of uh like like like doing things that seem like morally questionable it's often because they have at at a base sort of aaic level a zero some mindset um and and they without realizing it they don't realize they have a zero some mindset or or at least they they don't realize it consciously um and so if you have a zero mindset then
the only way to get ahead is by taking things from others if it's like if if if the if the pi is fixed then the only way to have more Pi is to take someone else's Pi but but this is false like obviously the pie has grown dramatically over time the economic pie um so the real in reality you you can [Music] have overuse this analogy you can have a lot of you can there's lot of pie Pi Pi is not fixed um uh so you really want to make sure you don't you're not operating
um without realizing it from a zero some mindset where where the only way to get ahead is to take things from others then that's going to result in you take trying to take things from others which is not not good it's much better to work on uh adding to the economic pie so when I interview somebody my interview question is always the same I said tell me the story of your life and and the decisions that you made along the way and why you made them and then and then and also tell me about some
of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them and um that that that question I think is very important because the people that really solved the problem they know exactly how they solved it um they know the little details and the people that pretended to solve the problem they can maybe go one level and then they get stuck are you happy at the moment I think there's degrees of love but certainly for one to be um we fully happy I think you have to be happy in work and happy in love
I suppose I'm medium happy there are degrees of happiness can love or projects for work compensate love among people I think love of work and my experience could at best make one halfway happy what was your biggest challenge in life one of the biggest challenges I think is making sure you have a corrective feedback loop and then maintaining that corrective feedback loop over time even when people want to tell you exactly what you want to hear here okay that's a very difficult [Music]
