Top highlights from Elon Musk
Good ideas are always crazy until theyre not.
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The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,
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If the rules are such that you cant make progress, then you have to fight the rules.
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There needs to be a reason for a grade. Id rather play video games, write software, and read books than try and get an A if theres no point in getting an A.
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He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask, Musk said. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment,
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One thing that Musk holds in the highest regard is resolve, and he respects people who continue on after being told no.
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We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters
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It bothers Musk a bit that his kids wont suffer like he did. He feels that the suffering helped to make him who he is and gave him extra reserves of strength and will. They might have a little adversity at school, but these days schools are so protective, he said. If you call someone a name, you get sent home. When I was going to school, if they punched you and there was no blood, it was like, Whatever. Shake it off. Even if there was a little blood, but not a lot, it was fine. What do I do? Create artificial adversity? How do you do that? The biggest battle I have is restricting their video game time because they want to play all the time. The rule is they have to read more than they play video games. They also cant play completely stupid video games. Theres one game they downloaded recently called Cookies or something. You literally tap a fucking cookie. Its like a Psych 101 experiment. I made them delete the cookie game. They had to play Flappy Golf instead, which is like Flappy Bird, but at least there is some physics involved.
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As his ex-wife, Justine, put it, He does what he wants, and he is relentless about it. Its Elons world, and the rest of us live in it.
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What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview. Hes the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted. Hes less a CEO chasing riches than a general marshaling troops to secure victory. Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants to . . . well . . . save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation.
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There is a fundamental problem with regulators. If a regulator agrees to change a rule and something bad happens, they could easily lose their career. Whereas if they change a rule and something good happens, they dont even get a reward. So, its very asymmetric. Its then very easy to understand why regulators resist changing the rules. Its because theres a big punishment on one side and no reward on the other. How would any rational person behave in such a scenario?
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Hes been known to obsess over typos in e-mails to the point that he could not see past the errors and read the actual content of the messages. Even in social settings, Musk might get up from the dinner table without a word of explanation to head outside and look at the stars, simply because hes not willing to suffer fools or small talk.
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Id rather play video games, write software, and read books than try and get an A if theres no point in getting an A.
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He seems to feel for the human species as a whole without always wanting to consider the wants and needs of individuals.
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I would like to allocate more time to dating, though. I need to find a girlfriend. Thats why I need to carve out just a little more time. I think maybe even another five to tenhow much time does a woman want a week? Maybe ten hours? Thats kind of the minimum? I dont know.
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From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something thats bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people dont want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees. That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic actionI have given enough warnings over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past. For example, there should be no HTS [horizontal test stand] or VTS [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A stand at our test site is obviously a *test* stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with Tripod, which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name! The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, eg MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum.
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If you told him that you made a particular choice because it was the standard way things had always been done, hed kick you out of a meeting fast.
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The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication.
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Everything he does is fast, Brogan said. He pees fast. Its like a fire hosethree seconds and out. Hes authentically in a hurry.
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I think there are probably too many smart people pursuing Internet stuff, finance, and law, Musk said on the way. That is part of the reason why we havent seen as much innovation.
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Money is not his motivation, and, quite frankly, I think it just happens for him, Justine said. Its just there. He knows he can generate it.
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I just look at it as What grades do I need to get where I want to go?
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Thats my lesson for taking a vacation: vacations will kill you.
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One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy.
Elon Musk,
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
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Whats fascinating is that Musk remains willing to lose it all.
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He doesnt say, You have to do this by Friday at two P.M., Brogan said. He says, I need the impossible done by Friday at two P.M. Can you do it? Then, when you say yes, you are not working hard because he told you to. Youre working hard for yourself. Its a distinction you can feel.
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To me, Elon is the shining example of how Silicon Valley might be able to reinvent itself and be more relevant than chasing these quick IPOs and focusing on getting incremental products out,
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He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask, Musk said. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment, he said.
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Im not sure why Id want to talk about extremely sad events. It does no good for the future. If youve got other kids and obligations, then wallowing in sadness does no good for anyone around you. Im not sure what should be done in such situations.
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In the years that followed, the goal went from taking huge risks to create new industries and grand new ideas, to chasing easier money by entertaining consumers and pumping out simple apps and advertisements. The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads, Jeff Hammerbacher, an early Facebook engineer, told me. That sucks. Silicon Valley began to look an awful lot like Hollywood.
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To the extent that the world still doubts Elon, I think its a reflection on the insanity of the world and not on the supposed insanity of Elon.
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Musk has talked about having more kids, and its on this subject that he delivers some controversial philosophizing vis--vis the creator of Beavis and Butt-head. Theres this point that Mike Judge makes in Idiocracy, which is like smart people, you know, should at least sustain their numbers, Musk said. Like, if its a negative Darwinian vector, then obviously thats not a good thing. It should be at least neutral. But if each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, thats probably bad, too. I mean, Europe, Japan, Russia, China are all headed for demographic implosion. And the fact of the matter is that basically the wealthierbasically wealth, education, and being secular are all indicative of low birth rate. They all correlate with low birth rate. Im not saying like only smart people should have kids. Im just saying that smart people should have kids as well. They should at least maintainat least be a replacement rate. And the fact of the matter is that I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid. Youre like, Wow, thats probably not good.
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The company would pick a plan of attack, and when it failed at something, it failed fast and then tried a new approach.
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Page holds Musk up as a model he wishes others would emulatea figure that should be replicated during a time in which the businessmen and politicians have fixated on short-term, inconsequential goals. I dont think were doing a good job as a society deciding what things are really important to do, Page said. I think like were just not educating people in this kind of general way. You should have a pretty broad engineering and scientific background. You should have some leadership training and a bit of MBA training or knowledge of how to run things, organize stuff, and raise money. I dont think most people are doing that, and its a big problem. Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When youre able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work. I think thats really an important thing for the world. Thats how we make progress.
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I think this needs to be done, and I dont see anyone else doing it.
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For Gracias, the Tesla and SpaceX investor and Musks friend, the 2008 period told him everything he would ever need to know about Musks character. He saw a man who arrived in the United States with nothing, who had lost a child, who was being pilloried in the press by reporters and his ex-wife and who verged on having his lifes work destroyed. He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone Ive ever met, Gracias said. What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didnt just survive. He kept working and stayed focused. That ability to stay focused in the midst of a crisis stands as one of Musks main advantages over other executives and competitors. Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray, Gracias said. Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. Hes still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets. Anyone who saw what he went through firsthand came away with more respect for the guy. Ive just never seen anything like his ability to take pain.
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They were building a Ferrari for every launch, when it was possible that a Honda Accord might do the trick.
Elon Musk,
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
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You dont know what you dont know. You realize there are all these things out there.
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When we first talked about the touch-screen, the guys came back and said, Theres nothing like that in the automotive supply chain, Musk said. I said, I know. Thats because its never been put in a fucking car before.
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But there is now a degree to which you have to ask whether his success is an indictment on the rest of us who have been working on much more incremental things. To the extent that the world still doubts Elon, I think it's a reflection on the insanity of the world and not on the supposed insanity of Elon. - Peter Thiel on Elon Musk
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As the first dozen or so employees came to the offices, they were told that SpaceXs mission would be to emerge as the Southwest Airlines of Space.
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Around 2010, Peter Thiel, the PayPal cofounder and early Facebook investor, began promoting the idea that the technology industry had let people down. We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters became the tagline of his venture capital firm Founders Fund. In an essay called What Happened to the Future, Thiel and his cohorts described how Twitter, its 140-character messages, and similar inventions have let the public down. He argued that science fiction, which once celebrated the future, has turned dystopian because people no longer have an optimistic view of technologys ability to change the world. I
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Do you think I'm insane?
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I really like computer games, but then if I made really great computer games, how much effect would that have on the world,
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My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail. Early
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There can be no question that Musk has mastered the art of getting the most out of his employees. Interview three dozen SpaceX engineers and each one of them will have picked up on a managerial nuance that Musk has used to get people to meet his deadlines. One example from Brogan: Where a typical manager may set the deadline for the employee, Musk guides his engineers into taking ownership of their own delivery dates. He doesnt say, You have to do this by Friday at two P.M., Brogan said. He says, I need the impossible done by Friday at two P.M. Can you do it? Then, when you say yes, you are not working hard because he told you to. Youre working hard for yourself. Its a distinction you can feel. You have signed up to do your own work. And by recruiting hundreds of bright, self-motivated people, SpaceX has maximized the power of the individual. One person putting in a sixteen-hour day ends up being much more effective than two people working eight-hour days together. The individual doesnt have to hold meetings, reach a consensus, or bring other people up to speed on a project. He just keeps working and working and working. The ideal SpaceX employee is someone like Steve Davis, the director of advanced projects at SpaceX. Hes been working sixteen hours a day every day for years, Brogan said. He gets more done than eleven people working together.
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Thats part of what separates Elon from mere mortals, said Ed Ho, the former Zip2 executive, who went on to cofound X.com. Hes willing to take an insane amount of personal risk. When you do a deal like that, it either pays off or you end up in a bus shelter somewhere.
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I really like computer games, but then if I made really great computer games, how much effect would that have on the world.
Elon Musk,
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
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Hed started the company to put a dent in the automotive industry and force people to rethink electric cars.
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Maybe I read too many comics as a kid, Musk said. In the comics, it always seems like they are trying to save the world. It seemed like one should try to make the world a better place because the inverse makes no sense.
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You dont tell Elon you cant do something. That will get you kicked out of the room. You need everything lined up. After we presented the plan, he said, Okay, thanks. Everyone was like, Holy shit, he didnt fire you.
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The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads, Jeff Hammerbacher, an early Facebook engineer, told me. That sucks.
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This left Musk searching for an industry that had tons of money and inefficiencies that he and the Internet could exploit. Musk began thinking back to his time as an intern at the Bank of Nova Scotia. His big takeaway from that job, that bankers are rich and dumb, now had the feel of a massive opportunity.
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When you realize that the Volkswagen sign-and-drive event is code for were making the experience of buying a car slightly less miserable than usual, youll start to appreciate just how low the automotive industry has sunk.
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Musk sampled a handful of ideologies and then ended up more or less back where he had started, embracing the sci-fi lessons found in one of the most influential books in his life: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.
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If the rules are such that you cant make progress, then you have to fight the rules. There
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Within the next few years, SpaceX expects to cut its price to at least one-tenth that of its rivals.
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And by recruiting hundreds of bright, self-motivated people, SpaceX has maximized the power of the individual. One person putting in a sixteen-hour day ends up being much more effective than two people working eight-hour days together.
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Either youre trying to make something spectacular with no compromises or youre not. And if youre not, Musk considers you a failure.
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Buy a Tesla. Forget about the mess youve made of the planet for a while.
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