1
Elon: If there are 2 paths and we have to choose one thing or the other, and one wasn't obviously better than the other, then rather than spend a lot of time trying to figure out which one is slightly better, we'll just pick one and do it. Sometimes we'd be wrong and we picked the suboptimal path, often it's better to pick a path and do it than to just vacillate on a choice.
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner (10/8/2003, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381)
2,
Elon(When asked to compare Zip2 and Paypal, which are the 2 companies he built before SpaceX and Tesla): I took the similar approaches to building both companies, which was to have a small group of very talented people and keep it small. Paypal had about 30 engineers, for a system that I would say is more sophisticated than Federal Reserve Clearing System.
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381
3,
Elon: We don't worry too much about Intellectual Property, paperwork and legal stuff, we are very focused on building the best product that we possibly could, both Zip2 and Paypal were very product-focused companies. We were incredibly obsessed about how do we build something that would really going to be the best possible customer experience. That was a far more effective selling tool than having a giant sales force or taking up marketing gimmicks or 12-step processes or whatever.
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381
4,
Elon (When asked about the most important qualities of Entrepreneurs): An obsessive nature with respect to the quality of the product is very important, so being obsessive and impulsive is a good thing in this context. Really liking what you do, whoever area you get into, even if you are the best of the best, there always a chance of failure, so it's important that what you really like what you are doing, if you don't like it, life is too short. If you like what you are doing, you'll think about it even when you are not working
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381
5,
Elon(on Paypal): Developing the software and have it ready for the general public reasonably coincide with us being able to conclude those deals to interface with the outside vendors, and all that took about a year. I think one thing important is try not to serialize dependencies, put as many elements in parallel as possible, a lot of things have a gestation period, it's very hard to accelerate that gestation period, if you can have all those things gestating in parallel, then that is one way to substantially accelerate your timeline. I think people tend to serialize things too much.
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381
Elon: I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.
- SpaceX: Entrepreneur's race to space, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwg8FvfuuU#t=577
10, (Context: Elon was talking about the innovations that SpaceX had done)
Chris Anderson: You haven't patented these stuff, since you think it's more dangerous to patent than not to patent.
Elon: Since our primary competitors are international governments, then enforceability of patents are questionable.
- TED http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgKWPdJWuBQ
20,
Elon: The goal in starting my 2nd internet company(Paypal) is to create something that would have profound effect.
- Bloomberg Risk Takers: Elon Musk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTJt547--AM)
23,
Inc. Journalist: If you ask Elon how he taught himself rocket science, he will just look at you very seriously and just say very quietly: I read a lot of books.
- Bloomberg Risk Takers: Elon Musk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTJt547--AM)
24,
Elon(telling his employees in Tesla during the financial crisis): I'm available 24/7 to help solve issues, call me 3am on a Sunday morning, I don't care.
- Bloomberg Risk Takers: Elon Musk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTJt547--AM)
27,
Interviewer: When you first started the company Zip2, how did you look for advice, did you have a mentor?
Elon: I read a lot of books, and talked to less people. I didn't have any one person who was a mentor, but I always looked for feedback from people around me, and feedbacks from historical context, which is book, basically.
Interviewer: Any book stood out? They were just general business books?
Elon: I didn't actually read many general business books, but I like reading biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. For example, Franklin's. I would say he's one of the people I always admire, Franklin is pretty awesome.
- Foundation Interview, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=535
30,
Interviewer: Advice for first-time entrepreneurs?
Elon: It's important to reason from first principals, rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our live is that we reason by analogy - "we're doing this because it's like something else that was done", or "it's like what other people are doing", since it's kind of easier to reason by analogy by from first principals. First principals is kind of a physics way of looking at the world, you kind of boil things down to the most fundamental truth, and say "Okay, what are we sure is true, or sure possible is true", and then reason up from there. That takes a lot more mental energy.
Interviewer: Give me an example of that, what's one thing that you feel works for you?
Elon: Sure. Somebody would say, and they do, that "battery packs are always really expensive, and that's just the way they're always be, because that's the way they've been in the past". No, that's pretty dumb. If you apply that to anything new, you wouldn't be able to get to that new thing. For batteries, they'd say "that's gonna cost $600 per kWh, it's not gonna be much better than that in the future" I would say "no, what are the batteries made of?" So the first principal is to say "Okay, what are the materials constitutes batteries? What is the broad market values of those constituents?" Okay, it's go copper, nickel, aluminum, carbon, and some polymers for separation and seal can. So break that down into material base is to say: okay, if we bought that in London Metal Exchange, how much would each of those things cost? Oh geez, $80 per kWh. So clearly, you just have to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them to a shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much much cheaper than anyone realizes.
- Foundation Interview, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=535
32,
Musk, who is SpaceX’s chief designer as well as its CEO, is involved in virtually every technical decision. “I know my rocket inside out and backward,” he says. “I can tell you the heat treating temper of the skin material, where it changes, why we chose that material, the welding technique…down to the gnat’s ass.” And he pushes his people to do more than they think is possible. “There were times when I thought he was off his rocker,” Mueller confesses. “When I first met him, he said, ‘How much do you think we can get the cost of an engine down, compared to what you were predicting they’d cost at TRW?’ I said, ‘Oh, probably a factor of three.’ He said, ‘We need a factor of 10.’ I thought, ‘That’s kind of crazy.’ But in the end, we’re closer to his number!”
- Is SpaceX changing the rocket equation? http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Visionary-Launchers-Employees.html?c=y&page=3
33, (On SpaceX's rocket Falcon 1)
The insistence on reusability “drives the engineers insane,” says Vozoff. “We could’ve had Falcon 1 in orbit two years earlier than we did if Elon had just given up on first stage reusability. The qualification for the Merlin engine was far outside of what was necessary, unless you plan to recover it and reuse it. And so the engineers are frustrated because this isn’t the quickest means to the end. But Elon has this bigger picture in mind. And he forces them to do what’s hard. And I admire that about him.”
- Is SpaceX changing the rocket equation? http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Visionary-Launchers-Employees.html?c=y&page=3
34,
“Most people, when they make a lot of money don’t want to risk it,” he says. “For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity.” He does not laugh or crack a smile when he says this. There is no hint of irony.
- Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Elon-Musk-the-Rocket-Man-With-a-Sweet-Ride-179998091.html
35,
Maye Musk: “His brain was just ahead of everyone else’s and we thought he was deaf, so we took him to the doctor. But he was just in his own world.” Musk shrugs when I tell him that story. “They took my adenoids out, but it didn’t change anything.It’s just when I’m concentrating on something I tune everything else out.” He was bullied by other kids. He hated going to school. He was obsessed with facts and reading. “If someone said the Moon is, like, a million miles away,” says Maye, “he’d say, ‘No, it’s 238,855 miles from the Earth, depending on when you view it.’ Kids would just go ‘Huh?’ He’s just curious about everything and never stops reading and remembers everything he reads. He’s not in la-la land; he just sees everything as a problem that can be fixed.”
- Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Elon-Musk-the-Rocket-Man-With-a-Sweet-Ride-179998091.html
36，
“Elon drives this think-bigger mentality,” says JB Straubel, in a lofty design studio behind SpaceX. “As engineers we tend to want to keep things small, but Elon is always imagining something so large it’s terrifying, and he’s incredibly demanding and hard-driving.”
- Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Elon-Musk-the-Rocket-Man-With-a-Sweet-Ride-179998091.html
38,
The difference between Musk and everyone else is that passion and ambition. When Tesla nearly went bankrupt, he fired its CEO, took over the role himself and risked his personal fortune, pouring $75 million into the company. As production delays have eaten into Tesla’s cash, some analysts have doubted the company’s viability. But Musk renegotiated the terms of a government loan, sold shares in the company and seems to have fixed its production delays. “The factory is state of the art,” says Elaine Kwei, an auto industry analyst with Jefferies & Company, “and the delays were little things from other suppliers, like door handles. The car is awesome and demand doesn’t seem to be an issue; if they can sell 13,000 cars next year, they’ll break even. Tesla has the potential to dominate the EV category, similar to the Toyota Prius’ dominance of the hybrid electric segment.”
- Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Elon-Musk-the-Rocket-Man-With-a-Sweet-Ride-179998091.html
39,
Elon: Most papers are pretty useless. How many phd papers are actually used by someone ever?
- Khan school: A conversation with Elon Musk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io
40,
Elon: The internet came along, I thought: okay, for the internet, I'm pretty sure that success is one of the possible outcomes, and it seems like I can either do a phd and watch it happen, or I can participate and help it happen. So I decided to put things in hold, and started an internet company.
- Khan school: A conversation with Elon Musk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io
41，
Elon: A lot of times people kind of thing creating a company is fun, it's really not that fun, well, there are periods of fun, and there are periods where they are just awful. Particularly, if you start a company, you actually have a distillation of all the worst problems of the company, there's no point spend your time on things that are going right, so you're only spend your time on things that are going wrong, and there are things that are going wrong that other people can't take care of, you have a filter for the crappest problem in the company. I think you have to feel quite compelled to do it, and have a fairly high pain threshold. You got to do the problems your company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on, and that goes on for a long time.
Asker: Then how do you keep your big picture?
Elon: There's just a very small amount of the mental energy is on the big picture, you know where you are generally heading for, and the actual path is gonna be some zig-zaggy thing, try not to deviate too far from the path, but you gonna have to do that in some degree
- Khan school: A conversation with Elon Musk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io
42,
Asker: When it comes to researching and analyzing an entrepreneur opportunity, how do you go about qualifying or legitimizing such a pursuit?
Elon: I'm not sure if I'm the best guy here (to answer this question), because things I've chosen have not been optimized on a risk/return basis, I would not say that I went to the rocket business, car business or the solar business thinking that it's a great opportunity, I just thought that something needed to be done in these industries in order to make a difference, and that's why I did it. But in general I do think you should think about what you are doing will result in a disruptive change or not, if it's just incremental, it's unlikely to be something major. It's gonna be something that's substantially better than what's going on before.
- Elon Musk Keynote - SXSW Interactive 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sumVEEAZ_w
46,
Recalling his two student years in Canada, Musk notes, “In the first two years at university, you learn a lot about a great many things. One particular thing that I learned at Queen’s – both from faculty and students – was how to work collaboratively with smart people and make use of the Socratic method to achieve commonality of purpose.”
- Rocket Man, http://queensu.ca/news/alumnireview/rocket-man
47,
And how did Musk recruit the scientists and other technical people he needed to join him in order to create, and quickly, a private rocket company capable of taking over the transport of space cargo after NASA’s space shuttle program ended?
“It would have been quite difficult if I’d just started off by cold-calling them and saying that I wanted to start a rocket company,” he says.
“What I said instead – because these people were working at Northrop-Grumman, Boeing, and other big aerospace companies – was ‘Would you mind helping me with a feasibility study to find out if it’s possible to make significant advancements in rocket technology? It will involve a few weekends and evenings of your time,’ I said I’d pay a decent amount for their help, and so they were enthusiastic. We had a series of meetings, and the people I recruited put a lot of thought into it and came to the conclusion that yes, it would be possible to build better rockets than had been made before.”
Was it really that straightforward?
Says Musk, “I essentially led them to a conclusion that they created. It was sort of a Socratic dialogue on a technical level. The essence of a Socratic dialogue,” he adds with another of his trademark soft laughs, “is that people wind up convincing themselves. People are much more willing to change their opinion if you’re not forcing it.”
- Rocket Man, http://queensu.ca/news/alumnireview/rocket-man
49,
“There are times, late at night, when I pace,” he confides. “If I’m trying to solve a problem, and I think I’ve got some elements of it kind of close to being figured out, I’ll pace for hours trying to think it through.”
- Rocket Man, http://queensu.ca/news/alumnireview/rocket-man
52,
“It’s better to have a higher quality venture capitalist who you think would be great to work with than to get a higher valuation with someone where there’s even a question mark, really.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
54,
“Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that….you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
56,
On hiring, Musk looks for two things – a positive attitude and being easy to work with. People must like working with the applicant. They have a no a-hole policy at Musk’s companies.
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
57,
“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop. Like where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s probably the single best bit of advice, is just constantly be thinking about how you could do things better and questioning yourself.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
59,
“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” He later says: “You have to be cautious in always saying one should always persist and never give up because there actually are times when you should give up, because you’re doing something in error. But if you’re convinced that what you’re doing is correct then you should never give up.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
60,
“I think it’s really a mindset. You have to decide. We’re going to try to do things differently. Well, provided that they’re better. You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be different or better. But I think you have to sort of decide. Let’s think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking in encouraged and rewarded and where it’s okay to fail as well. Because when you try new things, you try this idea, that idea….well a large number of them are not gonna work, and that has to be okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you’re not gonna get people coming up with ideas.”
“Get to a useful prototype with the least amount of money is probably a good idea….if people see actual hardware and it’s working, that is much more convincing [than PowerPoint, a website, etc].”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
61,
“If you’re trying to impose too much structure or if you don’t allow failure. A lot of companies, typically as they get bigger tend to have a risk/reward asymmetry, failure is severely punished [and] success is moderately awarded. That’s not a good idea if you want to be innovative because by its very nature innovation will result in many attempts that don’t work.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
71,
Anonymous(Tesla Employee): No matter how tired he was or how many times he'd travelled back and forth across the country in the last few days, or how many fire-drills were running simultaneously, he understood what you were saying. He'd sit there with his famous "uh huh" and a head nod, acknowledging that he understood. And his followup questions were targeted, thoughtful and relevant.
- What is it like to work with Elon Musk? http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk
74,
Anonymous(Tesla Employee): Sometimes we'd get stuck dealing with a vendor or making a decision across departments. He often tell us "Get me on the phone with the CEO of <insert company here>. I don't care what the problem is. We need it resolved now." Or if it was a company decision, he'd just assert the answer and we'd move on.
- What is it like to work with Elon Musk? http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk
75,
Anonymous(Tesla Employee): When you're in the trenches working on a hard problem, it's natural to convince yourself it can't be done. You start to compromise. Elon had no tolerance for this and rightly so. We'd exceed our goals, because we had to. It was how the company would survive and he reminded us of this if we drifted too far. If market conditions prompted us to change course, we would. If we needed his sign off on a large project or spend, as long as we did our homework, it was logical, and we laid out a plan, he'd be ok discussing. But he'd often send us back to rethink the proposal if it didn't jive. He wasn't afraid to spend money when needed.
- What is it like to work with Elon Musk? http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk
79,
At SpaceX there is an expression: "No matter how hard you work, someone else is working harder"... You can guess who that is. Quoting my friend: "Elon is a serious powerhouse in the building and sets the culture for everyone, which makes it exciting to work there."
- What is it like to work with Elon Musk? http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk
80,
Elon: I think it's a good idea, when creating a company, to create a type of demonstration. If it's a product, to have a good mockup, if it's a software, to have a good demo ware, or be able to sketch something, so people can really envision what it is about. Try to get to that point as soon as possible, and then iterate to make it as real as possible as fast as possible
- An Evening with Elon Musk and Alison van Diggelen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHHwXUm3iIg
93,
How has Musk been able to achieve his goal(SpaceX)? “I think the reason it’s cheaper is, first of all, we are a private entity and we have a very lean system in here,” he says. “What we have been able to do here at SpaceX is to cherry-pick, you know, the top one or two percent and give them, you know, capital to execute well and a clear mission, which is low cost, reliable access to space, and no other constraints.” To that end, Musk employs just 140 people and refuses to bog them down with bureaucracy.
- LESSON #1: KEEP YOUR OPERATIONS LEAN AND CLEAN, http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/1610/Lesson-1-Keep-Your-Operations-Lean-And-Clean.html
94,
Elon: "The first car of Tesla is sports car, not because we think the world is lack of sports car, but because it's the right entry point for the market, if you have a new technology, the right place to entry is hight unit-cost low unit-volumn, just as when a new cellphone comes out or a new laptop, tends to be expensive at first, because they are figuring out all the issues and they take time to optimize, and over time, that technology would become cheaper and cheaper. The idea is to drive it to the mass market as fast as possible, but only when the technology matures"
- Interview With Elon Musk Tesla Motors, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onajosm9PWo#t=150
98,
"Meetings", he's fond of saying, "are what happens when people aren't working."
- The Believer, http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/200901/elon-musk-paypal-solar-power-electric-cars-space-travel
106,
Elon: I'm more an engineer than anything else, engineering and design is my interest, but I figured if I don't learn the business stuff, then somebody else is gonna make me do things I don't wanna do, so I better learn the secrets of business. That's why I did the physics degree and finance degree. Finance is easy by the way, it's really easy. All my business courses together, were not as hard as quantum mechanics.
- Uber Entrepreneur: An Evening with Elon Musk Read, http://fora.tv/2009/04/07/Uber_Entrepreneur_An_Evening_with_Elon_Musk
109
Wired.com: So what have you learned so far?
Musk: Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.
- Now 0-for-3, SpaceX's Elon Musk Vows to Make Orbit, http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa
110
Musk: Guys like John Pike have existed since the dawn of time, and if you listen to people like that then things will never get better, never change. It's a false point of view. Yes, we need to put some rockets into orbit. But the first order of business is to get rid of design errors, which we're doing, and once those are eliminated then you're dealing with repeatability, and people should judge what we're doing from the point of view of all the design issues we've ironed out through these F1 test flights.
- Now 0-for-3, SpaceX's Elon Musk Vows to Make Orbit, http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa
113,
"Life has to be about more than solving problems, you've got to have reasons to be inspired and to stay excited about life."
- Elon Enthusiast: The Life and Times of Elon Musk, http://elonenthusiast.com/image/55458551092
Elon: If there are 2 paths and we have to choose one thing or the other, and one wasn't obviously better than the other, then rather than spend a lot of time trying to figure out which one is slightly better, we'll just pick one and do it. Sometimes we'd be wrong and we picked the suboptimal path, often it's better to pick a path and do it than to just vacillate on a choice.
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner (10/8/2003, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381)
2,
Elon(When asked to compare Zip2 and Paypal, which are the 2 companies he built before SpaceX and Tesla): I took the similar approaches to building both companies, which was to have a small group of very talented people and keep it small. Paypal had about 30 engineers, for a system that I would say is more sophisticated than Federal Reserve Clearing System.
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381
3,
Elon: We don't worry too much about Intellectual Property, paperwork and legal stuff, we are very focused on building the best product that we possibly could, both Zip2 and Paypal were very product-focused companies. We were incredibly obsessed about how do we build something that would really going to be the best possible customer experience. That was a far more effective selling tool than having a giant sales force or taking up marketing gimmicks or 12-step processes or whatever.
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381
4,
Elon (When asked about the most important qualities of Entrepreneurs): An obsessive nature with respect to the quality of the product is very important, so being obsessive and impulsive is a good thing in this context. Really liking what you do, whoever area you get into, even if you are the best of the best, there always a chance of failure, so it's important that what you really like what you are doing, if you don't like it, life is too short. If you like what you are doing, you'll think about it even when you are not working
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381
5,
Elon(on Paypal): Developing the software and have it ready for the general public reasonably coincide with us being able to conclude those deals to interface with the outside vendors, and all that took about a year. I think one thing important is try not to serialize dependencies, put as many elements in parallel as possible, a lot of things have a gestation period, it's very hard to accelerate that gestation period, if you can have all those things gestating in parallel, then that is one way to substantially accelerate your timeline. I think people tend to serialize things too much.
- Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner, http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=381
Elon: I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.
- SpaceX: Entrepreneur's race to space, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwg8FvfuuU#t=577
10, (Context: Elon was talking about the innovations that SpaceX had done)
Chris Anderson: You haven't patented these stuff, since you think it's more dangerous to patent than not to patent.
Elon: Since our primary competitors are international governments, then enforceability of patents are questionable.
- TED http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgKWPdJWuBQ
20,
Elon: The goal in starting my 2nd internet company(Paypal) is to create something that would have profound effect.
- Bloomberg Risk Takers: Elon Musk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTJt547--AM)
23,
Inc. Journalist: If you ask Elon how he taught himself rocket science, he will just look at you very seriously and just say very quietly: I read a lot of books.
- Bloomberg Risk Takers: Elon Musk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTJt547--AM)
24,
Elon(telling his employees in Tesla during the financial crisis): I'm available 24/7 to help solve issues, call me 3am on a Sunday morning, I don't care.
- Bloomberg Risk Takers: Elon Musk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTJt547--AM)
27,
Interviewer: When you first started the company Zip2, how did you look for advice, did you have a mentor?
Elon: I read a lot of books, and talked to less people. I didn't have any one person who was a mentor, but I always looked for feedback from people around me, and feedbacks from historical context, which is book, basically.
Interviewer: Any book stood out? They were just general business books?
Elon: I didn't actually read many general business books, but I like reading biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. For example, Franklin's. I would say he's one of the people I always admire, Franklin is pretty awesome.
- Foundation Interview, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=535
30,
Interviewer: Advice for first-time entrepreneurs?
Elon: It's important to reason from first principals, rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our live is that we reason by analogy - "we're doing this because it's like something else that was done", or "it's like what other people are doing", since it's kind of easier to reason by analogy by from first principals. First principals is kind of a physics way of looking at the world, you kind of boil things down to the most fundamental truth, and say "Okay, what are we sure is true, or sure possible is true", and then reason up from there. That takes a lot more mental energy.
Interviewer: Give me an example of that, what's one thing that you feel works for you?
Elon: Sure. Somebody would say, and they do, that "battery packs are always really expensive, and that's just the way they're always be, because that's the way they've been in the past". No, that's pretty dumb. If you apply that to anything new, you wouldn't be able to get to that new thing. For batteries, they'd say "that's gonna cost $600 per kWh, it's not gonna be much better than that in the future" I would say "no, what are the batteries made of?" So the first principal is to say "Okay, what are the materials constitutes batteries? What is the broad market values of those constituents?" Okay, it's go copper, nickel, aluminum, carbon, and some polymers for separation and seal can. So break that down into material base is to say: okay, if we bought that in London Metal Exchange, how much would each of those things cost? Oh geez, $80 per kWh. So clearly, you just have to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them to a shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much much cheaper than anyone realizes.
- Foundation Interview, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=535
32,
Musk, who is SpaceX’s chief designer as well as its CEO, is involved in virtually every technical decision. “I know my rocket inside out and backward,” he says. “I can tell you the heat treating temper of the skin material, where it changes, why we chose that material, the welding technique…down to the gnat’s ass.” And he pushes his people to do more than they think is possible. “There were times when I thought he was off his rocker,” Mueller confesses. “When I first met him, he said, ‘How much do you think we can get the cost of an engine down, compared to what you were predicting they’d cost at TRW?’ I said, ‘Oh, probably a factor of three.’ He said, ‘We need a factor of 10.’ I thought, ‘That’s kind of crazy.’ But in the end, we’re closer to his number!”
- Is SpaceX changing the rocket equation? http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Visionary-Launchers-Employees.html?c=y&page=3
33, (On SpaceX's rocket Falcon 1)
The insistence on reusability “drives the engineers insane,” says Vozoff. “We could’ve had Falcon 1 in orbit two years earlier than we did if Elon had just given up on first stage reusability. The qualification for the Merlin engine was far outside of what was necessary, unless you plan to recover it and reuse it. And so the engineers are frustrated because this isn’t the quickest means to the end. But Elon has this bigger picture in mind. And he forces them to do what’s hard. And I admire that about him.”
- Is SpaceX changing the rocket equation? http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Visionary-Launchers-Employees.html?c=y&page=3
34,
“Most people, when they make a lot of money don’t want to risk it,” he says. “For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity.” He does not laugh or crack a smile when he says this. There is no hint of irony.
- Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Elon-Musk-the-Rocket-Man-With-a-Sweet-Ride-179998091.html
35,
Maye Musk: “His brain was just ahead of everyone else’s and we thought he was deaf, so we took him to the doctor. But he was just in his own world.” Musk shrugs when I tell him that story. “They took my adenoids out, but it didn’t change anything.It’s just when I’m concentrating on something I tune everything else out.” He was bullied by other kids. He hated going to school. He was obsessed with facts and reading. “If someone said the Moon is, like, a million miles away,” says Maye, “he’d say, ‘No, it’s 238,855 miles from the Earth, depending on when you view it.’ Kids would just go ‘Huh?’ He’s just curious about everything and never stops reading and remembers everything he reads. He’s not in la-la land; he just sees everything as a problem that can be fixed.”
- Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Elon-Musk-the-Rocket-Man-With-a-Sweet-Ride-179998091.html
36，
“Elon drives this think-bigger mentality,” says JB Straubel, in a lofty design studio behind SpaceX. “As engineers we tend to want to keep things small, but Elon is always imagining something so large it’s terrifying, and he’s incredibly demanding and hard-driving.”
- Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Elon-Musk-the-Rocket-Man-With-a-Sweet-Ride-179998091.html
38,
The difference between Musk and everyone else is that passion and ambition. When Tesla nearly went bankrupt, he fired its CEO, took over the role himself and risked his personal fortune, pouring $75 million into the company. As production delays have eaten into Tesla’s cash, some analysts have doubted the company’s viability. But Musk renegotiated the terms of a government loan, sold shares in the company and seems to have fixed its production delays. “The factory is state of the art,” says Elaine Kwei, an auto industry analyst with Jefferies & Company, “and the delays were little things from other suppliers, like door handles. The car is awesome and demand doesn’t seem to be an issue; if they can sell 13,000 cars next year, they’ll break even. Tesla has the potential to dominate the EV category, similar to the Toyota Prius’ dominance of the hybrid electric segment.”
- Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Elon-Musk-the-Rocket-Man-With-a-Sweet-Ride-179998091.html
39,
Elon: Most papers are pretty useless. How many phd papers are actually used by someone ever?
- Khan school: A conversation with Elon Musk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io
40,
Elon: The internet came along, I thought: okay, for the internet, I'm pretty sure that success is one of the possible outcomes, and it seems like I can either do a phd and watch it happen, or I can participate and help it happen. So I decided to put things in hold, and started an internet company.
- Khan school: A conversation with Elon Musk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io
41，
Elon: A lot of times people kind of thing creating a company is fun, it's really not that fun, well, there are periods of fun, and there are periods where they are just awful. Particularly, if you start a company, you actually have a distillation of all the worst problems of the company, there's no point spend your time on things that are going right, so you're only spend your time on things that are going wrong, and there are things that are going wrong that other people can't take care of, you have a filter for the crappest problem in the company. I think you have to feel quite compelled to do it, and have a fairly high pain threshold. You got to do the problems your company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on, and that goes on for a long time.
Asker: Then how do you keep your big picture?
Elon: There's just a very small amount of the mental energy is on the big picture, you know where you are generally heading for, and the actual path is gonna be some zig-zaggy thing, try not to deviate too far from the path, but you gonna have to do that in some degree
- Khan school: A conversation with Elon Musk, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io
42,
Asker: When it comes to researching and analyzing an entrepreneur opportunity, how do you go about qualifying or legitimizing such a pursuit?
Elon: I'm not sure if I'm the best guy here (to answer this question), because things I've chosen have not been optimized on a risk/return basis, I would not say that I went to the rocket business, car business or the solar business thinking that it's a great opportunity, I just thought that something needed to be done in these industries in order to make a difference, and that's why I did it. But in general I do think you should think about what you are doing will result in a disruptive change or not, if it's just incremental, it's unlikely to be something major. It's gonna be something that's substantially better than what's going on before.
- Elon Musk Keynote - SXSW Interactive 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sumVEEAZ_w
46,
Recalling his two student years in Canada, Musk notes, “In the first two years at university, you learn a lot about a great many things. One particular thing that I learned at Queen’s – both from faculty and students – was how to work collaboratively with smart people and make use of the Socratic method to achieve commonality of purpose.”
- Rocket Man, http://queensu.ca/news/alumnireview/rocket-man
47,
And how did Musk recruit the scientists and other technical people he needed to join him in order to create, and quickly, a private rocket company capable of taking over the transport of space cargo after NASA’s space shuttle program ended?
“It would have been quite difficult if I’d just started off by cold-calling them and saying that I wanted to start a rocket company,” he says.
“What I said instead – because these people were working at Northrop-Grumman, Boeing, and other big aerospace companies – was ‘Would you mind helping me with a feasibility study to find out if it’s possible to make significant advancements in rocket technology? It will involve a few weekends and evenings of your time,’ I said I’d pay a decent amount for their help, and so they were enthusiastic. We had a series of meetings, and the people I recruited put a lot of thought into it and came to the conclusion that yes, it would be possible to build better rockets than had been made before.”
Was it really that straightforward?
Says Musk, “I essentially led them to a conclusion that they created. It was sort of a Socratic dialogue on a technical level. The essence of a Socratic dialogue,” he adds with another of his trademark soft laughs, “is that people wind up convincing themselves. People are much more willing to change their opinion if you’re not forcing it.”
- Rocket Man, http://queensu.ca/news/alumnireview/rocket-man
49,
“There are times, late at night, when I pace,” he confides. “If I’m trying to solve a problem, and I think I’ve got some elements of it kind of close to being figured out, I’ll pace for hours trying to think it through.”
- Rocket Man, http://queensu.ca/news/alumnireview/rocket-man
52,
“It’s better to have a higher quality venture capitalist who you think would be great to work with than to get a higher valuation with someone where there’s even a question mark, really.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
54,
“Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that….you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
56,
On hiring, Musk looks for two things – a positive attitude and being easy to work with. People must like working with the applicant. They have a no a-hole policy at Musk’s companies.
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
57,
“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop. Like where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s probably the single best bit of advice, is just constantly be thinking about how you could do things better and questioning yourself.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
59,
“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” He later says: “You have to be cautious in always saying one should always persist and never give up because there actually are times when you should give up, because you’re doing something in error. But if you’re convinced that what you’re doing is correct then you should never give up.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
60,
“I think it’s really a mindset. You have to decide. We’re going to try to do things differently. Well, provided that they’re better. You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be different or better. But I think you have to sort of decide. Let’s think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking in encouraged and rewarded and where it’s okay to fail as well. Because when you try new things, you try this idea, that idea….well a large number of them are not gonna work, and that has to be okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you’re not gonna get people coming up with ideas.”
“Get to a useful prototype with the least amount of money is probably a good idea….if people see actual hardware and it’s working, that is much more convincing [than PowerPoint, a website, etc].”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
61,
“If you’re trying to impose too much structure or if you don’t allow failure. A lot of companies, typically as they get bigger tend to have a risk/reward asymmetry, failure is severely punished [and] success is moderately awarded. That’s not a good idea if you want to be innovative because by its very nature innovation will result in many attempts that don’t work.”
- Inside the Inventive and Entrepreneurial Mind of Elon Musk, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/the-mind-of-elon-musk/
71,
Anonymous(Tesla Employee): No matter how tired he was or how many times he'd travelled back and forth across the country in the last few days, or how many fire-drills were running simultaneously, he understood what you were saying. He'd sit there with his famous "uh huh" and a head nod, acknowledging that he understood. And his followup questions were targeted, thoughtful and relevant.
- What is it like to work with Elon Musk? http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk
74,
Anonymous(Tesla Employee): Sometimes we'd get stuck dealing with a vendor or making a decision across departments. He often tell us "Get me on the phone with the CEO of <insert company here>. I don't care what the problem is. We need it resolved now." Or if it was a company decision, he'd just assert the answer and we'd move on.
- What is it like to work with Elon Musk? http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk
75,
Anonymous(Tesla Employee): When you're in the trenches working on a hard problem, it's natural to convince yourself it can't be done. You start to compromise. Elon had no tolerance for this and rightly so. We'd exceed our goals, because we had to. It was how the company would survive and he reminded us of this if we drifted too far. If market conditions prompted us to change course, we would. If we needed his sign off on a large project or spend, as long as we did our homework, it was logical, and we laid out a plan, he'd be ok discussing. But he'd often send us back to rethink the proposal if it didn't jive. He wasn't afraid to spend money when needed.
- What is it like to work with Elon Musk? http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk
79,
At SpaceX there is an expression: "No matter how hard you work, someone else is working harder"... You can guess who that is. Quoting my friend: "Elon is a serious powerhouse in the building and sets the culture for everyone, which makes it exciting to work there."
- What is it like to work with Elon Musk? http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk
80,
Elon: I think it's a good idea, when creating a company, to create a type of demonstration. If it's a product, to have a good mockup, if it's a software, to have a good demo ware, or be able to sketch something, so people can really envision what it is about. Try to get to that point as soon as possible, and then iterate to make it as real as possible as fast as possible
- An Evening with Elon Musk and Alison van Diggelen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHHwXUm3iIg
93,
How has Musk been able to achieve his goal(SpaceX)? “I think the reason it’s cheaper is, first of all, we are a private entity and we have a very lean system in here,” he says. “What we have been able to do here at SpaceX is to cherry-pick, you know, the top one or two percent and give them, you know, capital to execute well and a clear mission, which is low cost, reliable access to space, and no other constraints.” To that end, Musk employs just 140 people and refuses to bog them down with bureaucracy.
- LESSON #1: KEEP YOUR OPERATIONS LEAN AND CLEAN, http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/1610/Lesson-1-Keep-Your-Operations-Lean-And-Clean.html
94,
Elon: "The first car of Tesla is sports car, not because we think the world is lack of sports car, but because it's the right entry point for the market, if you have a new technology, the right place to entry is hight unit-cost low unit-volumn, just as when a new cellphone comes out or a new laptop, tends to be expensive at first, because they are figuring out all the issues and they take time to optimize, and over time, that technology would become cheaper and cheaper. The idea is to drive it to the mass market as fast as possible, but only when the technology matures"
- Interview With Elon Musk Tesla Motors, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onajosm9PWo#t=150
98,
"Meetings", he's fond of saying, "are what happens when people aren't working."
- The Believer, http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/200901/elon-musk-paypal-solar-power-electric-cars-space-travel
106,
Elon: I'm more an engineer than anything else, engineering and design is my interest, but I figured if I don't learn the business stuff, then somebody else is gonna make me do things I don't wanna do, so I better learn the secrets of business. That's why I did the physics degree and finance degree. Finance is easy by the way, it's really easy. All my business courses together, were not as hard as quantum mechanics.
- Uber Entrepreneur: An Evening with Elon Musk Read, http://fora.tv/2009/04/07/Uber_Entrepreneur_An_Evening_with_Elon_Musk
109
Wired.com: So what have you learned so far?
Musk: Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.
- Now 0-for-3, SpaceX's Elon Musk Vows to Make Orbit, http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa
110
Musk: Guys like John Pike have existed since the dawn of time, and if you listen to people like that then things will never get better, never change. It's a false point of view. Yes, we need to put some rockets into orbit. But the first order of business is to get rid of design errors, which we're doing, and once those are eliminated then you're dealing with repeatability, and people should judge what we're doing from the point of view of all the design issues we've ironed out through these F1 test flights.
- Now 0-for-3, SpaceX's Elon Musk Vows to Make Orbit, http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa
113,
"Life has to be about more than solving problems, you've got to have reasons to be inspired and to stay excited about life."
- Elon Enthusiast: The Life and Times of Elon Musk, http://elonenthusiast.com/image/55458551092
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