Elon Musk

All right. All right. Well, I'd like to thank you for leaving crazy person out of the description. So I thought.

I was trying to think, what is the most useful thing that I could. What could I say that could actually be helpful or useful to you in the future? And I thought, perhaps, tell the story of, how I sort of came to be here.

How did some of these things happen? And maybe there's some lessons there, 'cause I often find myself wondering, how did this happen? So when I was young, I didn't really know what I was gonna do, when I got older.

People kept asking me and but then eventually I thought that the idea of inventing things would be, would be really cool. And the reason I thought that was because, I read a quote from Arthur C. Clarke which said that a, "A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

And that's really true. If you go back, say 300 years, the things that we take for granted today, would be. You'd, you'd be burned at the stake for.

You know, being able to fly, that's crazy. Being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate, having, effectively, with the internet, a group mind of sorts, and having access to all the world's information, instantly from almost anywhere on the earth.

This is, this is stuff that really would be magic or would be considered magic, in times past. In fact, I think it actually goes beyond that because there are many things that we take for granted today that weren't even imagined in times past. They weren't even in the realm of magic.

So it actually goes beyond that. So I thought, well, you know, if I can do some of those things, basically if I can advance technology, then that's like magic, and that would be really cool. And the.

I always had sort of a slight existential crisis 'cause I was trying to figure out what does it all mean? Like what's the purpose of things?

And I came to the conclusion that if we can advance the the knowledge of the world, if we can do things that expand the scope and and scale of consciousness, then we're better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened and that's really the only way forward.

So I studied, physics and business because I figured in order to do a lot of these things, you need to know how the universe works, and you need to know how the economy works.

And you also need to be able to bring a lot of people together to work with you to create something 'cause it's very difficult to do something as an individual if it's, if it's a significant technology.

So I originally came out to California to, try to figure out how to improve the energy density of electric vehicles, basically to try to figure out if there was an advanced capacitor that could serve as an alternative to batteries. And that was in '95, and that's also when the internet, started to happen.

And it. I thought, well, I can either, pursue this this technology where success maybe may not be one of the possible outcomes, which is always tricky, or participate in the internet and be part of it. So I decided to drop out. Now obviously you.

Fortunately, we're, we're, we're past graduation, so I can't be accused of recommending that to you. And so did some internet stuff. You know. Did a few things here and there.

One of which was PayPal. And I think maybe it's helpful to say one of the things that was important then in the creation of PayPal was kind of how it started because initially. The initial thought was, with PayPal, was to create an agglomeration of financial services, so to have one place where all your financial services needs would be seamlessly integrated and and work smoothly.

And then we had like a little feature, which was to do email payments. And whenever we'd show the, show the system off to someone, we'd show the hard part, which was the agglomeration of financial services, which was quite difficult to put together. Nobody was interested. Then we'd show people email payments, which was actually quite easy, and everybody was interested.

So this is, I think it's important to take feedback from your environment. You know, it's, it You wanna be as closed loop as possible. And so we focused on email payments and really tried to make that work, and that's what really got things to take off.

But if we hadn't, if we hadn't responded to what people said, then we we probably would not have been successful. So it's, it's important to look for things like that and focus on them when you see them, and you correct, your prior assumptions. And then. All right, let's get to work.

The. Going from PayPal, I thought, well, what are some of the other problems that, are likely to most affect the future of humanity? It really wasn't from the perspective of what's the rank ordered best way to make money? Which is, which is okay, but it was really what I think is gonna most affect the future of humanity.

So the. I think the biggest terrestrial problem we've got is, sustainable energy, but the production and consumption of energy in a sustainable manner. If we don't solve that this century, this century, we're in, we're in deep trouble. And then the other one being the extension of life beyond Earth to make life multi-planetary.

So, that's, that's, that's the basis for The latter is the basis for for SpaceX, and the former is the basis for Tesla and SolarCity. And when I started SpaceX, I it actually initially, I thought that, "Well, there's, there's no way one could possibly start a rocket company." I wasn't that crazy.

But then, it I thought, "Well, what is a way to, increase NASA's budget?" That was actually my initial goal.

So I thought, "Well, if we can do a low-cost mission to Mars," something called Mars Oasis, which would land seeds with would seeds in dehydrated nutrient gel, and you hydrate them upon landing, and then you'd have this great sort of money shot of green plants on a red background.

And Yeah. The, the public tends to respond to, precedents and superlatives and this would be the first life on Mars, the furthest that life's ever traveled as far as we know. And I thought, "Well, that would get people really excited and and therefore increase, NASA's budget." So obviously the financial outcome from such a mission would probably be zero.

So anything better than that was on the upside. So I actually went to, I went to Russia three times to look at buying, a refurbished ICBM because that was the best deal.

And I can tell you it was very weird going there in 2000, late 2001, 2002, going to the Russian Rocket Forces and saying, "I'd like to buy two of your biggest rockets." "but you can keep the nuke." "That's a lot more."

And that was 10 years ago, I guess. So, they they I think they thought I was crazy, but I did have money, so that was okay.

And after making several trips to Russia, I came to the conclusion that actually, my initial impression was wrong about, it Because my initial thought was, well, that there's not enough will to explore and expand beyond Earth and have a Mars base and that kind of thing. But I came to the conclusion that that was wrong.

In fact, there's plenty of will, particularly in the United States, because the United States is a nation of explorers, of people who came here from other parts of the world. I think, the United States is really, a a distillation of the spirit of human exploration.

So, but if people think it's impossible, then, or it's gonna completely break the federal budget, then they're not gonna do it. So after my third trip, I said, "Okay, well, what we really need to do here is try to solve the space transport problem," and started SpaceX. And this was against the advice of pretty much everyone I talked to.

One friend made me sit down and watch a bunch of videos of rockets blowing up. Let me tell you he wasn't far wrong. The thing It was, it was tough going there in the beginning, because I'd never built anything physical.

I mean, I'd built like little model rockets as a kid and that kind of thing, but I'd never had a company that built anything physical. So I'd kind of figure out how to, how to do all these things and bring together the right team of people and and so we we did all that and then failed three times. It was tough going.

Because the thing about a rocket is the passing grade is a hundred percent. And you don't get to actually test the rocket in the real environment that it's going to be in.

So I think So the best analogy for rocket engineering is like if you wanna create a really complicated bit of software, you you can't run the software as an integrated whole, and you can't run it on the computer it's intended to run on, but the first time you put it all together and run it on that computer, it must run with no bugs. That's, that's basically the essence of it.

So we missed the mark there. The first launch, I was picking up bits of rocket near the, near the launch site. It was a bit sad.

And but we we learnt with each successive flight and were able to with, eventually with the fourth flight in 2008, reach orbit. And that was also with the last bit of money that we had. So, thank goodness, that that happened.

It I think the saying is, "Fourth time's the charm." so that So we got the Falcon 1 to orbit and then, began to scale that up to the Falcon 9, which is, about an order of magnitude more, thrust.

It's, around a million pounds of thrust, and we managed to get that to orbit and then, developed Dragon spacecraft, which, recently was able to dock and return to Earth from the space station. That was, Thanks. That was a white-knuckled event.

So, yeah, it's a, it's a huge relief. Still can't quite believe it actually happened. But there's a lot more that that must happen beyond this in order for humanity to to become a spacefaring civilization, ultimately, a multi-planet species.

And that's something I think it's, it's, it's vitally important, and I hope, that some of you will participate in that, either at SpaceX or at other companies, because it's just really one of the most important things for the preservation and extension of consciousness.

I mean, it's worth noting, as I'm sure people are aware, that the Earth has been around for four billion years, and civilization, at least in terms of having writing, has been around for 10,000 years, and that's being generous. So, it's, it's really, somewhat of a tenuous existence that, civilization and consciousness as as we know it has been on Earth.

And I think, I'm actually, I'm actually fairly optimistic about the future of Earth, so I don't wanna, I don't wanna sort of, people to have the wrong impression that I think we're all about to die. I think, I think we'll.

I think things will most likely be okay for a long time on Earth. But not for sure, but most likely. But even if it's, if it's sort of 99% likely, a 1%.

A 1% chance, it's still, it's still worth, spending a fair bit of effort to ensure that we have, we've backed up the biosphere, you know, planetary redundancy, if you will. And so I think, I think it's really really quite important.

And in order to do that, there's a breakthrough that needs to occur, which is to create a rapidly and completely reusable, transport system to Mars, which is one of those things that's right on the borderline of, of, if impossible. But that's sort of the thing that we're, we're gonna try to achieve there with SpaceX.

And then, on the, on the, on the Tesla front, the goal with Tesla was really to try to show that. What electric cars can do, 'cause people had the wrong impression, and we had to, change people's perception of an electric vehicle. 'Cause they used to think of it as something that was slow and ugly and had low range, kind of like a golf cart.

And so that's why we created the Tesla Roadster to show that you can be fast, attractive, and long range. And it's amazing how, even though you can show that something works on paper, you know, and the calculations are very clear, until you actually have the physical object and they can, they can drive it doesn't really sink in for people.

And so that I think is something worth noting. If you're gonna create a company, the first thing you should try to do is create a working prototype. You know, everything looks great on PowerPoint.

You can, you can make anything work on PowerPoint. But if you have a if you have an actual demonstration Oh. Even if it's in primitive form, that's much more effective for convincing people.

So we we made the Tesla Roadster, and now we're coming out soon with the Model S, which is a four-door sedan. Because after we made the Tesla Roadster, people said, "Oh, sure, we always knew you could make a car like that. It's an expensive car-" ".

And it's low volume and it's small and all that, but you couldn't make a real car." I'm like, "Okay, fine. We're gonna make that too."

So that's coming out soon. And yeah, so that's, that's, that's the, I think the, where things are and and hopefully there are some lessons to be, to be drawn there. But I think the overarching point I wanna make is that, you know, you guys are the the magicians of the 21st century.

You know, don't let anything hold you back. Imagination is the limit. And go out there and create some magic.

Thank you.