ELON'S CRAZY: Risked It All for SpaceX & Tesla

What's up, Believe Nation? I started the Did You Know series to learn a little bit more about some of our famous entrepreneurs, our favorite ones, to learn what makes them tick, to find a couple of surprising facts that maybe you haven't heard before. And so today we're going to learn 9 surprising facts about Elon Musk. Fact number 1: He almost went broke trying to save SpaceX and Tesla.

We used up all the, you know, invested $100 million, then still needed more money, and then there was the big recession of 2008 and '09, and in the end I had to invest everything, and I was borrowing money from friends to pay the rent.

You were on the edge of Actually, I didn't even buy a house. You could have bought an island and just, you could have sipped cocktails for the rest of your life. Why did you want to take the risks involved in these businesses that you've gone into?

Well, I have to say, at times I've wondered, you know, I wondered if I it was really the right choice. But it has actually been a very difficult journey, I have to say. But I think there are certain important things that we must do in order for the future to be good. We must have sustainable energy. If we don't have that, the future is going to be terrible.

Were you a little naive when you thought, I can easily build an electric car and a rocket?

I didn't think it would be easy. Like I said, I thought they would probably fail. But you know, like, creating a company is almost like having a child. So it's sort of like, how do you say, your child should not have food.

So once you have the company, you have to feed it and nurse it and take care of it, even if it It ruins you?

Yeah.

But I suppose there were some tough times in 2008, end of 2008. How did you get through that period of crisis?

Yeah. Can we just break for a second? Sure, sure, of course. 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.

Fact number 2: Steve Jobs was rude to him.

Steve Jobs is, was and is a wonderful Silicon Valley icon. Is he someone that you've admired and what have you learned from Steve's life and work?

Well, he's certainly someone I've admired. Um, although I did try to talk to him once at a party and he was super rude to me. But I don't think it was me. I think it was sort of, you know, popular—

I think you weren't the first.

Yeah, not the first, no. But, yeah, and I was actually there with, like, Larry Page is an old friend of mine. I've known Larry since before he got venture funding for Google. And Larry was the guy that introduced me to Steve Jobs. So it's not as like I'm going, like, and tugging on his coat, like, you know, "Please talk to me." But, you know, so I was introduced by Larry Page. It's not bad, so. But I mean, obviously he was an incredible guy and made fantastic products that— I don't know, there was like a certain— the guy had a certain magic about him that was really inspiring. So I mean, I think that's really great.

Is there that magic that you try and emulate?

No, I think Steve Jobs is way cooler than I am.

Fact number 3, he once shredded a $1 million uninsured F1 McLaren.

Not really, no, actually. And I never did. Although that was one of the things that was sort of talked about at one point. But I never did. I've never raced anyone with McLaren. I had it for several years. I put 11,000 miles on it. And I drove it from LA to San Francisco. It was my daily driver, which is a crazy car to have as a daily driver, particularly on the 405.

But I understand when you got it, Yeah, you're driving down 280 and you wrecked it.

No, uh, well, and you did—

let me just tell the story. Okay, all right.

Yeah, let's see if the story that you tell is actually— how does that— how that compares to the reality, because the reality is pretty messed up.

So hopefully the reality is better. So you wreck the car, you get out of the car, you're doubling over with laughter, and the person with you said, why are you laughing that you just wrecked the car, and you said, "No, you don't know the funny part.

It wasn't insured." Well, the punchline is correct. Yeah, so I was actually— I was driving up Sand Hill Road with Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of PayPal. We were actually driving to see Mike Moritz. This is in 2000. And so we're driving up Sand Hill Road. I didn't really know how to drive the McLaren. And Peter says, "So what can this do?" And then, like, I'm probably number one on the list of famous last words. I said, "Watch this." So I floored it and did a lane change on Sand Hill. And so the McLaren has no traction control or anything. It was just It's massive power to the wheels. 640 brake horsepower. And it only weighs a ton. So it has massive power to weight. It can break the wheels free at 80 miles an hour. So it broke the rear end free and started spinning. And I sort of— let's see. I think it was sort of— I was going straight and then turned. And I remember seeing the cars coming towards me while I was going backwards. And then we hit an embankment, sort of a 45-degree embankment on Sand Hill, which tossed the car into the air like a discus. And it kept rotating with about 3 foot of air clearance, according to witnesses. And then slammed down on the ground going the original direction. And we blew the suspension out. And now, it didn't actually wreck the car. The core chassis and the engine were okay. Thank God. But all the glass and the wheels and everything was shredded, and there was massive body damage in the front and rear. And, yeah.

Fact number 4: He has an idea for a 5th mode of transport, the Hyperloop.

I know that there are various companies that are trying to create the Hyperloop, and honestly, I think it's a lot easier than people think.

The blueprints are pretty complicated.

Well, blueprints are always kind of complicated, and I mean, yes, there's math, but it's really not that hard.

It still sounds pretty complicated, Elon.

It's like a tube with an air hockey table. It's just a low-pressure tube with a pod in it that runs on air bearings, on air skis, with an air compressor on the front that's taking the high-pressure air buildup on the nose and pumping it through the air skis. It's really— I swear it's not that hard.

Fact number 5, he considered buying intercontinental ballistic missiles from Russia.

Speaking of crazy things, went to Russia 3 times to negotiate a deal to buy a couple of the largest ICBMs in the Russian fleet. A strange experience.

How do you even get into that negotiation?

Well, you talk to people who know people. And pretty soon you're talking to the Russian rocket forces. And it turns out Russia's quite a capitalist society. And so I've definitely had some weird meetings. In places that I swear they looked like a sanitarium or something. I don't know. It was very odd.

We keep coming back to the theme of crazy.

Yeah. Seriously, this place had padded walls. You're like, "Why do you have padded walls?" It was weird. And yeah, and then some sort of Russian guy who was missing a front tooth started yelling at me. 'Cause his friend, one of his front teeth was missing, he was like spit flying at me in a place with padded walls. I'm like, this is really bizarre.

What's happened to my life?

Right.

And that was the moment when you thought, I'm gonna build my own rocket.

Yeah.

Fact number 6, reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a major turning point in his life.

Basically, I sort of was thinking about this when I was a kid and trying to find some meaning in life. Like, what's the meaning of life, you know? And I got quite sort of sad about it actually when I was a teenager. And then I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which basically said like the real, the real, you know, basically the universe is the answer and you just need to figure out the questions. So I think, you know, that's, if I can help kind of figure out the questions, then I consider that to be meaningful. Maybe for the name of the first ship that goes to Mars, not the name of the whole sort of the ship line or whatever necessarily, but the first ship that goes to Mars, like my current favorite is Heart of Gold from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So I think probably we'll name the first ship that goes to Mars Heart of Gold. I like the fact that it's driven by infinite improbability, because I think our ship is also extremely improbable. So I like the infinite improbability drive.

Fact number 7: He taught himself computer programming at a young age and sold his first program, Blastar, for $500.

I was— I went into a store in South Africa and saw a Commodore VIC-20. And I guess maybe I was 9 years old. I don't know. Somewhere around that time. And I thought this was like the most awesome thing I'd ever seen. And you could like make this— write computer programs and make games. And I played Atari and other things, other games, consoles, when I was like maybe 6 or 7. So the idea of being able to create games, I thought was really exciting. I taught myself how to program computers when I was a kid. Bought my first computer when I was 10 and sold my first commercial program when I was 12.

Fact number 8: He believes that we're possibly living in a simulation.

The strongest argument for us being in a simulation, probably being in a simulation, I think is the following: that 40— call it 40 years ago, we had Pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it's getting better every year. And soon we'll have virtual reality, augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality. Just indistinguishable. Even if that rate of advancement drops by 1,000 from what it is right now, then you just say, okay, well, let's imagine it's 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing in the evolutionary scale. So, um, so given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any set-top box or on a PC or whatever, and there would probably be billions of such computers or set-top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality is 1 in billions. Tell me what's wrong with that argument. Is the answer yes? The argument is probably— I mean, I just like, is there a flaw in that argument? I mean, someone— I'm not sure what the error No, no, the argument makes sense. So the assumption then is that somebody beat us to it and this is a game. No, no, there's a one in billions chance that this is base reality. Oh, okay. What do you think? Well, I think it's one in billions. Okay. I mean, that seems to be like clearly what the, you know, what, what, what suggests. And actually, I mean, arguably we should hope that that's true. Because otherwise, if civilization stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilization. So maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation because otherwise— Because they could reboot it. Well, otherwise, either we're going to create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will cease to exist. Those are the two options.

And fact number 9, he once made a guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory.

Here you go.

You gotta be kidding me.

Sorry?

You're Elon Musk.

I am?

What are you doing here?

I'm washing dishes. Well, I was on the turkey line But I got demoted for being too generous with the gravy.

Oh, man.

I—

What an honor to meet you. I'm such a fan of Tesla and SpaceX, all your companies. Howard Wolowitz, Caltech.

Nice to meet you, Howard. It feels great to come down here and help the less fortunate, huh? Oh, yeah.

Nothing better than helping people. Which is— Something I realized when I was viewing Earth from the deck of the International Space Station, where I spent 2 months as a payload specialist, a job I was qualified for because I'm an MIT-trained engineer.

And I thought I ladled the gravy on thick.

Sorry. It's just, you're you. And I really want you to adopt me.

Well, you're here on Thanksgiving, so you're probably a good person. Oh.

I made my wife come down too.

You think you might ever get back out to space?

Is that a job offer? 'Cause I really want to go to Mars. Assuming I can bring my wife. She hardly takes up any room. She's basically a carry-on.

Well, we're not quite there yet, but we're always looking for engineers. So let me give you my email. We can stay in touch.

Thank you.

Oh, look. Someone hardly touched their pumpkin pie. Want to share it with me?

A partially eaten piece of pumpkin pie from a homeless shelter with Elon Musk?

You bet I do. So thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'm super curious to figure out which surprising fact was most interesting for you, most surprising for you. Leave it down in the comments below. I'm going to check it out. Also, what do you think of this series? This is one of our series that's on the bubble. We've done Tony Robbins, we've done Bill Gates, we've done Kanye West, and this is Elon Musk. And we're not sure if we're gonna continue this series or not, so I'd love to know what did you like about it? Do you like it? How can we make it better? Share your thoughts down below. Maybe the series will continue, or maybe we'll replace it with something better. Let me know. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever Your one word is much love.

I'll see you soon.