Gmail creator Paul Buchheit on the “obsessive focus” of founders who build $100bn companies

Common denominators for the founders of hundred billion dollar companies. There is, I think, like this obsessive focus. There's almost an irrationality in some of these founders. The example that comes out as like the most insane version of it is probably like Elon Musk. He came into Google, gave like a tech talk, I want to say 2003 or something like that. It was after he had started SpaceX but before they had done the first rocket launch and someone is like, what are you going to do if the rocket explodes when you launch it? He's like, well, I have enough money for three launches, so I hope one of them succeeds. Like he literally plowed his entire fortune. The first three blew up too, I think. Yeah, and the first three did blow up. They managed to scrape together enough money for like a fourth rocket. But if that fourth rocket hadn't gone, there would be no SpaceX and Elon would be bankrupt. Right? Like he, like that is insane. I would not take all of my money and plow it into some hair brain rocket scheme. Right? That's like a level of irrationality that is, I think, wonderful.