Challenges and Insights in Innovation

22 hours a day or like

what I mean I was working the answer of seven days a week sleeping in the factory

Worked every from the I worked in the paint shop general assembly body shop You ever

worry about yourself imploding like it's just yeah Yeah absolutely No one should

Put this many hours into work

This is not good

And people should not work this hard I'm not they

should not do this This is very painful

Painful in what sense it's because my it hurts my brain and my heart so

it's This is not recommended for anyone I just did it because if I didn't do

it then Tesla

Good chance has it would die I don't think you'd necessarily want to be me

It's very hard to turn it off all the time and stop

When I was young I didn't really know what I was gonna do when I got older I think

when I was I don't know if I was six or something I thought I was insane

Because it was clear that other people did not

Would their mind wasn't exploding with ideas It was just strange

it was like hmm and strange eventually I thought that the idea of inventing things

would be really cool The reason I thought

that was because I read a quote from Odyssey clock which said that

Efficiently advanced technology is

indistinguishable from magic and and that's really true If you go

back say 300 years the things that we take for granted today

Would be 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 This is stuff that

that really would be considered magic in times past

if I can do Some of those things basically if I can advance technology that's

like magic and I would be really cool Well you're a

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

I Didn't think it would be easy

Like I said I thought there 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 one 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 supposing there was some tough times in

End of 2008 How did you get through that period of crisis

Yeah 2003 just break for a second Sure Sure

You want to wait a little while

And I sure but was worth it

Sure but was worth it One of the most

difficult choices I have ever faced in life was in 2008 I think I had maybe

30 million dollars left 30 or 40 million dollars left in 2008 I had two choices I

could put it all into one company and

Then the other company would definitely die or split it between

the two companies and

but if I split it between two companies that both might die and You

know where you put your blood sweat and tears into creating something

Building something It's like a child and

so it's like which one am I gonna let one starve to death

I couldn't bring myself to do it So I put I split the money between the two

Fortunately thank goodness

You know with Tesla we're like trying to make things

that people love how many things can you buy that you really love that

Really give you joy

So rare so rare I wish there were more

things That's what we're trying to do Try to just make things that somebody loves

Yes doing something useful for other people that I like doing

Generally starting a business I'd say number one is have a high pain threshold

That's it There's a friend of mine who's got a good saying which

is that starting a company is like eating glass and

staring into the abyss That's generally what happens because when you first start

a company there's lots of optimism and things are great So

happiness at first is high Then you encounter all sorts of issues and

happiness will steadily decline and then you'll go through a whole world of hurt

And then eventually

if you succeed and in most cases you will not succeed

and Tesla almost didn't succeed came very close to failure then if you succeed

then after a long time you will finally get back to happiness

And I want to know what is the one thing

that has surprised you about your life Well I certainly I'm surprised about

the whole thing honestly I certainly didn't expect to be for

any of these things to happen honestly

In fact the only reason I started a company back in 95 an internet company was

because I couldn't get

it there were only a few internet companies and I couldn't get a job at any of them

I tried to get a job at Netscape

and sent my resume in and tried hanging

out with people hanging out in the lobby but I was too shy to talk to anyone

And then I was like okay well I guess I'll

have to start a company because I can't get a job anywhere

Really liking what you do whatever area that you get into

given that even if you're the best of the best there's always a chance

of failure So I think it's important that you really like whatever you're doing If

you don't like it life is too short If you like what you're doing you think

about it even when you're not working

It's something that your mind is drawn to

And if you don't like it you just really can't make it work I think Well you

want to do particularly if you're starting a company you need to work super hard

So what does super hard mean When my brother and I were starting our first company I

didn't have any money In fact I had negative money I had huge student debts

In fact I couldn't afford a place to stay and an office So instead of

getting an apartment we just rented a small office and we slept on the couch

And we showered at the YMCA

And there was an ISP on the floor

below us just a little tiny ISP And we drilled a hole through the floor

and connected a null motor cable That gave us our internet connectivity for like

a hundred bucks a month And we're so hot up we had just one computer So

the website was up during the day and I was coding at night

Seven days a week all the time And I briefly had a

girlfriend in that period And in order to be with me she had to sleep in the office

So work hard

like I mean every waking hour That's the thing I would say particularly if

you're starting a company It's very important to actively seek out and listen very

carefully to negative feedback And

this is something that people tend to avoid because it's painful

When friends get a product I say look don't tell me what you like tell

me what you don't like Otherwise your friend is not gonna tell you what he doesn't

like This kid's gonna say oh I love this and that

and leave out the this is the stuff I don't like list And sometimes even your

enemies give you good negative feedback So I actually went to Russia three times to

look at buying a refurbished ICBM I can tell you it was very weird going there

in late 2001 2002

going to the Russian rocket forces and saying I'd like to buy two of

your biggest rockets They thought I was crazy but I did have money so that was okay

One good friend of mine collected a whole series of videos

of rockets blowing up and made me watch those He just didn't want me to lose

all my money For SpaceX the first three launches failed

We were just barely able to

scrape together enough parts and money to

do the fourth launch If that fourth launch had failed we would have been dead

I tried very hard to get the right expertise in for SpaceX

I tried hard to find a great chief engineer for the rocket but the good chief

engineers wouldn't join and the bad ones well

there was no point in hiring them So I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket

So if I could have found somebody better then we would have maybe had less

than three failures When you had that third failure in a row 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 You know there are American

heroes who don't like this idea

Neil Armstrong Gene Cernan have

both testified against commercial spaceflight and the way that you're developing

it and I wonder what you think of that

I was very sad to see that because those guys are yeah

those guys are heroes of mine so it's really tough

You know I wish they would come and visit and see the

hard work that we're doing here and I think that would change their mind

They inspired you to do this didn't they Yes

And to see them casting stones in

your direction It's difficult

Did you expect them to cheer you on

Certainly hoping they would When critics say you can't do this your

answer to them is we've done it