

so what advice do I have for college

graduates certainly I don't want you toapply for a job at solar city or Tesla

or SpaceX and if not then if thatdoesn't work for whatever reason thenapply to jobs at other companies in that

arena or try starting a company

if you study engineering and you figureout how to design new things then it's

relatively easy to start a company youjust need to get a few like-minded

people with you although I have to saythat the space business is quite it's

quite hard to start a company in spacebusiness because it's such a capital

intensive business so it may be betterto do something in solar power or if

you're gonna do it in cars do it and askind of a component supplier of cars or

something like that musk has collegedegrees in business and physics but

SpaceX is his first venture in aerospacehow did you get the expertise to be the

chief technology officer of a rocketship company well I do have a physics

background that's helpful as thefoundation and then I read a lot of

books and talked to a lot of a lot ofsmart people don't just follow the trend

you may have heard me say that it's goodto think in terms of the physics

approach of first principles which israther than reasoning by analogy you

boil things down to the most fundamentaltruths you can imagine and you reason up

from there and this is a good way tofigure out if if something really makes

sense or if it's just what everybodyelse is doing and it's hard to think

that way you can't think think that wayabout everything takes a lot of effort

but if you're trying to do something newit's the best way to think and that

framework was developed but byphysicists to figure outcounterintuitive things like quantum

mechanics so it's really a powerfulpowerful method

and I want to know what is the one thingthat is surprised to you about your life

well I simply I'm surprised about thewhole thing honestly

I certainly didn't expect to be to be of these things to happen honestly yeah

I just do I know I wanted to be involvedin technology and in fact the only

reason I started a company back to Internet company was because I couldn'tget it there were only a few internet

companies they're not gonna get a job atany of them now I try to get a job at at

Netscape and tomorrow's me and I triedhanging out in the lobby but I was too

shy to talk to anyone and it was likeokay well I guess I'll have to start a

company cuz I can't get a job anywhere



I wouldn't say I'm fearlessin fact I I think I fear I feel fearquite strongly but I am if the if what

we're doing isn't you know what I'mdoing is I think it's important enough

then I just override the fear so butit's not as that I don't feel I feel

like more stronger than I would like I

think also people tend to overweightrisk on a personal level it's one thing

if you've got you know a mortgage to payand kids to support and that if you were

to deviate from your job that well howyou're going to feed your family and pay

the ransomokay that's understandable but let's say

you're young and we just coming out ofcollege or coming out of high school or

whatever the what are you what are yourisk

you know you're not gonna stop I mean

nice it's really certainly not in anykind of modern economy it's so easy to

earn enough money just to live somewhereand eat food the other or what are the

field afraid of there it was mostlyafraid of failure I think

Applause

people should be less risk-averse whenthere's not much at risk

what is education like you're basicallydownloading data and algorithms into

your brain and it's it's actuallyamazingly bad in conventional educationit's like it shouldn't be like this huge

chore like the more you can gamify theprocess of learning the better

I always had sort of a slight

existential crisis because I was tryingto figure out what does it'll mean like

what's the purpose of things and I cameto the conclusion that if we can advance

the the knowledge of the world if we cando things that expand the scope and and

scale of consciousness then we're betterable to ask the right questions and

become more enlightened and and that'sreally the only way forward what drives

you what what is it that when you wakeup in the morning do you see a problem

and you want to solve it the thing thatdrives me is that I want to be able to

think about the future and you feel goodabout that

so that you know we're doing what we canto have the future be be as good as

possible to be inspired by what islikely to happen and to look forward to

the next day sothat's that's what really really drives

me is trying to figure out how do we howto make sure that things are great I'm

gonna be so and that's the unlinedprinciple behind Tesla and SpaceX is

that I think it's pretty important thatwe accelerate the transition to

sustainable generation and consumptionof energy it's inevitable but it's it

matters that we had if it happenedsooner or later



and then SpaceX is about helping makelife multiplanetary and doing what we

can to continue the dream of Apollo andultimately make contribution to life

becoming a multiplanetary let's talk alittle more about that I think everyone

very interested that when you say makinglife multiplanetary that's exciting it

is exciting so what's your vision thereyou know I think you know particularly

for Americans you know like you thinkabout America is a nation of explorers

people came here from other parts of theworld that you know chose to give up the

known in favor of the unknown so I thinkexploration like the United States is a

distillation of the human spirit ofexploration

so that's why it appeals to Americans somuch you know you can see this when say

there was a shuttle tragedy and sevenpeople died it and that's that's

terrible but a lot of people die all thetime but why do we care so much because

it was the dream of exploration that wasdying along with those people that's why

I mean I thought both Tesla and SpaceXwould fail at the beginning yeah really

of course nevertheless you put all yourmoney in them I expected to lose it

well technically what I thought was wellI'll take half the money from PayPal and

if L lose half of it that's okay butthen of course the companies encounter

difficulties and then have a choice ofthat you like let the company die or put

you know all the money into thecompanies and so really doing what the

companies to die so I put all the moneyin the companies and then I had to

borrow money for friends to pay livingexpenses you know just looking just for

evidence of exceptional ability and ifthere's a track record of exceptional

achievement then it's likely that thatwill continue into the future



well it really depends on the stakes ifthe stakes are high if it's really

important then what should then I knowwe'll overcome the fear and just do itanyway I essentially I mean it's drive

over rights fear but I feel the fearit's kind of annoying

I wish isn't oh Sh I felt it less



