Elon Musk at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2013
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (2)
Transcript
0:01AnnouncerTheir accomplishments are a study in opposites. Out of this world, down to earth, high tech, high touch. But while Elon and Kimbal Musk's means may differ, their end is the same.
0:15AnnouncerTo push humanity forward to greener pastures and beyond. They were born and raised in South Africa, but Elon came to America first, earning undergraduate degrees in both business and physics before briefly attending Stanford in 1995.
0:32Elon MuskMy brother was in Canada at the time, and I said, look, I think we should try to create an Internet company. So he came down and joined me.
0:38Kimbal MuskElon was more the business mastermind, I was more the sales guy.
0:42AnnouncerTheir first venture, Zip2, sold to Compaq in 1999. Kimball was an early investor in Elon's next company, which would eventually become PayPal and sell to eBay in 2002. In the years following, Kimball pursued the culinary arts, eventually landing in Colorado.
1:00Kimbal MuskI'm one of the founders of the of the Kitchen, which is a restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. It's a nationally recognized restaurant.
1:07AnnouncerWhile Kimball was pioneering local farm to table cuisine at what would become a family of four renowned restaurants, brother Elon was charting a different course.
1:16Elon MuskWhen I was in university, I thought about what are the problems that are most likely to affect the future of the world.
1:21AnnouncerIn 2002, Elon founded Space Exploration Technologies.
1:26Jeff Skoll (moderator)SpaceX continues America's mission to resupply the
1:29AnnouncerInternational Space Station from US Soil.
1:32Elon MuskI'm talking about setting ultimately tens of thousands, eventually millions of people to Mars and then going out there and exploring the stars.
1:39AnnouncerIn 2003, he founded Tesla Motors to build all electric cars.
1:44Elon MuskSo we had a $100,000 sports car, which was the roadster. Then we've got the Model S, which starts at around $50,000. And our third generation car, which will hopefully be out in about three or four years, will be a $30,000 car.
1:56Elon MuskThe winner by unanimous decision, Tesla model
2:00AnnouncerS. In 2006, he became chairman of SolarCity, the largest full service provider of solar power in the country. Meanwhile, Kimball, while also serving on the boards of SpaceX and Tesla, found another cause.
2:14Kimbal MuskObesity is the epidemic of our day. So I created a non profit called the Kitchen Community. And what we do is we help put learning gardens in schools around the country to fight childhood obesity and to improve test scores.
2:26Kimbal MuskWhen you teach kids in the garden, you can increase scores by over 15 points on 100 point scale. Restaurateurs literally means restorers. Let's energize and connect our community. Let's do it with kids, let's do it with real food.
2:40AnnouncerWith their unique forms of disruptive innovation, the Musk brothers are creating the future while holding fast to the ideals of family, teamwork, and service that got humanity this far in the first place.
2:57AnnouncerPretty amazing. You think their mom's proud? So leading the conversation with Elon and Jeff, Elan and Kimball is Jeff Skoll. As you all know, Jeff is one of the planet's true visionary leaders in a number of fields.
3:19AnnouncerAs a business innovator, he was the first full time employee of ebay, and he led the company's emergence into a transformative trading platform that democratized economic opportunity throughout the world.
3:32AnnouncerIn 1999, Jeff founded the Skoll foundation, which quickly became the world's largest foundation for social entrepreneurship. And in 2004, he founded Participant Media with the belief that a well told story has the power to inspire change.
3:49AnnouncerJeff has been the executive producer now on over 39 films, which have garnered five Oscars and 35 nominations. In 2009, Jeff founded the Skoll Global Threats Fund with a focus on the five issues that, if unchecked, could endanger the future of our planet.
4:09AnnouncerHis many awards include Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People, BusinessWeek's 50 Most Generous Philanthropists, and the John W. Gardner Leadership Award. We're honored and delighted, truly delighted, to welcome Jeff Skoll and his conversation with Lon and Kimball Musk.
4:30AnnouncerThanks very much.
4:45Jeff Skoll (moderator)Thank you very much, Paul, for the very generous introduction. My name is Jeff Skoll and I'm delighted to be here with my good friends Elon and Kimball Musk. In fact, we're in for a treat.
5:01Jeff Skoll (moderator)I'm usually the one that gets asked the question, so this is a chance for me to put the shoe on the other foot. And it's also the first time Elon and Kimball have been on a panel together.
5:13Jeff Skoll (moderator)I first met Elon in 1995 when he was dating a classmate of mine. Not long after that, I dated the same girl. And I realized then that Elon always likes to be first.
5:32Jeff Skoll (moderator)I've known Kimball for about a decade. Kimball runs four restaurants in Colorado, and he's invested heavily in Learning Gardens, which I hope he'll talk about at length tonight. Elon is the CEO of both Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and he's the chairman of SolarCity.
5:51Jeff Skoll (moderator)But the first question for both of you, what do you admire about each other?
5:59Kimbal MuskI'll do it first. So you don't know this, but the advantage of being his younger brother is I kind of used to get what he wanted, and he wanted a lot of stuff.
6:14Kimbal MuskAnd so the one time I remember he wanted motorbikes, I was too young. He was 7, I think, and I was 6 or something like that, which in this country is not very common to get motorbikes.
6:25Kimbal MuskBut one of the great things I admire about Elon is when he wants something, he really wants it, and he goes and gets it. And it's amazing to watch him do that as his brother, and he's done it throughout his life.
6:36Jeff Skoll (moderator)Interesting.
6:38Elon MuskWell, I think Kimball is just one of the nicest people I know in the world. I've never in all my life seen Kimball intentionally do a mean thing. So I admire that a great deal.
6:56Jeff Skoll (moderator)The two of you, as I understand it, I mean, entrepreneurs are interesting because they often get started at a young age doing entrepreneurial ventures of some kind. And I understand that when you were still in South Africa, you had a venture of some kind.
7:15Kimbal MuskYeah, the video arcade.
7:22Elon MuskYeah. We had this brilliant idea to start a video arcade because we really knew what games were popular.
7:28Kimbal MuskYeah. And also we were video game experts at 14 and 15. And the reason we had to stop was because we went to the city to get a code variance, and you need to be 18 to sign.
7:41Kimbal MuskAnd we had never told our parents, and we already had a lease. We had games coming. And when the parents found out, they put a stop to it, which is a real bummer because it would have been very successful.
7:56Jeff Skoll (moderator)Well, I'm glad that wasn't the final barrier to success. But that was the first time that you worked together as brothers. And eventually that led to a company called Zip2.
8:14Jeff Skoll (moderator)I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking about Zip2. How did it come about? What was the idea? What was the whole process like for you?
8:25AnnouncerSure.
8:26Kimbal MuskWell.
8:26Elon MuskAnd Kimball, do you want to start off or should it?
8:29Kimbal MuskWell, I mean, I would start with the road trip.
8:32Elon MuskRoad trip?
8:32Jeff Skoll (moderator)Yeah.
8:33Kimbal MuskYeah.
8:33Elon MuskOkay.
8:36Kimbal MuskSo a year before this is 94 we took. Elon was working at some video game company. And there's a theme here.
8:45Elon MuskI was actually working. I was doing two jobs. One was at a video company, a video game company that was ironically called Rocket Science. And then working on ultra capacitors during the day for electric cars.
9:00Kimbal MuskAnd so we went on a road trip from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia, and that was in 94. And we were both. I'm younger than Elon, but we were both finishing school at the same time because I'm much smarter than him.
9:15Kimbal MuskElon actually was doing a double major, so that's. But anyway, so we ended up doing that, and the. We Went. We started with a medical network, medical database. Remember that?
9:28Elon MuskYeah. Well, there were a bunch of iterations, but I think the thought in 95 was that the Internet was going to be something really that fundamentally changed humanity. It was like humanity acquiring a nervous system.
9:43Elon MuskYou know, previously, people would communicate information almost by osmosis relative to how the Internet works. If you wanted to have access to a lot of information, you'd go to the Library of Congress, but unless you're physically where the books were, you didn't have access to that information.
10:02Elon MuskBut with the Internet, you could be anywhere in the world. And if you're connected to the Internet, you have access to all the world's information. So it was really just like the humanity was almost becoming like a superorganism with a nervous system.
10:16Elon MuskSo we want to be part of building some elements of that.
10:20Kimbal MuskIt was a funny time because it made so much sense to us. But we literally had a guy throw us. Throw a Yellow Pages book at us. He was a very senior executive.
10:29Kimbal MuskAnd tell us, do you ever really think the Internet is going to replace this? Yeah. And literally. And you're kind of looking at them going, this guy's screwed.
10:42Elon MuskYeah. Yeah. He didn't. And people didn't know what the Internet was, including in Silicon Valley.
10:49Kimbal MuskYeah.
10:50Elon MuskYeah. There was, like, something that universities and, like, the government used and nobody was really doing anything on it. And you certainly couldn't make money. Yeah.
10:59Jeff Skoll (moderator)Did you know that you were onto something right away, or did people just think you were crazy and pursuing some bizarre dream? When did it occur to you that Zip2 might be a success?
11:18Elon MuskWell, I mean, when we first started out, I think our ambitions were really quite, quite low. It was really to make enough money to pay the rent.
11:27Kimbal MuskYeah. We got a vc, gave us money that was yay. We thought it was all over then.
11:34Elon MuskYeah, it was pretty crazy. I mean, when we started out in 95, we literally, the beginning, we had one computer, which would be the web server during the day, and then at night I'd program on it
11:48Kimbal Muskand we'd sleep in the office.
11:49Elon MuskYeah.
11:49Kimbal MuskWe couldn't afford to rent.
11:51Elon MuskYeah. It was cheaper to rent the office than to rent an apartment. So we just rented the office and slept in the office and showered at the ymca.
11:59Kimbal MuskThe ymca. And for me, the worst part was eating a Jack in the Box three times a day.
12:04Elon MuskYeah, man, this. It's really difficult to get food at Palo ALTO after, like, 10pm it's like Jack in the Box and a few other options. So we rotated through the Jack in the Box menu.
12:15Kimbal MuskI remember the one time I was literally at Jack in the Box. Hopefully you guys aren't. Whoever's from the company's not here. And it was one of those, like, three in the morning things.
12:22Kimbal MuskAnd it was. I took a milkshake and I was so tired, and there was something in the milkshake, and I literally went like this.
12:33Kimbal MuskYour standards just dropped to nothing.
12:37Elon MuskYeah. So through the end of 95, essentially, we're just sleeping in the office and chatting with the YMCA. And around the end of 95 is when Netscape went public.
12:49Elon MuskAnd then whether or not somebody knew what the Internet was, they knew that you could make money on the Internet somehow, or even if it's only on the greater fool theory.
12:58Elon MuskSo when we went and talked to venture capitalists in early 96, there was a much greater interest in what we were doing. In fact, the round closed in, like, maybe a week or something.
13:11Kimbal MuskIt's crazy. Yeah. We went from sleeping in the office to people throwing. Again, this is a financial crowd, so you guys see these numbers every day. But for us to hear, we'll give you $3 million sound extremely.
13:24Elon MuskWe thought they were crazy. Like, why would they do that?
13:26Kimbal MuskIt was literally like, these people are insane.
13:29Elon MuskThey obviously do not realize we're sleeping in the office.
13:32Kimbal MuskIn fact, when they did fund us, they realized that we were illegal immigrants. Well, yes, we were.
13:39Elon MuskI think it was a gray area.
13:40Kimbal MuskYeah.
13:41Elon MuskYes, we were.
13:42Kimbal MuskI was. We were illegal immigrants. We were sleeping in the office. We didn't have a car. We had one car, but the wheel kept falling off.
13:48Elon MuskBut. Well, actually, yeah, the wheel did actually fall off the car.
13:51Kimbal MuskYes, exactly. And the venture capitalist actually bought us cars.
13:56Elon MuskYeah, well, they gave us 40 grand.
13:59Kimbal MuskIt was 40 grand to go buy cars, which was, at the time, was more money than we ever seen.
14:02Elon MuskYeah. And I bought a. I spent 35k on a series 167 Jaguar E type,
14:12Kimbal Muskwhich didn't drive. But he got what he wanted.
14:16Elon MuskIt looked really great by the side of the road.
14:19Kimbal MuskHe got it. He was driving it home from the dealer and it broke down and he had to actually come to the house on a flatbed truck.
14:29Elon MuskRight. And it didn't improve from there. I mean, it was really broken.
14:31Kimbal MuskHe should have kept the truck.
14:32Elon MuskYeah.
14:34Jeff Skoll (moderator)It reminds me, in some ways of ebay. Went public 1998, and we had kind of the scrappy startup mentality as well. And the first time I ever saw Elon on TV was when you took delivery of a McLaren supercar.
14:53Elon MuskThat's right.
14:55Jeff Skoll (moderator)So.
14:56Elon MuskYeah, Right.
14:59Jeff Skoll (moderator)So presumably, somewhere between sleeping on the floor of the office and the McLaren, something happened.
15:09Elon MuskYeah. So at SIP2, we basically created software to help bring the media companies online. So it was sort of Internet publishing software. It was the yellow pages, white pages, maps and directions, that kind of thing.
15:24Elon MuskAnd we helped bring some of the major media companies online, or at least a portion of what their online presence was. And so we had customers and investors, New York Times company, Knight Ridder, host, and most of the major media companies.
15:38Elon MuskAnd then, in fact, the guy that
15:39Kimbal Muskthrew the telephone book at us eventually became an investor.
15:42Elon MuskYeah, right.
15:44Jeff Skoll (moderator)And then the company sold to Compaq for a little over 300 million.
15:50Elon MuskYeah.
15:51Jeff Skoll (moderator)Circa 1999. Late. Late 90s.
15:53Elon MuskYeah, that's right.
15:54Kimbal MuskIt was.
15:54Elon MuskYeah, the deal was sort of struck late 98 and concluded early 99.
15:59Jeff Skoll (moderator)And so then what happens to you guys? I mean, at that point, you're 23, 24 years old, give or take, and you've gone from being barely able to pay the rent to having substantial resources.
16:14Jeff Skoll (moderator)How did that influence your paths in what you did next?
16:20Kimbal MuskThe way I like to think about it is I was like a dog in a cage getting beaten for four years, and then they let me out. And here are all the T bones you can eat.
16:30Kimbal MuskSo it was a very weird experience, actually, because you don't think. I thought I was building that company for life, and then, boom, they give you lots and lots of money in easy to carry bags, and it was totally surreal.
16:44Jeff Skoll (moderator)And what did you do?
16:46Kimbal MuskSo I went to New York. So I was done with Silicon Valley. I think technology is my brother's thing. He loves it, and I enjoy it too. But honestly, for me, food is what I've always been passionate.
16:58Kimbal MuskSince I was a kid, I was the cook in the family.
16:59Elon MuskIt's ironic. He's much thinner than I am.
17:03Kimbal MuskIt's true. I can eat anything. Although I'm finding out as you get older, it doesn't work out that way. But, no. So I went to New York, and I learned to cook.
17:11Kimbal MuskI went to, you know, I was young, and I figured, you know, what else do you do when you cook, have enough financial resources to do whatever you want.
17:20Kimbal MuskAnd I always wanted to learn to cook. So I enrolled in a cooking school, one of the top schools in the country in New York City, and had this incredible experience of cooking with some of the best, most talented chefs in the world.
17:34Kimbal MuskAnd it was a unique circumstance for me, personally, because I was there in New York during 911 and I graduated from cooking school just before for 911 and I lived right by the World Trade center.
17:47Kimbal MuskSo I saw everything happen. It was a very big event in my life. But the rare opportunity it gave me was the opportunity to cook for the firefighters. So I spent six weeks at ground zero cooking for the firefighters.
18:01Kimbal MuskAnd that's when I kind of. I always loved food, but my passion for community and connecting people to each other through food was just, I mean, I literally couldn't even describe how incredible this experience was.
18:15Kimbal MuskAnd so I came out of that with a very strong intention to start a restaurant. And having been part of a company that just sold for 300 million and investing in PayPal, which at the time is worth billions of dollars, doing a restaurant was a weird decision, but for me it was the right decision.
18:33Jeff Skoll (moderator)So for you it unlocked a path to dreams that maybe you had beforehand or just opportunistically you just said this is what I want to do. And you still not only run the restaurant you began, but there's more to it.
18:52Kimbal MuskYeah. Well, do you mean the non profit or do you mean.
18:54Jeff Skoll (moderator)No, I mean just in terms of there are more than one restaurant.
18:58Kimbal MuskOh, yeah, sure. So it turns out I'm actually pretty good at cooking. I didn't really know I was good at cooking, but. But when I opened the restaurant with, I had two partners.
19:08Kimbal MuskHugo and Jen opened the restaurant. We were supposed to do 60 people a night. And it was just going to be this side project for me because I was still involved in Elon's companies, Tesla and SpaceX.
19:20Kimbal MuskAnd today we serve 10,000 people a week and it just continues to grow.
19:30Jeff Skoll (moderator)Elon, for you, Zip 2 happened. You sold it and, and bought the McLaren.
19:38Kimbal MuskYes.
19:40Jeff Skoll (moderator)And if I'm not mistaken, you, you invested most of that money into your next, your next venture. X.com?
19:47Elon Muskthat's right. So yeah, most of, most of the funds went into x.com which was later renamed PayPal. And yeah, and that worked out pretty well.
20:02Jeff Skoll (moderator)It worked out pretty well. But looking back on it, because you put a lot of your eggs in that basket, would you advise entrepreneurs to roll the bones quite the way you did?
20:16Elon MuskYeah, absolutely, I think so. I think it's worth investing your own capital in what you do. I don't believe in the sort of other people's money thing, you know, I think if you're not willing to put your own assets at stake, then you shouldn't ask other people to do, to do that.
20:39Jeff Skoll (moderator)So eBay comes along, buys PayPal, and then I remember 2003, give or take, meeting Elon Musk at a coffee shop in Palo Alto. This was not long after the PayPal deal had closed.
20:57Jeff Skoll (moderator)And I said to Elon, what would you like to do next? And you had three things to say, right? Do you remember what they were?
21:07Elon MuskYeah, but yeah, I mean they're basically, you know, Space, solar and electric cars.
21:17Jeff Skoll (moderator)Space, solar and electric cars? Yes, two points.
21:21Kimbal MuskSpace electric cars. What was the middle one?
21:25Jeff Skoll (moderator)Well, so I asked Elon what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to do something in solar power. He wanted to colonize Mars eventually, but to get there by building a rocket business, a sustainable business and building electric cars.
21:48Jeff Skoll (moderator)And let's talk a little bit about Mars. So where did this come from? When did you have that dream? How did that come to be?
22:03Elon MuskWell, I guess when I was in college I thought about things that would most effective future of humanity and there were three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and those were the Internet sustainable energy of which solar power is the production side and electric cars the consumption side and then humanity becoming a multi planet species.
22:28Elon MuskI think our future will fundamentally bifurcate to one where we are space branch civilization or one where we are confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event. Although I'm quite optimistic about life on Earth I should point out sometimes people think that by that I expect some imminent catastrophe but I think that the probable outcome for civilization is on Earth is quite good for a long time.
22:55Elon MuskBut I still think that we should try to extend life beyond Earth and have a. And the thing to do is to establish a base on Mars and try to make that a self sustaining base as soon as possible.
23:08Elon MuskSo I don't expect that SpaceX is going to do that sort of single handedly, but I think we're going to try to advance the technology of space travel to the point where we can at least send some number of people to Mars, which is not currently possible.
23:28Jeff Skoll (moderator)As I recall when.
23:30Kimbal MuskYes, follow up question Jeff.
23:34Jeff Skoll (moderator)When SpaceX started I think the first three rocket launches weren't successful and the fourth one was what would have happened if the fourth one hadn't worked?
23:46Elon MuskWe would have failed.
23:47Kimbal MuskYeah, but let's talk about one of the failures were spectacular. I would go out to the island with Elon and seeing giant exploding rockets is quite an amazing sight.
24:03Kimbal MuskAnd I was one of the early investors in SpaceX and I said, you know what, if all I get to do is to see these rockets explode, well worth every dime I put into this.
24:23Jeff Skoll (moderator)There's something to be said about brotherly support,
24:28Kimbal Muskbut it was an amazing thing to watch what Elon had built with those rockets in. I mean, on a shoestring in the middle of nowhere and literally the middle of Pacific, 2,000 miles from Hawaii.
24:41Kimbal MuskAnd that experience, we'd fly in these, these, what are they called? The helicopter Hueys. You find the Hueys, you feel like you're right out of Apocalypse now flying to Dr.
24:54Kimbal MuskEvil's Island. Really amazing. I mean, and again, worth every penny still to this day, I'd say. So I think the failures were actually unbelievably exciting to be part of.
25:07Elon MuskYeah.
25:08Kimbal MuskYeah.
25:11Jeff Skoll (moderator)Thank you, Eli.
25:12Elon MuskYou're welcome.
25:14Jeff Skoll (moderator)I mean, the point being that these ventures now seem to have wonderful momentum and things are going well, but I remember well, there was a point in time when each of them had their tipping point and could have gone either way.
25:33Jeff Skoll (moderator)I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the origins of Tesla.
25:37Kimbal MuskSure.
25:39Elon MuskSo with, as mentioned, I was quite interested in electric car cars from when I was doing my undergrad physics. And in fact I originally came out to California to do a PhD at Stanford in applied physics material science to work on ultracapacitors and electric cars.
25:56Elon MuskSo it was a long standing interest of mine and the Internet kind of put that on hold for a few years. But then once after PayPal, I decided I wanted to get back into electric vehicles and, and make something happen in that arena, particularly since GM had come out with the EV1.
26:17Elon MuskAnd I thought, okay, well, there's not really a need for a startup company to develop electric cars because obviously GM is going to create the EV2 and the EV3 as logical sequence and it will get increasingly better and better with each iteration and so not really need for a new company in that arena.
26:38Elon MuskBut actually what happened was that after California changed the regulations to no longer require electric cars, GM recalled all the EV1s and then just to make sure that nobody could get them back, they crushed them in a lot somewhere.
26:54Elon MuskAnd in fact, while they were being crushed, the people who had been the EV1 owners who did not want those cars recalled actually held a candle at vigilance, as though somebody was getting executed basically.
27:08Elon MuskAnd it's like that just seemed extremely crazy that GM would ignore this because it's quite rare for people to hold a candle at vigil about a product and particularly a GM product.
27:25Elon MuskSo if people are doing that, you should really pay attention. But, but they wanted to just sort of erase all that. And so I thought, okay, well, we've Got to try to create an electric car company.
27:37Elon MuskBut it wasn't as though in creating these companies that we thought that we would be successful. I thought that the most likely outcome was failure, but it was still worth doing, even though the odds of success were low.
27:51Elon MuskIn fact, even for SpaceX, the originally what I started doing was not creating a rocket company, but actually was going to do a small mission to Mars, which was just a philanthropic mission, where you would send a small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated gel, would, upon landing, hydrate the gel and you'd have this cool picture of green plants on a red background.
28:14Elon MuskAnd the public tends to respond to precedents and superlatives. So this would be the first life on Mars furthest that life's ever traveled. And you'd have this great money shot of green plants on the right background.
28:24Elon MuskSo I thought that would get people's attention, but the expectation for that was no return. I thought we wouldn't get any, you know, just spend the money on that and it wouldn't happen.
28:39Elon MuskAnd it was in the process of trying to do that mission that I concluded that I'd made a mistake with respect to my assumptions about why
28:52Announcerare
28:52Elon Muskthere no people on Mars? Because I started off thinking that it was because there was a lack of will and that if you could reignite the will, then it would happen.
29:03Elon MuskSo my initial thing, even with the space side, was really to get the public excited and to get people to essentially vote NASA to have a bigger budget. That was my goal initially.
29:19Elon MuskBut as I tried to do that mission, I was able to compress the costs of the satellite or the spacecraft and the greenhouse, everything, and the communication costs, but I wasn't able to compress the rocket costs.
29:35Elon MuskAnd I actually tried, had some adventures along the way trying to. Trying to get a good deal on rockets. Actually flew to Russia three times to try to buy some ICBMs.
29:48Elon MuskAnd I negotiated a deal too, actually. But after the third trip to Russia, which was very, very strange because I was like there in 2001, 2002, and I thought, well, if we do this well, it's going to generate a lot of interest.
30:10Elon MuskBut if there's still a fundamental technology issue with rocket transport, then it's not going to solve the problem. So I decided that it was not a question of will, it was a question of way.
30:23Elon MuskAnd if people thought there was a way to do it without it fundamentally affecting their standard of living, then they would support such an endeavor, particularly in the United States, which United States is a nation of explorers.
30:35Elon MuskI mean, it's a distillation of the human spirit of exploration. People came here from other places and so I think that exploratory spirit is actually very strong. But people need to know that it's possible this can be done without materially affecting their center of living.
30:54Jeff Skoll (moderator)I mean, what you've accomplished is amazing. Between linking up with the space station on launches and the Model S winning car of the year and being just a phenomenon.
31:09Jeff Skoll (moderator)But good. Yes,
31:15Jeff Skoll (moderator)I mean, it's amazing. It's amazing. And we'll come back and talk about SolarCity in a second. But you mentioned gardens and I think that's a natural segue. We're surrounded by some beautiful gardens here on stage.
31:28Jeff Skoll (moderator)And Kimball, I wonder if you might want to talk a little bit about these.
31:32Kimbal MuskSure. So the restaurants that we do in Colorado are before farm to table was a term, we work with local farmers and bring local food to the table. And we really considered ourselves a community restaurant.
31:46Kimbal MuskAnd one of the things we did as part of the community was to reach out to, to kids in the community in schools and get them connected to food through school gardens.
31:56Kimbal MuskAnd we bring them into the restaurant and we do everything from give them chicken liver pate without telling them what it was and they would thoroughly enjoy it. And then you tell them, then they spit it out of their mouth.
32:06Kimbal MuskAnd fun things like that that we just did as a great way to connect into the community. And then I had a personal accident, a very severe accident. I was paralyzed my left and horizontal for two months after breaking my neck.
32:23Kimbal MuskAnd just it really helped me focus on. Well, let me go back to having more of an impact on society. I know there's a lot of philanthropists in the crowd and I have a lot of respect for that.
32:33Kimbal MuskBut for me it was very much about how can I give back. But in a way that really I understood and could really see that, see the impact. And I'd been working with these school gardens for many years.
32:45Kimbal MuskAnd so I came up with this idea called the learning garden, which you see. Beautifully presented. Thank you very much, Nancy, for doing this. And what we do is it's a non profit.
32:56Kimbal MuskWe go to schools around the country and we install these outdoor learning environments that are school gardens and they're very different to traditional school gardens. Traditional school gardens being in the corner of the schoolyard with a fence around it.
33:08Kimbal MuskThese are designed to be in the schoolyard, on the playground where the kids will see it every day, hundreds of kids will enjoy it and play with every day.
33:17Kimbal MuskAnd it's made out of the same material as playground equipment, so it will last for decades, unlike traditional school gardens, which are very temporary. We also came up with this idea to make it more modular so that you could fit it in any schoolyard.
33:29Kimbal MuskRooftops, asphalt. There's a lot of toxic soil, sadly, in our cities, where you literally couldn't put a garden there if you wanted to. And these are all designed to be FDA approved just for food, for growing food.
33:41Kimbal MuskAnd so what I did was really look at the problem based on the experience that I had working with Elon and working in, whether it's manufacturing or operations or politics, frankly, which is a very big political problem.
33:56Kimbal MuskAnd you know what, what value could I add? And there are lots of great gardeners out there. And I'll be the first to tell you, I'm not a gardener, but I really believe in the impact that these were having.
34:07Kimbal MuskAnd the data is amazing. We see a doubling of vegetable intake when kids have a learning garden on their schoolyard. Literally a doubling from two and a half to five portions a day.
34:18Kimbal MuskWe see test scores, particularly in science, go up by 15 points on 100 point scale when they get taught the same science lesson in the learning garden versus in the classroom, this incredible impact on their lives.
34:31Kimbal MuskAnd the challenge was not a question of school gardens that had already been proven. The challenge was how do you scale? How do you get something that will reach 100,000 schools within a few years?
34:43Kimbal MuskBecause that's the problem we have. Childhood obesity is today's problem. It is not tomorrow's problem. 20% of underserved kids are going into kindergarten obese. It's an awful tragedy. We have these poor children that are not only obese, but they're actually starving because the food we're giving them has no nutrients.
35:01Kimbal MuskIt has calories, but no nutrients. And it's just this awful, awful situation. A real tragedy that we're creating. And so for me, what I wanted to do was how do I come in and say, okay, I know what I know, I know what I think I can do.
35:14Kimbal MuskWell, let me see what I can create that could actually go into a hundred thousand square schools within a few years. And so I created the learning garden with this idea by the end of this decade to reach every child that wants one or every school that wants one.
35:30Kimbal MuskAnd we have the capacity now what we need is the political will to go do it. And so we'll have about 200 installed this year. And we started two years ago, and we did one two years ago.
35:42Kimbal MuskWe did 50 last year. We'll do about 200 this year, hopefully a thousand next year, and then many thousands after that.
35:54Jeff Skoll (moderator)Kimball, if people are interested in finding more out about learning gardens, where would they go?
36:00Kimbal MuskThekitchencommunity.org please go. If you're a superintendent, and I know there's some superintendents in this room because I had some heated conversations with you guys earlier, please go learn about it, because there's no better way to teach kids about science, which we all understand is a massive problem in this country.
36:18Kimbal MuskGetting our kids to love science is so important and childhood obesity is so important. We need to fix this problem. We are creating expensive, unproductive people. Let's just stop that.
36:31Kimbal MuskLet's fix the problem. Let's fix it now.
36:33Jeff Skoll (moderator)Absolutely.
36:38Jeff Skoll (moderator)I think we'll talk a little bit about SolarCity and then maybe open up to questions from the audience. SolarCity, I mean, your family is remarkable. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about how SolarCity got going and your role as chairman and all that.
37:00Elon MuskSo well. So Soul City was founded by two cousins of ours, Lyndon and Peter Rive, who are really great guys. Before SolarCity, they did a company called Everdream, which did large scale management of computers and other assets, electronic assets, which was sold to Dell, and that did pretty well.
37:21Elon MuskSo, and the genesis of SolarCity was actually, you know, we were Burning man with our cousins and they were thinking about what to do next. And I said, well, I think there's a real need for great entrepreneurs in the solar industry.
37:41Elon MuskAnd I said, if they were willing to start a solar power company, then I would completely back them on that. So they took me up on the offer and created SolarCity, which what SolarCity is essentially is a giant distributed utility, or I'd say right now it's a small distributed utility, but will be hopefully a giant distributed utility.
38:07Elon MuskAnd it's obviously one that's based on the sun, that giant fusion reactor in the sky. So it's something that'll last for a very long time. I ultimately think that we will generate more energy from solar power than from any other source.
38:26Elon MuskIn fact, it's worth noting that the planet is already almost entirely solar powered, in that we would be a Frozen ice ball at 3 Kelvin if not for the sun.
38:37Elon MuskAnd the sun powers our whole system of precipitation and the ecosystem. So really we're just talking about a little bit of extra power that humanity uses for to run civilization, essentially.
38:52Elon MuskBut it's really quite a small amount relative to the amount that actually hits the earth.
38:57Kimbal MuskRight.
38:58Jeff Skoll (moderator)And Solar City went public a few months back.
39:01Elon MuskYeah, it went public in December. It was quite a difficult ipo and we were able to get it through. And now it's doing reasonably well.
39:12Jeff Skoll (moderator)Well, there are amazing successes on both your parts. We're going to go to questions from the audience. Assuming these monitors work as of the moment, they're not. And if not, then I will.
39:26Jeff Skoll (moderator)Oh, I see a monitor coming on here. All right. What are the key traits, skills or circumstances that have allowed you to be so successful?
39:43Elon MuskI don't know. Why don't you answer for me? Or do you think I'll ask you? That's a great idea.
39:47Kimbal MuskSo I live in a small town in Colorado called Boulder. And my joke is I grew up in South Africa during the collapse of apartheid. Very, very difficult time.
40:00Kimbal MuskThen I went to California during the rise of the Internet. Exciting but difficult time. And I was in New York City during 9, 11 difficult time. Now I'm in this little small town of Boulder waiting for some serious shit to go down.
40:17Kimbal MuskSo I think those had very big impacts on me. And I think the impact personally is constant paranoia. I guess maybe it's better. I hate to say that, not in a negative way, but it's.
40:29Kimbal MuskYou just kind of, you know, you're waiting for something really intense to happen all the time. So I think that just keeps you on your toes and keeps you moving forward.
40:40Elon MuskYeah, I think just being tenacious and being. Well, I think just being super focused on the truth is extremely important. And looking for feedback from all sources, I think those are really key.
41:01Jeff Skoll (moderator)Yeah. I'd also add, knowing both of you is that you're very detail oriented. There's no small part of the experience that doesn't get attention from you. So another question that I had, you know, Elon, you've been compared to Henry Ford, Richard Branson, you know, Steve Jobs.
41:29Jeff Skoll (moderator)Who do you compare yourself to?
41:32Elon MuskI don't really compare myself to anyone. I mean, it's not. I mean, there's some people that I admire from history that I think are, you know, think are great.
41:42Elon MuskCertainly many of the scientists and engineers and literary figures and so forth. And like, I'm a big, big fan of Ben Franklin, you know, who's a scientist and sort of thinker.
41:55Elon MuskAnd I mean, he was the kind of guy who did what needed to be done, you know, so guys like that, I.
42:02Jeff Skoll (moderator)Right.
42:03Elon MuskWouldn't say I compare myself in any way, but I certainly admire them.
42:07Jeff Skoll (moderator)Are there people you look up to?
42:10Kimbal MuskI think the two that I look up to in my way, I look the same thing. Xenon is kind of look back. I love Winston Churchill.
42:19Elon MuskYeah, he's cool.
42:23Kimbal MuskThat guy, I think, was one of the greatest gifts to mankind. And I think Steve Jobs, right?
42:29Elon MuskYeah.
42:29Kimbal MuskAnd I think the thing that makes me like these people is that they put their passion into their work. And it's not about the job. It's not about coming to work.
42:39Kimbal MuskIt's about creating, making a difference in your society. And I think that's what I have always admired as my brother and with anyone else.
42:48Jeff Skoll (moderator)One thing I've observed from my own entrepreneurial history is that people that start out building a company to make a lot of money almost invariably fail. It's people that start out with a dream or something that they're passionate about and they care about, and the money just kind of comes.
43:09Kimbal MuskI think if you think about it, you can get money both ways. But we have a mutual friend of ours, Bill Lee, who has this phrase that starting a business from scratch is like chewing glass and looking into the abyss.
43:23Kimbal MuskIt is really, really hard. And if you don't like your glass sandwich, you're gonna have a miserable, miserable life. And so it's a very important lesson. Do what you're passionate about.
43:33Kimbal MuskBecause no matter what you do, if it's making a difference, if you. It's super hard to do it. And so you better enjoy. You better be passionate about it.
43:41Jeff Skoll (moderator)Let's see if we have any other questions from the audience. Yeah. Next question, please.
43:53Jeff Skoll (moderator)For Kimball, what role and impact do you see impact investing in social ventures having in solving the world's major problems?
44:05Kimbal MuskSo I actually get this question asked to me a lot. I was literally had this conversation with a major social investor a week ago. I really struggle with it, to be honest.
44:15Kimbal MuskI think the idea of obviously investing as a philanthropist, I love. I think that's really great. But if you're looking for a financial return, it is super hard to not have that as your key driver.
44:28Kimbal MuskI get the idea of double bottom line or triple bottom line, bottom line. And I live that life all day long. But it's a personal decision of mine, and I.
44:36Kimbal MuskI really do struggle with the right answer. Because the more money you make, the more difference you can make in philanthropy, and you can separate the two, and you can be quite impactful as a philanthropist.
44:47Kimbal MuskIf you're a financier on Wall street, you can choose to. I mean, I'm sure once you reach a certain point, everything you do will be philanthropy after that. And that makes a big difference in the world, if you chose to invest in social ventures and get a smaller return, I think you struggle.
45:05Kimbal MuskSuccess is very important. And so I really believe in isolating the problem, focus on success, getting it done. And in the case of investing, that means focusing on investing and getting the highest possible return within reason, you know, human rights and all that stuff.
45:20Kimbal MuskBut social investing, I think is a very difficult space to make work. And actually maybe, Jeff, you should answer that question because you do that all the time.
45:33Jeff Skoll (moderator)Yeah, except I'm sitting in this chair. Well, I agree with you. I think social investing has all the rigor and challenges of for profit investing, but added into that is the qualitative, sometimes unmeasurable aspects of dealing with some sort of social change or social good.
45:59Kimbal MuskSo one of the things I actually, I mean, on the nonprofit side, I was specifically referring to for profit social ventures, which. But on the nonprofit side, I get really frustrated because there is no measuring stick.
46:10Kimbal MuskIt's how are you doing? You get to measure yourself. That's retarded. You need to have. You need to have some measuring, some common grounded measuring stick. In the for profit world, you've got profit.
46:24Kimbal MuskAnd in the nonprofit world, it's very weird. It's my first non profit, so I'm learning as I go. I don't know what the answer is.
46:32Jeff Skoll (moderator)Elon, anything to add on that?
46:38Elon MuskWell, I mean, but I think generally anything that if it's possible to solve a problem with a profitable venture, then that's the best thing to do. So it's only when, like, there's some failure in the market, and there are some, but actually aren't that many.
46:56Elon MuskBut in the grand scheme of things. But there are some failures in the market that have to be addressed with a non profit. But generally, I'd say. Or on the side of, I mean, I do have a small foundation.
47:09Kimbal MuskNo, no.
47:09Elon MuskSo as long as I'm against giving stuff, I do.
47:11Kimbal MuskElon's the biggest donor to the non profit.
47:15Elon MuskI mean. Yeah. Generally, if there's a way to fix the market system, that's the better way to do it. But sometimes there isn't or there are complications in doing it.
47:26Jeff Skoll (moderator)How is the Elon of 2013 different from the Elon of the Ziploc two days? What have you learned?
47:35Elon MuskWe've learned, I think, well, quite, quite a lot. A lot of scotch history between then and now, I think. You know, I've mentioned this at. When I was giving my talk at south by Southwest, but I think the.
47:53Elon MuskI've made several hiring decisions in the past, which. Where I valued intellect over heart. And I think that was a mistake. And so try to adjust accordingly. You know, it actually matters whether somebody's a good person beyond just, you know, goodness itself.
48:14Jeff Skoll (moderator)Right. Yeah. Kimball, same question. The Kimball of 2013. How are you different from the Zip two days?
48:24Kimbal MuskYeah. As I say, as Elon said, that is a long time ago. I would say I'm much more comfortable with myself. I'm much more able to say no. So if there's an opportunity in front of me that is very financially attractive or whatever, and it's not what I want to do, I know.
48:45Kimbal MuskTo say no. In the past, I would always say yes.
48:48Elon MuskAnd.
48:48Kimbal MuskAnd I would get involved in things that weren't what I was passionate about. So I think that's probably the most valuable thing I've learned. I think I still have a lot to learn.
48:57Kimbal MuskSo that's.
49:00Jeff Skoll (moderator)I think we have time for one last question. We got anything? Please wrap up. In that case, my last question is, are you guys going to go to Mars together?
49:18Elon MuskWho might.
49:20Kimbal MuskI think we. I mean, when we're 95, what the hell else are we going to do?
49:25Elon MuskYeah, exactly.
49:26Kimbal MuskI think that'll be fun. I don't think I would want to go before that, but.
49:34Jeff Skoll (moderator)Well, Elon has a famous line about going to Mars. Would you mind repeating it?
49:41Elon MuskOkay. I mean, so yeah, I mean, I think I would like to die on Mars, but just not on impact.
49:53Jeff Skoll (moderator)All right. I think on that note, I'd like to thank Elon and Kimball for a wonderful panel.
49:59Elon MuskThank you.
49:59Jeff Skoll (moderator)Thank you to the milking force.
50:05AnnouncerPretty extraordinary. Let's have one one more time for Ilana and Kimball and Jeff.
50:10Elon MuskThank you.
50:19AnnouncerBefore you all leave, we have a great late night show for you in the Beverly Hills Ballroom. Lionel Richie, David Foster and Paul Anka. I'm reliving my childhood and a series of special guests.
50:33AnnouncerSo it's going to be a lot of fun. Beverly Hills Ballroom, right down the hall. Thank you so much.