Elon Musk: Dream Big and Think Even Bigger
Rana Sohail / Published 14 April, 2023
Elon Musk teaches English. On June 15, 2012, SpaceX founder Elon Musk delivered his commencement speech to the Caltech graduating class at the 118th annual commencement ceremony. Elon Reeve Musk FRS is a billionaire businessman, industrial designer, and engineer. He is the founder, CEO, CTO, and chief designer of SpaceX; an early investor, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; the founder of The Boring Company; the co-founder and initial co-chairman of Open AI.
Elon Musk | COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT
Okay, fine. I'd like to thank you for omitting the phrase "crazy person" from the description. So I thought — I was trying to think of the most useful thing that I could say that would actually be helpful and useful to you in the future. And I considered telling the story of how I ended up here. What caused these events?
And perhaps there are lessons to be learned. I frequently wonder, "How did this happen?"
When I was younger, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. People kept asking me questions. But then I realised that the idea of inventing things was really cool.
And I thought that because I read an Arthur C. Clark quote that said, "A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That is entirely correct
.If you went back 300 years, you'd be burned at the stake for the things we take for granted today. The ability to fly. That's insane. Being able to see over long distances, communicate effectively, use the Internet as a sort of group mind, and have instant access to all of the world's information from almost anywhere on the planet. This is the kind of stuff that would be considered magical in the past.
In fact, I believe it goes beyond that, because many things we take for granted today were not even imagined in the past, and were not even in the realm of magic. So it goes above and beyond that. So I reasoned, "Well"
I was always having existential crises, trying to figure out 'what does it all mean?' What is the point of it all? And I came to the conclusion that if we can advance world knowledge, if we can do things that broaden the scope and scale of consciousness, we will be better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened. That is the only path forward.
So I studied physics and business because I figured that in order to do a lot of these things, you have to understand how the universe works and how the economy works. You must also be able to gather a large number of people to collaborate with you.
So, I came out to California to figure out how to improve the energy density of electric vehicles - basically, to see if there was an advanced capacitor that could serve as an alternative to batteries. That was back in 1995.
That was also the beginning of the Internet. And I thought, well, I could pursue this technology, where success may not be one of the possible outcomes, which is always tricky, or I could participate in and be a part of the Internet. So I decided to withdraw.
We're past graduation, so I can't be accused of recommending that to you. I also did some Internet research. I've done a few things in the past. One
Perhaps it's useful to mention that one of the key factors in the creation of PayPal was how it began. Because the original idea behind PayPal was to create a conglomeration of financial services, so that you could have one place where all of your financial needs could be seamlessly integrated and work smoothly.
We also had a small feature that allowed us to accept payments via email. Whenever we showed the system to someone, we would highlight the difficult part, which was the conglomeration of financial services. Nobody seemed to care.
Then we demonstrated e-mail payments, which were simple and appealing to everyone. As a result, I believe it is critical to consider feedback from your surroundings. You desire
Perhaps it's worth noting that how PayPal got started was a critical factor in its development. Because the original concept of PayPal was to create a conglomeration of financial services in one place where all of your financial needs could be seamlessly integrated and work smoothly.
We also had a minor feature that let us accept payments via email. We would highlight the difficult part of the system, which was the conglomeration of financial services, whenever we showed it to someone. Nobody seemed to notice.
Then we showed how to make email payments, which were simple and appealing to everyone. As a result, I believe it is critical to take feedback from your surroundings into account. You wish to
It's worth noting that how PayPal got started was an important factor in its growth. Because the original idea behind PayPal was to create a collection of financial services in one location where all of your financial needs could be seamlessly integrated and run smoothly.
In addition, we had a minor feature that allowed us to accept payments via email. When we showed it to someone, we would emphasise the difficult part of the system, which was the conglomeration of financial services. Nobody seemed to care.
Then we demonstrated how to make email payments, which were straightforward and appealing to everyone. As a result, I believe it is critical to consider feedback from your surroundings. You want to
One of my friends made me sit down and watch a bunch of videos of rockets exploding. Let me tell you, he wasn't far off the mark. It was difficult to get started there. Because I've never constructed anything physical. I mean, as a kid, I used to build model rockets and stuff like that. But I've never worked for a company that built anything physical. So I had to figure out how to do all of these things while also assembling the right team of people. And we did all of that, only to fail three times. It was difficult going.
Because the passing grade for a rocket is 100 percent. And you don't get to test the rocket in a real-world environment.
It was a bit sad the first time I was picking up rocket fragments near the launch site. And we learned more with each subsequent flight. And, eventually, with the fourth flight in 2008, we were able to reach orbit. That was also done with the last of our money. Thank goodness for that. Isn't it true that the fourth time is the charm?
So we got Falcon 1 into orbit. Then it was scaled up to the Falcon 9, which has an order of magnitude more thrust, around a million pounds of thrust. We were able to get that into orbit, and then we developed the Dragon spacecraft, which was recently able to dock and return to Earth from space.
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