“SpaceX is so special? Like, how has nobody been able to replicate what they've been able to do? The path that they've been on has been proven for years. Like, there's lots of people with more engineers and more money. So, like, why can't they catch up? Like, they're not even really getting closer. And so this is unpacking that, and the answer the deepest answer is, like, the culture and the habits and the routines, the selection of the people, and then the memes that spread through the organization, how they work and how they attack problems.”
A single half-hour meeting can add $100 million in value
“He he says there are times when a single half hour meeting has added a $100,000,000 to the enterprise value of Tesla. Every single minute of thinking is, like, worth a million dollars, a high quality minute of thinking. And these tools are the things that he does in those minutes that actually have that kind of effect.”
Burning the boats forces a level of effort optionality kills
“He talks about burning the boats constantly. And and he did this from, like, day one. Like, even with, like, Zip two. I do think there is some kind of, like, advanced very advanced understanding of human nature that if you truly are putting your back against the wall and not giving yourself any options, like, you will come up with ideas or, like, push yourself to in in a manner into an extreme manner in which you just can't if you're if you're optimizing for, like, optionality.”
“We must make stuff. Manufacturing is underrated. It is hard. I've got mad respect for the makers of things. Some people have an absurd view of the economy as a magic thing that just produces stuff. Let me break it to the fools out there. If we don't make stuff, there's no stuff. Technological progress is not inevitable. It's not some kind of abstract concept. Humans make technology.”
Vertical integration is required when supply chains move too slow
“There's a lot of vertical integration of Tesla. We make the battery pack, the power electronics, and the drive chains ourselves. We vertically integrated because the pace we need to move was much faster than the supply chain could move. To the degree that you rely on the legacy supply chain, you inherit the legacy constraints, including their speed, their costs, and their technology.”
Engineer your organization to fail small, fast, and often
“When he sets deadlines, he's like, I wanna pick a deadline that I'm 50% likely to make. We're gonna miss half our deadlines, and I'm totally fine with that because it means we'll be moving as fast as we possibly can, and we're gonna make some deadlines that nobody thought we were gonna make. If we're making a 100% of our deadlines, then they're way too far out because we'll always consume at least the amount of time that we give ourselves. He says when he hires people, like, if you don't if you can't tell me the four ways you fucked something up, then you weren't the one doing the real work.”
Elon hires young engineers and saturates them with responsibility
“He really biases towards hiring young, unproven engineers and then giving them, like, a shocking amount of accountability and responsibility. And that's part of the benefit of the iteration rate of these companies is he can figure out who knows what works. You know, it's it's like in wartime how you get these, like, skip level promotions. You just find competent people and, like, give them more responsibilities as fast as you can.”
The algorithm: question requirements before deleting, simplifying, accelerating, automating
“Step number one is question requirements. Make your requirements less dumb is is, like, specifically how he says it a lot. The most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that shouldn't exist. So much money and time and effort is wasted trying to accommodate requirements that don't make any fucking sense in the first place. So the first thing to do is, like, shorten your list of design requirements so that you've got the maximum possible space to play in.”
Elon slept on the factory floor so workers could see him suffering
“I lived in the factories for three years, talking about the Tesla production hell. I lived in the factories for three years running around like a maniac to every part of the factory. I was living with the team. I slept on the floor. This is actually smart. I slept on the floor so the team going through a hard time could see me on the floor and knew I was not in some ivory tower. Whatever pain they experienced, I experienced more.”
Ask 'what would it take?' instead of accepting impossible
“He says what's possible within the absurd. And so he takes these crazy ideas and throws them out, and people are like, that's crazy. That wouldn't work. That would be absurd. And he asks, what would it take? Don't tell me no. Tell me what would have to be true. What would it take to make it possible?”
