Speaker 1: Latest interview of Elon muss Tasmanian.
Speaker 2: Hi, all right, great, and then we got galile A
Speaker 2: Russell from hyper Change what out third Row?
Speaker 1: And then we got Viv from Who's Falcon Heavy?
Speaker 3: Hey?
Speaker 1: Great? All right, Omar, do you want to introduce our guest.
Speaker 4: Please welcome the inventor of the car fart, Elon miss.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. Please put that on my grapestone.
Speaker 3: I love it so yeah.
Speaker 5: It's kind of crazy that we're actually all here, and thank.
Speaker 1: You so much for doing This're welcome.
Speaker 5: We'll all test the customers, fans, and it's really good
Speaker 5: that is finally happening. I remember that I was looking
Speaker 5: at your Wikipedia tweet that it's like this bizarre fictionalized
Speaker 5: version of reality, and I replied to him, wait, why
Speaker 5: don't you come on a podcast and like tell your
Speaker 5: fictionalize version of reality?
Speaker 1: Sure, exactly, tell my.
Speaker 5: Fictionalized and You're like, okay, sure, And I was kind
Speaker 5: of like taken by surprise by that. And you know
Speaker 5: the way you engage listen to your customers online, It's
Speaker 5: like I've never seen anything like that from you know,
Speaker 5: CEO of a public company or any executive. So can
Speaker 5: you tell us a little bit where that came from.
Speaker 5: Why you communicate directly instead.
Speaker 4: Of like having this PR strategy that.
Speaker 1: Most companies have.
Speaker 6: Sure, well, I mean it started out. I actually had
Speaker 6: one of the very very first Twitter accounts, like when
Speaker 6: it was like less than ten thousand people, and then
Speaker 6: everyone was tweeting at me like what kind of lat
Speaker 6: they had it Starbucks, Like this seems like the silliest
Speaker 6: thing ever. So I'd leaded my Twitter account and then
Speaker 6: someone else took it over and started tweeting in my name. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and then a couple of friends of mine, Wellie and
Speaker 6: Jason Calcaana said they both said, hey, you should really
Speaker 6: use Twitter to get your message out. And also some
Speaker 6: somebody's tweeting in your name and they're crazy things. So
Speaker 6: I'll crazy things in my name.
Speaker 1: Did you have to pay them? No?
Speaker 6: No, they they they I'm not sure who it was,
Speaker 6: but it was for some reason. I got my account
Speaker 6: back great, and and then it was just I don't
Speaker 6: know some of you. It's like just sort of I
Speaker 6: just started tweeting for fine really and my early tweets
Speaker 6: are quite crazy.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 6: As I was trying to explain, like it has the
Speaker 6: arc of insanity is short and that is not very
Speaker 6: steep because it started off insane, and so if it's
Speaker 6: still insane, it's you know, it hasn't changed that much.
Speaker 6: So yeah, and I don't know, it seemed it seemed
Speaker 6: kind of fun too, you know. Like I said before,
Speaker 6: it's like, you know, some people use their hair to
Speaker 6: express myself.
Speaker 1: I use Twitter. Why did you like Twitter? Some? I
Speaker 1: mean you could use platforms, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: Well, like I don't trust Facebook obviously, you know, and
Speaker 6: and and then Instagram is fine, but it's i think,
Speaker 6: not exactly my style. It's hard to convey sort of
Speaker 6: intellectual arguments on Instagram. It's hot on Twitter too, but
Speaker 6: it's but you can't, you know. It's so yeah, Instagram
Speaker 6: is also owned by Facebooks, and I was like, yeah, yeah, deleted, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: just deleted it to It's like I don't really need
Speaker 6: to just if I need to say something, I only
Speaker 6: really need to say it on one platform pretty much,
Speaker 6: and so and so if I'm trying and I don't
Speaker 6: spend too much time on social media, so it's just
Speaker 6: like if people want to know what I'm saying, then
Speaker 6: they can just sort of go to Twitter. You know,
Speaker 6: let's keep doing that as long as Twitter is good,
Speaker 6: I suppose more good than bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cryptos cameras are really I understand that they've been
Speaker 1: taken advantage of Vincent recently. I know really Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like ten Vincent's out there.
Speaker 6: All right, but they totally they can copy everything and
Speaker 6: just like changed one my.
Speaker 3: Avadars and then the picture and then they just post
Speaker 3: like right.
Speaker 1: Below yeah your tweet. Yeah yeah wow yeah, and they
Speaker 1: blocked me to We fight them all all the time.
Speaker 2: We're always like reporting them, like every day we report
Speaker 2: like ten people.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I have so many like yeah, exactly, a
Speaker 6: conversations of Twitter, like come on, can you just like
Speaker 6: I think it would take like three or four customer
Speaker 6: service people to just look look at this. It's cryptos
Speaker 6: can block it, and it should be easy.
Speaker 2: It should be easy. Like my wife Figan Shelley, I
Speaker 2: think you'd like to tweet it. The other day she
Speaker 2: got banned for like replying to one of your tweets
Speaker 2: and quoting like the video inside of it, and then
Speaker 2: she got suspended for like a day.
Speaker 1: Or something, and I was like, what the heck is
Speaker 1: going on? Yeah, So it's just weird how the algorithm works.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of manipulation. But you're going
Speaker 4: back to the Wikipedia page. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 4: interesting just what a decade you've had. I remember I
Speaker 4: was reading somebody's article. I think they interviewed you in
Speaker 4: two thousand and nine or something like that, and they said,
Speaker 4: you know, if you had met Elon Musk in two
Speaker 4: thousand and nine, right after the recession, they're like struggling
Speaker 4: with the roadster. You know, you never would have thought
Speaker 4: that you are where you are today. You're you know,
Speaker 4: launching astronauts into space hopefull. Well yeah, this year, you know,
Speaker 4: servicing the International Space Station, I mean Tesla with the
Speaker 4: Model three, the model why you know, electrification really without Tesla,
Speaker 4: it would not be where it is today. You see
Speaker 4: where the other legacy automakers are, they're not doing great.
Speaker 4: So you know, looking at kind of like this, like
Speaker 4: you've become this legendary figure and looking at kind of
Speaker 4: like how people kind of see you, kind of the
Speaker 4: Ashley Vance biography or Wikipedia page, what is it that
Speaker 4: really kind of sticks out to you or you know,
Speaker 4: makes you laugh like that's just completely off base.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I think I mentioned that that I kept
Speaker 6: getting referred to as an investor in like the munch things,
Speaker 6: and it's like, but I actually don't invest really except
Speaker 6: in companies that I help create. So I only have
Speaker 6: the only publicly traded share that I have at all
Speaker 6: is Tesla. I have no diversity on publicly traded share
Speaker 6: so and yeah, that's right, quite unusual. So, uh, you
Speaker 6: know what's everyone diverse by agree? And then the only
Speaker 6: stock that I have of significance outside of Tesla is
Speaker 6: space X, which is privately private corporation. And and and
Speaker 6: then in order to get liquidity, which is mostly to
Speaker 6: reinvest in SpaceX and Tesla and occasionally in like uh,
Speaker 6: provide funding for much more projects like your link and
Speaker 6: boring company. Uh, then I'll actually take out loans against
Speaker 6: the Tesla and space X stock. So the so what,
Speaker 6: so what I actually have is is whatever my tail
Speaker 6: list in space X stock is. And then there's about
Speaker 6: a billion dollars of debt against that, so which you know,
Speaker 6: it's it's that this is starts taking to imply that
Speaker 6: I'm claiming that I have no money, which I'm not claiming,
Speaker 6: but it's it's something to make it clear that you'll
Speaker 6: see some like number some big number in like four
Speaker 6: or something. People will think I have the tessent space
Speaker 6: like stock, and I have the cash, and I'm being
Speaker 6: somehow I'm just sitting on the cash doing nothing like
Speaker 6: hoarding resources, and like, no, it's you know, the only
Speaker 6: alternative would be to say, okay, let's give the stock
Speaker 6: to the government or something, and then the government would
Speaker 6: be running things, and that the government it just is
Speaker 6: not good at running things.
Speaker 1: That's the main thing.
Speaker 6: But there's like a fundamental sort of quick question of
Speaker 6: like consumption versus capital allocation. This is probably gonna get
Speaker 6: me to travel, But the paradigm of say communism versus capitalism,
Speaker 6: I think is fundamentally sort of orthogonal to the reality
Speaker 6: of actual economics in in some ways. So what you
Speaker 6: actually care about is like the responsiveness of the feedback
Speaker 6: loops to the maximizing happiness of the population. And if
Speaker 6: if more resources are controlled by entities that have poor
Speaker 6: response in their feedback leaps. So if it's like a
Speaker 6: monopoly corporation or a small oligopoly or in the limit,
Speaker 6: I would take the monopolistic corporation in the limit is
Speaker 6: the government. So you know, it's just it's it's this
Speaker 6: is not to say people who work at the governor
Speaker 6: a bad if if those same people are taking and
Speaker 6: put in any better sort of operating system situation, that
Speaker 6: outcome will be much better. So it's really just what
Speaker 6: is the responsiveness of the organization to maximize in the
Speaker 6: happiness of the people. And and so you want to
Speaker 6: have a competitive situation where it's truly competitive, where companies
Speaker 6: aren't gaining the system, and then where the rules are
Speaker 6: set correctly, and then you need to be on the alert
Speaker 6: for regulatory capture where the referees are in fact captured
Speaker 6: by the players, which is, you know, and the players
Speaker 6: should not control the referees essentially, which which can happen,
Speaker 6: you know. I think like that happened, for example with
Speaker 6: I think there's a emission vehicle mandate in California where
Speaker 6: California was like really strict on EV's and then they
Speaker 6: the car companies managed to sort of, frankly my view,
Speaker 6: trick the regulators into into saying, Okay, you don't need
Speaker 6: to be so hardcore about the EV's and instead you say, say,
Speaker 6: fuel sales of the future, but fuel sales of of
Speaker 6: course many years away, so.
Speaker 1: Forever this is so then, so that's something that they
Speaker 1: let up the rules.
Speaker 6: And then you know, GM recalled the e V one
Speaker 6: and crushed them in a junk yard, which is against
Speaker 6: the wishes the owner.
Speaker 1: They all lined up to buy them, and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: let them buy that.
Speaker 6: I mean, Chris Paine did this great documentary on it,
Speaker 6: and it's like the you know, the owners of the
Speaker 6: the ev one, which why there wasn't actually that great
Speaker 6: of a car, but they still wanted the electric car
Speaker 6: so bad that they held a candle vigil at the
Speaker 6: junkyard where their cars were crushed. Like it like it
Speaker 6: was like a like a prisoner being executed or something
Speaker 6: like that. That was literally like when is the last time
Speaker 6: you even heard of that for a product?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: You know, GM is stops the product. I mean what
Speaker 6: I mean, listen, man, They're not doing that for any
Speaker 6: other GM product. You thought, I'm doing the evo. It's
Speaker 6: kind of time times hard to get through these guys,
Speaker 6: you know. So anyway, I think that's a very important thing.
Speaker 6: So generally, where you could see like these oligopolies forming
Speaker 6: or duopolies and then they get effective of price fixing
Speaker 6: and then they cut back in the R and D.
Speaker 6: But Fudgret like kind of a silly one. Frankly, it's
Speaker 6: like like candy, like there's a there's a candy oligopoly,
Speaker 6: and it's like when's the We don't see much innovation
Speaker 6: in candy, so.
Speaker 4: You're still working on the candy company Still candy?
Speaker 3: Is that boring candy?
Speaker 1: Boring candy? He's gonna be boring.
Speaker 6: I haven't seen a candy yet that's good enough to
Speaker 6: send out. But and it's yeah, but I think I
Speaker 6: think it it's it's there's there's like three companies or
Speaker 6: something that control the candy in the world pretty much.
Speaker 6: It's crazy and dog food, Yeah, there's somebody constructed like this.
Speaker 6: It's this crazy conglomerate and and it's like and it's
Speaker 6: like dog food and baby food and candy, and it's
Speaker 6: like all you know.
Speaker 1: Rendering, Yeah, hundreds of brands.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you think you're buying from different companies, but it
Speaker 6: all funnels up to like three companies or something like that.
Speaker 8: Don't send the rendering food to the candy company.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a big candy.
Speaker 6: So you want to have like a good competitive forcing
Speaker 6: functions so that you have to make the product better.
Speaker 1: Or you'll lose.
Speaker 6: Like, if you don't make the product better and and
Speaker 6: and improve the product for the end consumer, then then
Speaker 6: that company should have relatively less prosperity comparative company it
Speaker 6: makes better products. Now, the car industry you know, is
Speaker 6: actually pretty competitive, so that's good. And then the good
Speaker 6: thing about it competitive company industry, then if if you
Speaker 6: make a product that's better, it's going to do better
Speaker 6: in the marketplace, definitely.
Speaker 1: So this is Gene Wilders Whole House.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing, it's lovely. Thanks for having us here
Speaker 2: as well. Thanks you really special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good it's a cool spot and it's
Speaker 1: got a soldo glass roof.
Speaker 4: Yeah, portion too, right, we didn't notice it, but you
Speaker 4: checked it out the second time.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for my three. So I'm waiting for a
Speaker 1: version three.
Speaker 2: Well, whatever is they're going to put on, I don't
Speaker 2: care human motions, right, yeah, looking forward to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we saw it at the store in Torrents. Actually
Speaker 4: they've got in the stores now. It looks really good.
Speaker 6: Well that it's actually design such that you don't notice it.
Speaker 1: So he's like this, look it's old.
Speaker 6: This is like it's an old house, I know, probably
Speaker 6: fifty years old something like that, and it's quite quirky.
Speaker 6: So if you put something on that was like it
Speaker 6: didn't blend in that it would it would not look right.
Speaker 1: It would be pretty straightent. And this had a black
Speaker 1: comp shingle roof.
Speaker 6: So I was like, Okay, let's see if we can
Speaker 6: actually have it weave in and still feel natural, look good.
Speaker 6: And yeah, and I think it's it's sort of achieved
Speaker 6: that goal. But yeah, this is a lovely quirky little house.
Speaker 6: I'll show you around afterwards. It's got all those of
Speaker 6: weird things.
Speaker 1: It's exactly what is it, Francloyd right now? I don't
Speaker 1: think so.
Speaker 6: I think it was just built in increments over time
Speaker 6: by probably several people, but that they would have just
Speaker 6: knocked it down and built a giant house here.
Speaker 1: So it's like, so glad I didn't. Yeah, it's super cool.
Speaker 6: Really So gene Wild is one of my favorite actorms actually,
Speaker 6: so it's great.
Speaker 1: What was some movies?
Speaker 9: So, so when you come up with a product like
Speaker 9: the solar glass roof, I think a lot of people
Speaker 9: misunderstand that, like your goal is to bring these crazy
Speaker 9: technologies to market and really create a change in the world,
Speaker 9: and so I think it's fascinating that you do it
Speaker 9: through companies, and it seems like the fastest way to
Speaker 9: create that feedback loop and to really like get go
Speaker 9: from inventing something to millions of people using it right away. Yes,
Speaker 9: so like like it seems like buying a Tesla is
Speaker 9: almost like the best thing you could do to help
Speaker 9: the climate crisis because you're like turbo charging, R and
Speaker 9: D and products and innovation. I feel like not enough
Speaker 9: people really understand that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that is I think there's lots of good things
Speaker 6: people can do for the climate, but just generally anything
Speaker 6: that is moving towards sustainable energy, whether it's sustainable.
Speaker 1: Energy, create generation through solar or with an electric vehicle.
Speaker 6: Actually just think just things like better installation in a
Speaker 6: house just is just really effective for energy consumption. But
Speaker 6: but fun is more fun, it's ingratiating. That's mom on
Speaker 6: the motion. I actually got him a little folloween, a
Speaker 6: little mistage mob in the Martian, you know, the helmet
Speaker 6: with it looks super cute.
Speaker 1: You got enough funny.
Speaker 4: So did you always know, like you know, business was
Speaker 4: the way you wanted to kind of attract attack these
Speaker 4: problems versus say, you know, maybe a nonprofit or you know,
Speaker 4: working as a college professor or something. I don't know.
Speaker 6: Uh, well, when I was in in high school, I
Speaker 6: thought I would most likely be doing physics at a
Speaker 6: particle accelerator. So that's what I was if physics and computers.
Speaker 6: I mean, I got distinctions in two areas in physics
Speaker 6: and computer science and those who are yeah, some of
Speaker 6: my two best subjects. And and then I thought, okay,
Speaker 6: well that I want to want to figure out what's
Speaker 6: the nature of the universe, and so you know, go
Speaker 6: try to working with people banging particles together and see
Speaker 6: what happens. And and then these sort of things went along,
Speaker 6: and the superconducting super collider got canceled in the US,
Speaker 6: and that actually I was like, whoa, you know what
Speaker 6: if I was working at a collider, I spent all
Speaker 6: these years and then the gunment just canceled it. Wow,
Speaker 6: and then that would I was like, I'm not going
Speaker 6: to do that. So so it's like, well we roll
Speaker 6: it back a little, like I was trying to forget
Speaker 6: what when I was had like this existential crisis and
Speaker 6: I was about twelve years old or something, and and
Speaker 6: I was like, well, what does the world mean, what's
Speaker 6: it all about?
Speaker 1: We're living some meaningless existence. And then.
Speaker 6: I made the mistake of reading Nieture Inchoprenur and and.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, don't do that. Not a be a
Speaker 1: little older. And actually lately these days are s rear it.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it's actually he's not that bad.
Speaker 1: He's got issues, got issues. I have a question about it,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's so.
Speaker 6: But there are the hitchbacks, guys to the galaxy Douglas Adams,
Speaker 6: which was which is like quite really, quite a good
Speaker 6: book in philosophy, I think, And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 6: we don't really know what the answer is obviously, so
Speaker 6: but the universe, the universe is the answer, and that really,
Speaker 6: what are the questions we should be asking to better
Speaker 6: understand the nature of the universe? And so then to
Speaker 6: the degree that we expand the scope and scale of consciousness,
Speaker 6: then we'll better be able to answer the ask the
Speaker 6: questions and understand the why we're here or.
Speaker 1: What it's all about.
Speaker 6: And so we should sort of take the set of
Speaker 6: actions that are most likely to result in its understanding.
Speaker 6: What questions to ask about the nature of the universe.
Speaker 6: So that so therefore, we must propagate human civilization on
Speaker 6: Earth as far into the future as possible and become
Speaker 6: a multiplanet species to gain extend the scope and scale
Speaker 6: of consciousness and increase the problem lifespan of consciousness, which
Speaker 6: is going to be I think probably a lot of
Speaker 6: machine consciousness as well.
Speaker 1: In the future.
Speaker 6: And that's the best we can do it, basically, you know,
Speaker 6: And yeah, that's the best we can do. So, you know,
Speaker 6: and think about the various problems that we're facing or
Speaker 6: what would most likely change the future. The when they
Speaker 6: were in college, there were five things that I thought
Speaker 6: would be I thought these were actually I would not
Speaker 6: regard this as a profound insight, but rather an obvious one,
Speaker 6: that the Internet would fundamentally change humanity because it's it's
Speaker 6: like a humanity would become more of a super organism
Speaker 6: because the Internet is like the nerves, like the nervous system.
Speaker 6: Now suddenly any part of the human human human organisms
Speaker 6: anywhere would have access to all the information instantly. You
Speaker 6: were like, hey, well, I can imagine if you if
Speaker 6: you didn't have a nervous system, you wouldn't know what's
Speaker 6: going on your fingers wouldn't know what's going on. Your
Speaker 6: total knows what's going on. You'd have to do it
Speaker 6: by diffusion. And yeah, and the way information used to
Speaker 6: work was really by diffusion. One human would have to
Speaker 6: call another human or to write them. Yes, like if
Speaker 6: it was a letter you would have to write. You'd
Speaker 6: have to have that letter to another human. That would
Speaker 6: be carried through a bunch of things and finding another
Speaker 6: person would give it to you inefficiently, extremely slow diffusion.
Speaker 6: And if you wanted access to books, if you're not
Speaker 6: did not have a library, you're not, you don't have it.
Speaker 1: That's okay. So now you have access to all the
Speaker 1: books instantly.
Speaker 6: And if you can be in a remote like you know, mountaintop,
Speaker 6: jungle location or something and have access to all of
Speaker 6: humanity information, if you've got a link to the internet,
Speaker 6: this is a fundamental, profound change. So that's one thing.
Speaker 6: I was on the Internet early because of you know,
Speaker 6: the physics community. That was pretty normal, although it was
Speaker 6: interface was you know, almost entirely text and hard to use.
Speaker 6: But that another one be obviously making life multiplanetary, making
Speaker 6: consciousness multiplanetary, the change human genetics, which obviously I'm not
Speaker 6: doing By the way, there's a thorny subject, but it
Speaker 6: is being done with Crisper and others. You know, it
Speaker 6: would it will, it will become normal to I think,
Speaker 6: to change the human geno. It will become normal.
Speaker 9: Like what's the opportunity, Like why is that something that's inevitable.
Speaker 6: Or well, you know, I think for for sure, as
Speaker 6: far as say getting rid of diseases or propensity to
Speaker 6: various diseases, then that's gonna be like the first thing
Speaker 6: that you'd want to edit out, you know. So it's like,
Speaker 6: if you've got like your you know, a situation where
Speaker 6: you're definitely gonna die of some kind of cancer at
Speaker 6: age fifty five, I prefer to have that edit it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, So I think, you know, edit that out.
Speaker 6: You know, there's the Gatacus sort of extreme thing where
Speaker 6: it's not really edited out, but it's like it's edited
Speaker 6: in for various enhancements and that kind of thing, which
Speaker 6: probably will come too.
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, you.
Speaker 6: Know, arguing for against, I'm just saying this more likely
Speaker 6: to come than not down the road.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so then and then aim really major one.
Speaker 2: So these are all big motivational factors to keep our
Speaker 2: consciousness going.
Speaker 6: And it's sustainable, yes, yes, sustainable energy. So sustainable energy
Speaker 6: actually was something that I thought it was important before
Speaker 6: the vital environmental implications became as obvious as they are,
Speaker 6: because if you mine and burn hydrocarbons, then you're gonna
Speaker 6: run out of them, because it's it's not like it's
Speaker 6: not like mining sort of say metals for example, if
Speaker 6: you if you know that we recycle steel and aluminum,
Speaker 6: and because that's just it's it's it's.
Speaker 1: Not a change of energy state.
Speaker 6: Whereas if you if you take fossil fuels, you're taking
Speaker 6: some from a high energy state converting it to a
Speaker 6: lower energy state like CO two, which is extremely stable.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: So whereas we will never run out of metals, not
Speaker 6: a problem, we will run out of mind hydrocobbins. And
Speaker 6: then necessarily, if we have got billions, ultimately twillions of
Speaker 6: tons of hydrocobbins that were very deep underground, in solid
Speaker 6: liquid gas form whatever, but they're deep underground, you should
Speaker 6: remove them from deep underground to the oceans and the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: You will have a change in.
Speaker 6: The chemistry of the of the surface obviously, and then
Speaker 6: there's just a certain probably associated with well, how bad
Speaker 6: will that be? And the range of possibilities goes from
Speaker 6: wildly bad to extremely bad. But then why would you
Speaker 6: run that experiment? That seems like the crazy, especially since
Speaker 6: we have to go to sustainable energy anyway, why would
Speaker 6: you run that experiment? This is the maddest thing I've
Speaker 6: ever heard. I'm not saying it shouldn't be some use
Speaker 6: of hydroc commons on Earth, but there just should be
Speaker 6: the cover the correct price pay placed on CO two production.
Speaker 6: And the obvious thing to do is have a common tax.
Speaker 6: It's a no brainer every if I don't know the
Speaker 6: ninety plus percent of economists would say this, and I
Speaker 6: think of physicists, and it's just the you know, the
Speaker 6: mark system works well if you've got the right price
Speaker 6: in things, it's very very simple. And if you've got
Speaker 6: a price of zero effectively or very low, then it's
Speaker 6: well people will wave accordingly, though, So it's just that's
Speaker 6: that's the thing that needs to get done.
Speaker 1: I think it will get done.
Speaker 6: And then the if, over time, as you raise the
Speaker 6: price on common you can actually I think encourage sequestration
Speaker 6: technologies over time, and and and there'll be a lot
Speaker 6: of innovation in that regard and now that's the way
Speaker 6: we to do it.
Speaker 4: So you had these realizations about you know, areas of
Speaker 4: big value and you went and started zip to you
Speaker 4: sold it, got you know, twenty million cash. You were
Speaker 4: the largest shareholder at PA of Papal at the time
Speaker 4: eBay acquired it. I think, you know, you got one
Speaker 4: hundred sixty million or something like that. You know, you
Speaker 4: have enough money basically for an entire lifetime. Why go
Speaker 4: and put your money into SpaceX, which is a huge,
Speaker 4: you know, risky operation or Tesla. Why not just kind
Speaker 4: of you know, relax.
Speaker 1: Sure what?
Speaker 6: So yeah, basically, you know, I graduated from from from
Speaker 6: Penn with basically physics and economics and then that we're
Speaker 6: act a road trip to to Stamford with with Robin
Speaker 6: rand who is in my class and now it works
Speaker 6: at Tesesla.
Speaker 1: Actually yeah, he grew up in Shanghai, so yeah, this
Speaker 1: was a very smart guy.
Speaker 6: He ended up continuing at Stanford and I ended up
Speaker 6: going on Deferma to complate into the semester. But I
Speaker 6: was going to be studying material science and the physics
Speaker 6: of high in age dentistic capacitors for use electric vehicles.
Speaker 6: So the intent was I was going to go, Okay,
Speaker 6: I'm want to work on energy storage solutions for electric vehicles,
Speaker 6: and I'd worked at a company at Cold Pinnacle Research
Speaker 6: for a couple of summers that did high energy density capacitors.
Speaker 6: I was going to try to do effect me like
Speaker 6: a solid state version of what they were doing with
Speaker 6: It's going to get very complicated from a technical standpoint,
Speaker 6: but they're using ruthenium tantlemox side. Ruthum is extremely rare
Speaker 6: and expensive. You cannot scale that, so like can you
Speaker 6: find a substitute for ruthenium? But they were able to
Speaker 6: get to uh energy dynasty is comparable to let us
Speaker 6: at battery, but with incredibly high power density. So just
Speaker 6: I can go down a deep rabbit hole air. But
Speaker 6: what's the capacitor in an no?
Speaker 1: I think with the.
Speaker 6: Advent of high energy lithium batteries, a capacitor is not
Speaker 6: not the right path.
Speaker 4: What was your thinking back then though, that made you
Speaker 4: think you could be useful for evis?
Speaker 6: I want to use advanced chip making equipment to make
Speaker 6: capacitors that were precise at a molecular level, so at
Speaker 6: the you know, just a level of precision that that
Speaker 6: was sort of unheard of in in capacitors. Like capacitors,
Speaker 6: energy is a function of its area or and a
Speaker 6: separation distance. So if you have if you can have
Speaker 6: very tiny separation distance, and you can and you can
Speaker 6: inhibit quantum tunneling, like so how do you things get
Speaker 6: pretty estery? So you're going to inherit quantity tunneling, give
Speaker 6: very short gap and and then you can in theory
Speaker 6: get to very high energy densities you by making capacitors
Speaker 6: in the way that you would make a a an
Speaker 6: X eighty six processor. And since there's there there were
Speaker 6: tens of billions of dollars going into chip making R
Speaker 6: and D that I thought there might be a way
Speaker 6: to make an advanced capacitor using chip making equipment instead
Speaker 6: of the conventional means.
Speaker 8: So is it off the table alter capacity?
Speaker 6: It's unnecessary? Interesting, it's unnecessary, It's it's I think I
Speaker 6: think it's I think it's probably is physically possible, but
Speaker 6: it's it's unnecessary at this point.
Speaker 4: I mean, I know a lot of people were talking
Speaker 4: about Maxwell and they had been working on some stuff
Speaker 4: with capacitors.
Speaker 6: The funny thing is that when I was doing the
Speaker 6: my intentions that this uh mass capacity company called Pink Research,
Speaker 6: which was in Less Godess. We talked a lot about
Speaker 6: Maxwell and Maxwell is also trying to kags to Capacitor.
Speaker 1: Is no Tesla a required Maxwell?
Speaker 8: Yeah, Wow, we're looking forward to that investorday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of a big deal. That's great. Great
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 6: Maxwell has a bunch of technologies that are that where
Speaker 6: if they're applied in the right way, I think can
Speaker 6: be have a very big.
Speaker 1: Impact, Like the dry electrode stuff that every one of them.
Speaker 1: That's a big deal.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure, much much bigger deal than it may seem. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and there's a few other things with the space that
Speaker 6: it takes up for the ovens that you know, for
Speaker 6: the current technology, you can save all that that real
Speaker 6: estate space.
Speaker 2: Now that's one aspect. And the cost reduction, the weight savings,
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many pluses.
Speaker 6: Right, Yes, and there's many things that but I left
Speaker 6: wait until you know whatever battery day. Sure, hope in
Speaker 6: a few months, but I think we've had some pretty
Speaker 6: exciting things to share.
Speaker 4: So Galley's very exciting.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it seems like the pace of the innovation of
Speaker 9: the battery things just taken off like since you guys
Speaker 9: have more capital and being able to like have the
Speaker 9: Giga factory be vertically integrated. It seems like know of
Speaker 9: their car company is making that many batteries, so they're
Speaker 9: not even thinking about what comes next.
Speaker 1: But they're not even you know, man, not even come
Speaker 1: cool at all. I can two hundred and one mile
Speaker 1: not not either.
Speaker 6: That's a joke, Yeah, no, it's really, it's true. The
Speaker 6: other countries just really want to outsourced battery technology, not
Speaker 6: even not even making the like this.
Speaker 1: Battery module and cell.
Speaker 6: But they're they're obviously outs hosting the cells, but even
Speaker 6: out sourcing the modules in the packs. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 6: and it's like they're really not thinking about fundamental chemistry improvements.
Speaker 6: And there's some pretty deep wizardry at TELSA.
Speaker 1: On this front.
Speaker 6: I should say a bit about like like electric vehicles,
Speaker 6: and it was sustainable energy in general.
Speaker 1: I said it was.
Speaker 6: It was pretty I think obvious to not not just me,
Speaker 6: to me, to a lot of people even go back
Speaker 6: thirty years or or longer, that we must have a
Speaker 6: sustainable energy solution. In fact, it's it's toto logical, if
Speaker 6: it's un if it's if it's not sustainable, we must
Speaker 6: at some point find an alternative to it. And so
Speaker 6: even if there were no environmental impact to the sort
Speaker 6: of fossil fuel economy, then we would run out of
Speaker 6: them and then we would have economic collapse and well,
Speaker 6: civilization would fall apart. So so that that that was
Speaker 6: actually my initial motivation for electric vehicles is like, Okay,
Speaker 6: we've got to have a solution that does not require
Speaker 6: mining hydrocarbons, that that that is sustainable in the long term.
Speaker 6: It was not actually initially from an environmental standpoint, because
Speaker 6: I had not realized the gravity of the environmental situation
Speaker 6: at that time, and I thought, actually, for sure by
Speaker 6: now we'd have electric cars, like for sure, but back
Speaker 6: on the moon. Yeah, yeah, totally. Why are we not
Speaker 6: back on the moon? It's insane, insane. If you sold
Speaker 6: something in sixty nine that, yeah, that would not be
Speaker 6: back on the moon, And in like twenty twenty, they'd
Speaker 6: be like you probably might have getten punched, honestly, because
Speaker 6: they'd be like, you're just it's like so insultingly rude
Speaker 6: to if youture.
Speaker 1: Because they'd be like, what is wrong with you?
Speaker 6: It's encouraging encouraging them, Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it's like,
Speaker 6: we should have a sure of a base on the Moon,
Speaker 6: we should have sent people to Mars. None of that's occurred.
Speaker 6: You know, it's gonna that We've got to make that happen. Yeah,
Speaker 6: So it's a bit on the sustainability front. It was really,
Speaker 6: like I said, not so much initially, not so much
Speaker 6: from an environmental standpoint, but from the necessity of replacing
Speaker 6: a finite resource in order to ensure that civilization could
Speaker 6: continue to grow. And then the urgency of it became
Speaker 6: much more obvious, like, wow, we're just really better do
Speaker 6: something because the environmental stuff is becoming quite serious, and
Speaker 6: the the the inertia of large existing companies is just
Speaker 6: hard to appreciate that they just want to keep doing
Speaker 6: the same thing and maybe five percent different every year,
Speaker 6: maybe five percent difference. Big companies had changed. So so
Speaker 6: then the you know, the time that Tesla you know,
Speaker 6: was creator, you know, there was no no one was
Speaker 6: doing electric cars. They weren't really startups. There weren't big
Speaker 6: car companies weren't doing it. Uh GM tot cancel their
Speaker 6: EV programs.
Speaker 1: Now everybody's doing it right now, like.
Speaker 7: And their mom, the mom is doing it, and we
Speaker 7: will all like to congratulate about the take off.
Speaker 1: Actually three one, yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's and I would like to know, like why
Speaker 7: China is the best country to build a first foreign
Speaker 7: Giga factory.
Speaker 6: China is the biggest consumer cars in the world, so it's.
Speaker 1: So that that that alone would be enough to do it.
Speaker 6: I think also there was a lot of uncertainty about
Speaker 6: the tariffs, and and you know, it's like potentially would
Speaker 6: be unable to sell effectively in China if we did
Speaker 6: not have a factory locally, or at least unable to
Speaker 6: sell at prices that weren't extremely high. But those are
Speaker 6: really the two two main reasons.
Speaker 1: I think that.
Speaker 6: But I think there's also a third important reason that
Speaker 6: that there's just so much talent and drive in China
Speaker 6: that I think it's a good place to do a
Speaker 6: lot of things. And the evidence is there in the
Speaker 6: incredible progress in the factory, which was built with very
Speaker 6: very high quality and very short period of time, and
Speaker 6: that the car is coming out of of Shanghai are
Speaker 6: already very high quality.
Speaker 1: I can't tell. And the run rate is amazing.
Speaker 2: And I love that they used the Chinese badge as well.
Speaker 2: It's like a simple pride and you know made made
Speaker 2: in China.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's cool, it's super cool.
Speaker 4: How did Tesla manage to get the first wholly owned
Speaker 4: foreign car company in China? I mean a factory?
Speaker 6: Uh well, I've went to China many times and they
Speaker 6: kept saying that we would have to do this, you know,
Speaker 6: majority local venture. And I said that, well, we had
Speaker 6: to partner with someone, and say, well, oh, you know,
Speaker 6: we're a little late to the dance here, you know,
Speaker 6: so who do we partner with? You know, there's nobody,
Speaker 6: nobody left, and uh and also we're just a little company,
Speaker 6: so you know, we're you know, like because they should
Speaker 6: get married, like we're young.
Speaker 1: That's a good example.
Speaker 6: But yeah, you know, and then so then you know,
Speaker 6: but and then also is pointing out like you know,
Speaker 6: there's so many Chinese companies that are going to you know,
Speaker 6: that are establishing factories or in the US, and there's
Speaker 6: like Verity Future and that kind of thing, and that's
Speaker 6: known by them. And so I mean, to be fair,
Speaker 6: it should be allowed that a marine car company should
Speaker 6: be able to own its factory in China as well.
Speaker 6: And so we talked to him over and over of
Speaker 6: years and they eventually said Okay, well.
Speaker 1: We'll change law.
Speaker 6: They changed law, but now those other companies can do
Speaker 6: it as well, so it's not just limited to Tesla.
Speaker 9: And how much of that production hell like learnings have
Speaker 9: really enabled because one of the I don't want to
Speaker 9: like to bring up Capex, but one of my favorite
Speaker 9: things is the stats and the shareholder letter. It's so
Speaker 9: much cheaper, not only faster, but it seems like that
Speaker 9: you have learned so much from this the Fremont factory,
Speaker 9: and that really enabled like kind of a turbo charged
Speaker 9: build for Shanghai.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the.
Speaker 6: I think the big difference is is like we are
Speaker 6: way less dumb than we were, so the the fullishness
Speaker 6: of capital expenditures was very high and it's less high.
Speaker 1: Know, and then.
Speaker 6: The the Shanghai factory, we designed out all of or
Speaker 6: as much of the foolishness as we could think of
Speaker 6: that exists at Fremont and at Nevada. So we just
Speaker 6: made a lot of decisions that weren't smart and and
Speaker 6: we designed those out so such the production line is
Speaker 6: much simpler, So it's much simpler and better implemented. And
Speaker 6: then we also found like that in most cases the
Speaker 6: suppliers were more efficient in China as well than in
Speaker 6: the US, so, but we've also managed to get a
Speaker 6: lot more output from existing equipment in the US as well.
Speaker 6: So the Model three bodyline in Fremont, for example, was
Speaker 6: only ever meant to do five thousand cars Model three
Speaker 6: is a week and it's doing seven thousand nice, nice
Speaker 6: and with with with with turning off a bunch of
Speaker 6: unnecessary things that were being done. So it I mean,
Speaker 6: there's just there's a lot of bullish things that were
Speaker 6: doing so and we changed some of the designs and
Speaker 6: made it easier to would it's it's like hundreds of
Speaker 6: little things to make it, to make it easier to build,
Speaker 6: and and so being able to get forty percent more
Speaker 6: output off the same line obviously makes it makes a
Speaker 6: big difference, and while while reducing the cost of the module,
Speaker 6: cost of production and I and I think improving the
Speaker 6: quality of the car. So it's just all good, good stuff.
Speaker 6: It was the result of a ton of hard work
Speaker 6: by a lot of people. So yeah, it was kind
Speaker 6: of necessary in that there was we didn't really have
Speaker 6: a place to put a second molitary body line. So
Speaker 6: it's like you either we either make with one go
Speaker 6: faster or we will not be able to achieve production.
Speaker 6: But the Model three body line in Shanghai is much
Speaker 6: much simpler than the one in and I said that
Speaker 6: a good way then, because it has the same the
Speaker 6: same end result. So if if you know and and
Speaker 6: but but it's much easier to understand this just getting
Speaker 6: rid of unnecessary movement. There's a lot of unnecessary movement
Speaker 6: in the Freemont body line, but not in Shanghai.
Speaker 4: So you guys said in the production letter that you
Speaker 4: just started battery production in Shanghai too, And I heard
Speaker 4: that you guys were getting cells from cattle and l GCM.
Speaker 4: Are the cells basically kind of like a commodity part
Speaker 4: that you can assemble into your battery packs there or
Speaker 4: you know, does it make a difference. How do you
Speaker 4: see that long term?
Speaker 6: I believe these cells are not yet from LG We
Speaker 6: do expect to use locally, locally produced cells, but I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, I don't know, it's a week clear.
Speaker 6: I don't always know exactly what's going on everywhere in
Speaker 6: the fifty thousand person company. So some of the things,
Speaker 6: like most most most of the things I say, will
Speaker 6: be crippets of maybea occasionally something that's not as to
Speaker 6: that my knowledge, we're not yet using Algae camp cells.
Speaker 6: We are using Panasonic cells made in Nevada.
Speaker 4: But LGAE CAM can make pretty much the same cells
Speaker 4: as Panasonic.
Speaker 6: Yes, but pretty much is not the same as the same.
Speaker 6: So there's still a few bugs to work out with
Speaker 6: the LGA camp cells before we can use them in
Speaker 6: our module and battery pack production system. The CTL cells,
Speaker 6: the CL situation will be more of an integrated module
Speaker 6: then it will be a cell. And that's so that
Speaker 6: it's it's not just it's not super easy to replace
Speaker 6: these things. But yeah, we'll be We do expect to
Speaker 6: use CTL. We do expect to use Algae. Currently we're
Speaker 6: use using Panasonic. Might expect to use I mean like
Speaker 6: virtually a matter of months. So by the middle of
Speaker 6: this year we will probably be using both LGA and
Speaker 6: ctail in volume.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 8: So we were talking about a lot of Tesla stuff,
Speaker 8: but we kind of wanted to ask you about your
Speaker 8: personal history because we were saying you were saying how
Speaker 8: there's some misconceptions you would like to make straight. And
Speaker 8: you know, Ashley Vance wrote a book about you. I
Speaker 8: just read May's loved the book, and it was really wonderful.
Speaker 8: I loved it, and I learned a little bit more
Speaker 8: history about your family and you. What are some of
Speaker 8: the misconceptions that you would like to correct?
Speaker 6: You know, most of this is just and it ended
Speaker 6: up being kind of water under the bridge that people
Speaker 6: didn't notice that much. Yeah, I mean there's a sort
Speaker 6: of some stories in there where it sounds like I
Speaker 6: like fired people all of a sudden and arbitrarily, which
Speaker 6: was not the case.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 6: You know, it just Ashley asked somebody who who didn't
Speaker 6: know what was going on, and then that person was
Speaker 6: suddenly not there.
Speaker 1: And they didn't know why.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I yeah, I definitely do not fire talented people.
Speaker 6: And yeah, you know, unless there's no option. So yeah,
Speaker 6: and absolutely not not without warning or like.
Speaker 8: Keep hearing you say, we like it sounds like you're
Speaker 8: always thinking of everybody. I see you as a very
Speaker 8: selfless person. I mean seriously, I mean, yeah, it's like
Speaker 8: from the age of twelve, it sounds like you've been
Speaker 8: thinking about how to help humanity.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I'm not trying to be sort of
Speaker 6: like some you know, the sort of savior or something
Speaker 6: like that. You know, but it's really just that if
Speaker 6: it just seems like there, it's just I don't know,
Speaker 6: it feels like the obvious things to do. I can't like,
Speaker 6: I'm not sure why you do anything else. We want
Speaker 6: to maximize happiness to the population and propagating to the
Speaker 6: future as far as possible and understand the nature of reality,
Speaker 6: and from that, I think everything else follows.
Speaker 5: I saw you on Twitter like talking about how like
Speaker 5: people are having this rumor that you've been wealthy your
Speaker 5: whole life and that would be like the only reason
Speaker 5: who became successful and you've debunked that, And can you
Speaker 5: ask share more about your upbringing and what led you
Speaker 5: to go into North America.
Speaker 6: Sure, I was in South Africa and it seemed like
Speaker 6: wherever there was like a lot of the advanced technology
Speaker 6: in the world was being produced in America and Solucton
Speaker 6: Valley especially, So I wanted to be where I could
Speaker 6: sort of have an impact on technology, so that's or
Speaker 6: be involved in the creation of new technology. So that's
Speaker 6: what brought me to go to at first Canada because
Speaker 6: I could get citizenship in Canada through my mom, and
Speaker 6: then ultimately to the US.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I just left Slavco. When I was seventeen and.
Speaker 6: Land in Montreal, I had like about two thousand dollars Canadian.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah.
Speaker 6: I started staying in a youth hustle for a few days,
Speaker 6: and then there was a you could buy a ticket
Speaker 6: to across the country for hard bucks and stopped along
Speaker 6: the way, and so I put that and just took
Speaker 6: it greyhound across Canada and sold these like little towns.
Speaker 1: Well we were getting I didn't have much.
Speaker 6: I had like a backpack again suitcase books, but that
Speaker 6: the bus company, the Greyhound, unloaded it in one of
Speaker 6: the cities and then the bus left without my stuff.
Speaker 1: So I literally had nothing. All your books but you're
Speaker 1: closed to.
Speaker 6: Actually, weirdly, I think I might have had the books thing,
Speaker 6: but I closed that prior you need it, Yeah, because
Speaker 6: I needed. I was just sitting in the bus station reading,
Speaker 6: waiting for the bus to get ready, and I think
Speaker 6: I have the books but not not.
Speaker 1: But no clothing.
Speaker 6: So anyway, but I managed to get to Swift Current, Saskatchewan,
Speaker 6: and then my, my, it's your cousins cousin's son, Yeah,
Speaker 6: has a whaed farm there, and I worked on the
Speaker 6: wheat farm for about six weeks and turned eighteen and Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1: It's just a ton of called swift current.
Speaker 2: So that was summertime, right it is June, Yeah, June
Speaker 2: twenty eighth, So because I've been there in the winter
Speaker 2: and it's like minus forty yeah, yeah, you don't want
Speaker 2: to be traveling.
Speaker 8: Yeah did you ice kate? Did you try ice skating?
Speaker 1: No? There was it was quite warm.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean in the winter.
Speaker 1: Stay for there in the winter. I was just I
Speaker 1: was there for about six weeks. Oh, you're lucky you survived.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I was old there literally working on the wheat farm,
Speaker 6: did a bond raising and they cleared out the wheat binds,
Speaker 6: you know, the grain, grain salos, that kind of thing,
Speaker 6: and I just worked the vegetable patch basically just doing
Speaker 6: various things.
Speaker 8: Would your mind just thinking of what you're what you're
Speaker 8: going to do after that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, t figure what I do next. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do.
Speaker 6: So then, but I ended up getting back on the
Speaker 6: bus and went to Vancouver and I had a half
Speaker 6: uncle there who was kind of in the lumber industry.
Speaker 6: He like made lumber, like lumber equipment.
Speaker 8: Sounds like the Northwest.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, basically throwing up chains, throwing logs and working
Speaker 6: on the slumber mill and cleaning out the where they
Speaker 6: where they boil the pulp and just like create crazy
Speaker 6: so boiler rooms and that that might be the hardest
Speaker 6: job I've had, actually, because you had to like crawl
Speaker 6: through this little tunnel and it has mat suit and
Speaker 6: then with shovel with and then shovel the sort of
Speaker 6: steaming sand and mulch out of the boilers.
Speaker 1: To clean him out.
Speaker 6: And you had to like there's only one entrance to exit,
Speaker 6: which is like a little tunnel. If you're classrophobic, you
Speaker 6: could be real bad. And then you could shovel the
Speaker 6: sand and the mulch through the tunnel and it actually
Speaker 6: blocked the tunnel, and then somebody else would reach in
Speaker 6: and shovel it out from the outside. So it just
Speaker 6: big enough long enough if you have a trovel with
Speaker 6: a long handle, one person on the inside can shovel
Speaker 6: it far enough that someone on the outside can shovel
Speaker 6: it out. And then you have to rotate every fifteen
Speaker 6: minutes to avoid getting hyperthermia.
Speaker 8: Oh wow, and the safeties just a man looking out
Speaker 8: for you.
Speaker 6: There were just two people kind of paired up. So
Speaker 6: if like one person's collap and you go to call somebody,
Speaker 6: but it'd be really hard to drag somebody out. I
Speaker 6: have to say that it does not seem safe because
Speaker 6: if the tunnel gets blocked, trying to get then and
Speaker 6: block that tunnel would be very difficult in a short
Speaker 6: period of time. So, but it was the highest painting
Speaker 6: job at the employment office. Sorry, I was like, okay,
Speaker 6: the other jobs were like, I don't know, eight dollars
Speaker 6: an hour and this one was eighteen dollars an hour.
Speaker 8: It fire your clothes and were gone.
Speaker 1: Well they gave you they did you give you a
Speaker 1: have hazmat suits?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: How long did you have to did you do that
Speaker 1: job for? It was like four days, it was it
Speaker 1: was then it was done.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you said it was like a short term thing,
Speaker 6: clean green fins, continding that the boilers the ball.
Speaker 3: Rooms, so what was next? We were in boiler rooms and.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, so basically.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean literally it was like a lump of dragons,
Speaker 6: chainselwing logs and just during the lumber or lumber stuff
Speaker 6: basically for a few months there and then applied for college,
Speaker 6: going to Queen's University and Kingston.
Speaker 1: And was there for a couple of years.
Speaker 6: And then some of that's just that I should apply
Speaker 6: to Jupan, and I didn't think I'd be able to
Speaker 6: go because I've paid for my own way through university
Speaker 6: just which is actually not that hard in Canada because
Speaker 6: the tuition system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the tuitions had yourselves that I is in Canada.
Speaker 6: So so with you know, with basically some if you
Speaker 6: sort of worked during the summer semester and take out
Speaker 6: some omens and get some scholarships, you can pretty much
Speaker 6: go to any college in Canada, I think. But I
Speaker 6: met someone who was at Yupan and they said you
Speaker 6: should at least apply, and I applied and they actually
Speaker 6: gave me like quite a big scholarship, so that that
Speaker 6: allowed me to go there, and so that I did
Speaker 6: the physics and economics there and uh and and then.
Speaker 1: That that's what led to the road trip to Stafford
Speaker 1: with Robin ran.
Speaker 6: And and and then I was during that that summer
Speaker 6: that I was was like, Okay, if I can either
Speaker 6: spend several years kind of doing a PhD and know
Speaker 6: that I care about the PhD actually, but I just
Speaker 6: need a lab. But I could either spend a bunch
Speaker 6: of years working in a lab and maybe it would
Speaker 6: maybe the technology would pan out or maybe it wouldn't,
Speaker 6: but the Internet would was definitely about to go super
Speaker 6: and over in ninety five. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 6: I can always come back to working on electric cars basically,
Speaker 6: and which I did, but the Internet is not going
Speaker 6: to wait. So it's so then I put stafford on
Speaker 6: defoement and started up to which was really just you know,
Speaker 6: I started off with maps and directions, yell pages, white pages,
Speaker 6: that kind of thing, and it was the best of
Speaker 6: my knowledge of the first maps and directions on the Internet.
Speaker 6: So this was some like patents I have. I don't
Speaker 6: know how many more of it. They've obviously lapsed at
Speaker 6: this point, but for maps and directions and yell pages
Speaker 6: and advertising and stuff. And I wrote the whole the
Speaker 6: whole initial code base I wrote personally because there wasn't
Speaker 6: any reels.
Speaker 1: It's just me so.
Speaker 6: And I only had a few thousand dollars and my
Speaker 6: brother joined and he brought like five thousand dollars, which
Speaker 6: was led. Yeah, at least for the first few months,
Speaker 6: there was literally only one computer. So the website when
Speaker 6: the website wasn't working. It was because I was compiling
Speaker 6: code and and even again an interat connection was pretty hard,
Speaker 6: but there was an Internet service provider on the flow blows.
Speaker 6: We're more or less squatted in this office because the
Speaker 6: landlord was like out of the country or something and
Speaker 6: nobody was using it.
Speaker 1: So so you've lived in there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think I've read that in Mays book. You
Speaker 8: showered at wymc A then, right, that's right. Yeah, it's
Speaker 8: smart though, I mean you were thrifty to what you
Speaker 8: had to do.
Speaker 4: We just like had no no money, so we're gonna
Speaker 4: do you know, what did people think about zip tou generally?
Speaker 4: Was it like seen as a crazy idea or like
Speaker 4: do people even understand the Internet? Back then, most people
Speaker 4: didn't understand the Internet.
Speaker 6: Most people didn't know Even on sand Hill Road, like
Speaker 6: we tried pitching people to invest in an inter company.
Speaker 1: Most of the vcs we pitched too had never used
Speaker 1: the Internet.
Speaker 4: Do you remember some of the VC firms you went
Speaker 4: to on sandial.
Speaker 6: I remember most of time we wouldn't take a meeting,
Speaker 6: and if they didn't take a meeting, there were pretty
Speaker 6: bored and not say like who's who's made money on
Speaker 6: the Internet. No, like no one, okay, but the seed
Speaker 6: change occurred when Escape went public.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So the first thing I tried to do was not
Speaker 6: to start a company. I tried to get a job
Speaker 6: in Netscape, but they didn't reply to me. Oh no,
Speaker 6: oh man, So I just I tried. I tried hanging
Speaker 6: out in the lobby at Escape. I don't know who
Speaker 6: to talk to. I was really too shy to talk
Speaker 6: to you when I don't know. So it's like, Okay,
Speaker 6: I can't get a job at the only internet company
Speaker 6: that you know that that does Internet software, So then
Speaker 6: I'll try writing software.
Speaker 1: So that's.
Speaker 6: Kind of what happened there. Yeah, and then like I said,
Speaker 6: my brother came down and joined. This is like well
Speaker 6: like late ninety five.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 1: In January ninety five, I think it was the.
Speaker 6: There was there was a lot more interest in the
Speaker 6: internet stuff following the newscape I p O and that's
Speaker 6: the software software was more impressive, I guess.
Speaker 1: So then we then more more. David aw invested so
Speaker 1: they're VC from on sand Hill Road and they.
Speaker 6: They invested I think it was like three million dollars
Speaker 6: for effectively sixty percent of the company.
Speaker 1: Wow, which we thought was crazy.
Speaker 6: They're like, well, these get Learn gives us the money
Speaker 6: for nothing, they must be mad. Yeah, so they that
Speaker 6: this this seems like like crazy that they're to give
Speaker 6: so much money for a company that consisted the time
Speaker 6: of about five people, like literally I think five people.
Speaker 1: At the time.
Speaker 6: So but anyway, it worked out well for them in
Speaker 6: the end, so we hired a lot more people were
Speaker 6: both out the service, and they also ended up writing
Speaker 6: a bunch of software to bring the newspapers online. So
Speaker 6: Night Ritter, New York Times Company, Hurst well became investors
Speaker 6: and customers, and at one points of two which responsible
Speaker 6: for a significant section of the New York Times company website. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so I got to know the media industry pretty well.
Speaker 6: And but over what really happened with with it effectively
Speaker 6: got too much there was too much control by the
Speaker 6: existing media companies, so that too may board seats and
Speaker 6: too much boarding control, and that they kept trying to
Speaker 6: push the company down directions that made no sense. So
Speaker 6: like so, if you actually had really good software, I'd
Speaker 6: say software is comparable in some ways more advanced than
Speaker 6: say Yahoo were excite at the time, but it was
Speaker 6: just not being used properly, and it was all being
Speaker 6: forced through uh, through media companies who they're not.
Speaker 1: Not use it, you know.
Speaker 6: So it's like it's okay, we've got the best technology,
Speaker 6: but it's it's not being deployed properly. So but unfortunately
Speaker 6: compback came along and they compat compact It acquired Digital Equipment,
Speaker 6: and Digital Equipment had owned Aulti Vesta, which at the
Speaker 6: time was probably the best the search best search engine.
Speaker 6: So they thought that their idea was they will combine
Speaker 6: Altivesta with a bunch of other Internet companies and try
Speaker 6: to compete create a competitor to Yahoo or Excite that
Speaker 6: that was the Excite used to be a big thing,
Speaker 6: amazingly and yeah, who used to be a big thing
Speaker 6: a long time.
Speaker 4: Ago that it was like owned by Verizon or something.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and there was Ala.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a crazy story. They you know, they
Speaker 4: failed to ocquord Google twice. You know, Microsoft offered them
Speaker 4: like forty billion or something and they turned.
Speaker 9: It down and then Alibaba saved them out of nowhere.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Alibaba steak was worth more than the whole
Speaker 4: whole company I went.
Speaker 9: By, like, yeah, huge amount. It was basically a proxy
Speaker 9: for Alibaba shares training.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. But at one point, I mean at that time,
Speaker 1: like if you get back.
Speaker 6: To say ninety eight, ninety nine, yeah, who seemed like
Speaker 6: an unstoppable juggernaut, Like literally like this company, will you know?
Speaker 6: It's a behemoth. Nobody could possibly defeat them. But anyway,
Speaker 6: and where's com back today?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So, but that was their idea, which is at least,
Speaker 6: if executed well, could have made sense.
Speaker 3: Kimball, Yeah, what do you what are you guys doing?
Speaker 4: We're recording a podcast?
Speaker 3: Yeah, how do you want me to join?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So what do you remember about it?
Speaker 1: Too? Well? Remember?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, but then the Internet came along with came
Speaker 3: this huge thing. I mean it was always it was
Speaker 3: always there, but it became a big deal. And then
Speaker 3: Elan was working on uh, working in Silicon Valley, and
Speaker 3: as I remember it, you know, I never heard a
Speaker 3: meeting where some of the Yellow Pages companies were thinking
Speaker 3: of doing sort of online yellow Pages, And.
Speaker 1: No, where would I why would I have been? This
Speaker 1: is a long time ago.
Speaker 3: You called me up and you said we should do
Speaker 3: you think you can do a better job, so we
Speaker 3: think we can do it.
Speaker 4: Maybe you made that up to try and get Kimball interested.
Speaker 1: How would I be in a meeting with Yellow Pages company.
Speaker 3: I have no idea, that's what I remember Leafless.
Speaker 1: I don't even know any of Yellow Persons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with you now. But so it was
Speaker 3: like I think April of nineteen ninety five we started
Speaker 3: working on it, and the I guess the idea was
Speaker 3: fairly simple to take mapping and apply it to the Internet,
Speaker 3: and there were a few other companies trying to do it,
Speaker 3: but no one with the very cool technology of sort
Speaker 3: of what was called vector based mapping, which is which
Speaker 3: is what we all use today, where the map is
Speaker 3: actually alive, you know, not just a picture.
Speaker 4: I was very ahead of its time.
Speaker 3: I think we were the first. I know there were
Speaker 3: other people putting maps on the Internet, but I think
Speaker 3: we were the first to put vector based mapping, which
Speaker 3: is what the kind of technology used today on the Internet,
Speaker 3: and orginal directions. So it was cool. I remember my
Speaker 3: brother and I pressing go on his server at our
Speaker 3: office and took about sixty seconds for the first door
Speaker 3: to door directions to come up on the screen. And
Speaker 3: even sixty seconds was amazing. You're like, this is incredible.
Speaker 3: Directions to anywhere. This is just amazing and definitely seen
Speaker 3: amazing at the time. Definitely seen amazing at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah it now, it's like, but this was like an
Speaker 3: impossible thing. It was so cool and using Java, you know,
Speaker 3: had coated a interactive map, which again all super normal
Speaker 3: stuff today, but the ability to just draw square and
Speaker 3: zoom in or zoom out, that was just unheard of technology.
Speaker 3: Draw square, yeah, you remember that, it was a little
Speaker 3: little red square on the Java browser.
Speaker 1: That was unusual.
Speaker 4: Yes, just like, yeah, well you cheated if you're using
Speaker 4: Java applets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is when Java sucked and it was barely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was like probably the most I think we
Speaker 3: even got some sort of recognition because it was the
Speaker 3: most advanced Java application on Java at the time because
Speaker 3: it was so ridiculously hot.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It was a really crappy technology at the time, but
Speaker 3: this this was done on it.
Speaker 6: The thing is that if you if you downloaded the
Speaker 6: job outplet, we could we could transmit the vector data,
Speaker 6: not just a betmap. And this is what when everyone's
Speaker 6: on a modem, so something's on like you know, twenty
Speaker 6: covets motem or you know, trying to download a map
Speaker 6: image to take forever, whereas if you had downloading the
Speaker 6: vector data, is that locally rendered using the Java applet
Speaker 6: was super was relatively speaking, super fast.
Speaker 1: That's what made it cool.
Speaker 4: Sparta, I mean yeah, even like vector maps are even
Speaker 4: Google Maps using like raster maps a few years ago,
Speaker 4: like it seems like very out of its time.
Speaker 3: Well, we were the first, I believe. I believe the
Speaker 3: two of us were the first humans to see the
Speaker 3: maps and little directions on the Internet, which I think
Speaker 3: is pretty cool, very cool cool.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Garman came out. When did Garman first launch?
Speaker 3: Well, they were an Internet based right, so you could
Speaker 3: you could. Actually I don't think Garman was even a
Speaker 3: player at this point. It was Navtek was the only
Speaker 3: place that we were. That's where we got the data from. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they were building it for for Hurts Never Lost,
Speaker 3: which came out a few years lady. You know those
Speaker 3: things that no one uses in the GPS systems, really
Speaker 3: really bad technology. But the actual mapping data was amazing,
Speaker 3: and so we took that and applied it to the Internet.
Speaker 3: That we were twenty two and twenty three at the time.
Speaker 3: It had cost them three hundred million dollars to build
Speaker 3: this data. And they gave it to us for free
Speaker 3: with a simple contract saying, if you ever make any
Speaker 3: money on this, you've got to you've got to come share.
Speaker 3: And that's how we got it. That's amazing that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can say it's amazing what happens if you ask nicely.
Speaker 3: And there's also part of it was these guys had
Speaker 3: been working so hard on the tech and no one
Speaker 3: had ever seen what they were doing because it was
Speaker 3: not on the internet and it was not being used
Speaker 3: for for hurts, and so it was just they were
Speaker 3: excited that someone would use the data and it would
Speaker 3: think people could see what they've been they've been working on.
Speaker 9: So how did you guys get the engineering chops to
Speaker 9: pull this off? Because it sounds like you were so
Speaker 9: young you didn't really have any help and then you
Speaker 9: built this like cutting edge piece of technology.
Speaker 3: Did you need to teach yourselves from I don't know
Speaker 3: what time, what age, but publisher for the.
Speaker 9: Like blast Star game, right, yeah, when it was twelve.
Speaker 1: Did you write any other cool stuff back then? Yeah?
Speaker 6: I wrote a bunch of games. Yeah, and then like
Speaker 6: occasionally software for people like asked for software.
Speaker 3: You know, you also worked for a video game company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our funily it was called rocket Science. Yeah, that's funny.
Speaker 4: By the way, we took a SpaceX to yesterday.
Speaker 1: It was insane. Thank you for that. That was amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was so good.
Speaker 4: It's like Batman's layer in there.
Speaker 3: It's really it is amazing.
Speaker 2: But it gives your perspective on what Tesla's doing because
Speaker 2: the technology is so advanced and that there's you know,
Speaker 2: interchange of information there. Like the I know they used
Speaker 2: to incannel fuse right, was from SpaceX. When they couldn't
Speaker 2: get the power output right, it kept burning up the
Speaker 2: fuse in the in the performance models. So yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty cool to see the SpaceX tech being
Speaker 3: applied to Tesla. I think I think there's a joint
Speaker 3: there's one joint employee between SpaceX and Tesla, and it's real.
Speaker 3: It's the materials is it the materials engineer?
Speaker 1: What about you want.
Speaker 3: In addition to el because they're just not that many
Speaker 3: humans on the planet that know how to do this stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounded like back in the old days it
Speaker 1: was was it just elam doing the coding or.
Speaker 6: I mean I did a little for like HTML friend,
Speaker 6: not recently but no, there was there was no money,
Speaker 6: so you can employ it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I strolled the software and you worked through
Speaker 1: the night.
Speaker 8: Right, you just never according to his book, he never slept.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean we we lived in a little office. I
Speaker 3: think this address was four to seventy Sherman Way in
Speaker 3: Palo Alto. It was probably Lea. Yeah, it was probably
Speaker 3: like fifteen feet wide by thirty feet long, with a
Speaker 3: little little closet in the back. And we would we
Speaker 3: we couldn't afford a place to sleep or like a
Speaker 3: house home apartment, so we would sleep in it and
Speaker 3: it had a couch that was a photon and it
Speaker 3: would pull out the futon, take turns sleeping on the
Speaker 3: fouts on or the floor, although he coated a lot
Speaker 3: at night, so I usually got the futon at night,
Speaker 3: and we had we had to coat it at night
Speaker 3: because the server when the Internet was live, needed to
Speaker 3: be functional, and we just had data for the Bay
Speaker 3: area at the time, so we were just kind of
Speaker 3: making sure that the people in the Bay area could
Speaker 3: use it. And then and then we had a little
Speaker 3: little mini fridge with a cooking stove on and we'd
Speaker 3: cook simple things, you know, pasta, sauce and pasta and
Speaker 3: things like that that would be as cheap as dirt.
Speaker 3: People think it's expensive to eat. Real food is actually
Speaker 3: really cheap. Yah, books, vegetables, pasta and beans and stuff.
Speaker 3: Beans super cheap, so that Jack the cheapest, and then
Speaker 3: we would go eat a Jack in the Box, which
Speaker 3: I can still and still kind of shiver a little
Speaker 3: still even there for probably twenty years or longer, maybe
Speaker 3: twenty two years, and I can still probably recite the
Speaker 3: entire menu.
Speaker 6: Yeah, recycled through the menu and Jack in the Box
Speaker 6: because what it was like just a few blocks away
Speaker 6: from and it was up in twenty four hours, over
Speaker 6: twenty four hours, and tried to get to you know,
Speaker 6: dinner at Coalbelta after ten a zero.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So did they know you very well Jack in
Speaker 1: the Box.
Speaker 3: Well they didn't really, they did know. And I remember
Speaker 3: one time I got a milk chick and I was
Speaker 3: so tired. I was like four in the morning and
Speaker 3: just needed to get some sugar for the rest of
Speaker 3: the night. And there was something in it, and I
Speaker 3: remember just flicking it out and just pertaining it didn't exist,
Speaker 3: kept drinking my milkshake. It was it was like that
Speaker 3: or that kind of like not in the zone to
Speaker 3: go back into Jack argue about a milkshake, but I
Speaker 3: don't want to not drink the milkshake.
Speaker 6: And probably reason that food was like so cheap is
Speaker 6: that they had some people I think that had of
Speaker 6: food poisoning.
Speaker 3: Right around that time when they got fit into a
Speaker 3: food poisoning scare.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so that there, it was just very cheap to
Speaker 6: eat there, and I figured, like, you know, they probably
Speaker 6: you know, have taken some action because that after the
Speaker 6: food poisoning, so hopefully, Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's just like eat a little bit of it, just
Speaker 1: tastes funny. Stop eating if it tastes funny.
Speaker 3: You run out of things to eat because after like
Speaker 3: the seventeenth chicken feet at Peta, you like can't do it.
Speaker 1: The yacha boll, remember that is that one good? It's
Speaker 1: actually it veried, but it was it was edible. It
Speaker 1: was so bad.
Speaker 3: Which one one? The chariochy baal teriochy ball wasn't bad.
Speaker 3: There was the sort of sour dough grilled grilled cheese
Speaker 3: thing that was wasn't bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, those were the good old days, right, I mean
Speaker 4: it was honestly good days.
Speaker 3: I mean we just we were just hoping that people
Speaker 3: would let us stay in the country.
Speaker 1: We weren't really that word about what we were eating.
Speaker 3: We were just doing everything we could to to get
Speaker 3: to get someone to support the company. We didn't really understand.
Speaker 3: I didn't understand the venture capital that much. So we
Speaker 3: were doing a seed round and angel around and doing
Speaker 3: our best to talk to everyone and anyone we could find.
Speaker 3: We had a very good friend with us, Greg Curry,
Speaker 3: who now passed away, who was older than us by
Speaker 3: about ten years I think, And yeah, it was a
Speaker 3: wonderful mentor helped us out and put a little money
Speaker 3: in as well. And and then I did a lot
Speaker 3: of the work to just find just network with people.
Speaker 3: I think our our first salesman who was selling Yellow
Speaker 3: Pages ads for us, I was a real state agent
Speaker 3: who knew another person who knew this other person who
Speaker 3: helped us, who helped us raise put together We ended
Speaker 3: up not doing the round, but put together a round
Speaker 3: of like two hundred thousand dollars or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we did like part of it or something.
Speaker 3: But I think once we had the Java Java Map,
Speaker 3: which was really quite impressive. I mean, if you've never
Speaker 3: seen if you're never you've never seen Google maps or
Speaker 3: Java maps before. It really is a remarkable thing to see.
Speaker 3: We started to go to we got it. We got
Speaker 3: some audiences with some venture capitalists, and it just went
Speaker 3: from we were starving, we had no car. Well, the
Speaker 3: car we had it broken, the will fell off, the
Speaker 3: wheel fell off, the wheel fell off. Yeah, what kind
Speaker 3: of car was it? I remember that's an old BMW
Speaker 3: three wed across the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one that my mom mest some pictures of.
Speaker 3: I think there's I think there's still a there's a
Speaker 3: there's a car of in the in the road at
Speaker 3: page Mill and night alchemmed. Literally the wal came off,
Speaker 3: will fell off, and and and the guy literally in
Speaker 3: the air section just drove it without the wheel to
Speaker 3: the to the silence.
Speaker 6: It's pretty much time for the junk yard at that point,
Speaker 6: because the whole car is falling apart. So yeah, it's
Speaker 6: like the point which the wheel falls off, it's time
Speaker 6: to go to the junkyard.
Speaker 4: In the morning. No, that was that was way more.
Speaker 3: That was way later because we already had the deal,
Speaker 3: but we were we were not I don't know if
Speaker 3: you were, but I was not legally in America. So
Speaker 3: I was illegally there.
Speaker 1: I was legally there, but but I was mentioning student work.
Speaker 3: At a student work you you were you were doing
Speaker 3: you were supposed to be doing a PhD in Stanford.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I decided not to do so. And it
Speaker 1: was like I was allowed to do work sort of
Speaker 1: supporting whatever, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I tried to get a visa, but there's just there's
Speaker 3: just not no visa you can get to do a startup.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, nobody was paying you anything either, and so so
Speaker 1: we ended up.
Speaker 3: We got a deal from from from More David out
Speaker 3: and uh, this really high well respected DC firm, and
Speaker 3: we had to break the news to them that that
Speaker 3: that we take the bus. We took the bus to
Speaker 3: get to to the offices. We don't have a car,
Speaker 3: and we don't have an apartment, and were illegal.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, you're illegal.
Speaker 6: And so I was legal, but my visa was going
Speaker 6: to run out in two years, okay, yeah, but I
Speaker 6: was definita.
Speaker 3: We needed to get it sorted. And so, uh they
Speaker 3: were great. I mean they're the lead investor's wife was
Speaker 3: from Canada. They knew the whole challenge of being an
Speaker 3: immigrant and we had Canadian passports, and so uh. They
Speaker 3: they funded the company and they gave us some money
Speaker 3: to each buy a car, and they gave us a
Speaker 3: salary so could rent an apartment, and they I got
Speaker 3: a visa through the company. But but the day, the
Speaker 3: morning we were supposed to present to the partners, I
Speaker 3: went to Toronto because my mother was freaking out because
Speaker 3: she needed her computer fixed. And seriously, this is brutal.
Speaker 5: So I.
Speaker 3: Flew out there planning to fly back on Sunday and
Speaker 3: the meeting was on Monday. And I get to the
Speaker 3: airport on Sunday and the border control they they called
Speaker 3: me out. They're like, you're you're you're going down to work.
Speaker 3: You're not going down for for for travel. I was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm going out to work. I explained, Actually no, I didn't.
Speaker 3: I said I'm not going to work because I think
Speaker 3: that's what I was supposed to say. The Lord's told
Speaker 3: me not to say anything, and so they rejected me
Speaker 3: from the border and so I'm sposed to would do
Speaker 3: the presentation with you on the next morning, and so
Speaker 3: a friend of mine came to pick me up at
Speaker 3: the airport and drove me across the border, and we
Speaker 3: went to the Buffalo border and just said we're going
Speaker 3: to go see the David Letterman show. And the Border
Speaker 3: Control I was like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, wow'z I.
Speaker 3: I got on the late night flight from Buffalo to
Speaker 3: San Francisco and we made the meeting in the morning.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I mean, technically we're not going out of
Speaker 6: work because that would have required meant you of being
Speaker 6: paid something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wasn't actually paid anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, technically we weren't.
Speaker 3: Actually you're not actually breaking the law. We're not breaking
Speaker 3: the law because we we were not being paid anything. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I should have told them that the Border Control.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it was very getting paid for something. No, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right exactly. We were not not being paid exactly.
Speaker 1: But yeah.
Speaker 3: So so then they approved the deal that Monday, and
Speaker 3: we started buildings up too, you know. And it wasn't
Speaker 3: a business model for you know, back in those days,
Speaker 3: well it was.
Speaker 6: It was kind of like a pre like YELP is
Speaker 6: like business model is similar to sort of yell But
Speaker 6: it was at a time when most businesses didn't didn't
Speaker 6: know what the internet was so and most people didn't
Speaker 6: haven't email address or yeah, we went online flinging to.
Speaker 3: Them what a website was. The internet was kind of
Speaker 3: this cool thing. People were using Netscape browser and I
Speaker 3: think by the end of it, we got eighteen thousand
Speaker 3: businesses to be on our service, pay pain to be
Speaker 3: like with websites and everything, you know a lot of
Speaker 3: the things that you can do today, like automatically build websites.
Speaker 3: We built a lot of those sort of tools to
Speaker 3: make it easier to build websites. And we had to
Speaker 3: sell door to door.
Speaker 1: Because that was the only way.
Speaker 8: Did you hire people or is it just to you
Speaker 8: guys going.
Speaker 3: No, No, We had a team by that time because
Speaker 3: we could hire a team. But I remember talking to
Speaker 3: the Yellow Pages guy once and it was amazing. That
Speaker 3: was the head of the Toronto Star that they owned
Speaker 3: all the.
Speaker 1: Yellow Pages in the Yellow Pages will never die famous last.
Speaker 3: Work literally because we went to talk to him partner.
Speaker 3: We said, we want to part with you and let's
Speaker 3: just be one of your partners to do to put
Speaker 3: the Yellow Pages online. And he picked up the Yellow Pages.
Speaker 3: This book, this big thick book that full of as
Speaker 3: this multi billion dollar Redney stream.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys were so arrogant and so like
Speaker 1: we are kings of the world and it will never end.
Speaker 3: He picked he picked up this book and grew it
Speaker 3: at me and he said, do you ever think you're
Speaker 3: going to replace this? And I was just literally like,
Speaker 3: I mean my head and my head is like, dude,
Speaker 3: you're already dead.
Speaker 4: The anti Tesla people, you know, guess cars.
Speaker 3: Will never die. Yeah, But I mean, like we we
Speaker 3: saw the growth of the Internet, we saw the use
Speaker 3: of the Yellow Pages, We saw even more our competitors
Speaker 3: and stuff, and no one was using the paper yellow
Speaker 3: Pages if you had the choice, yes, exactly, no one.
Speaker 3: And so so at that point, very few people who
Speaker 3: are on the internet. So it was really a question
Speaker 3: of really is the Internet going to succeed, which we
Speaker 3: were huge believers in, and these guys were not, you know,
Speaker 3: they didn't even clue in.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there was like one one point country after another.
Speaker 6: We say like, listen, we'll just put your l pays online,
Speaker 6: gonna cost very little. You know, you're still own all
Speaker 6: the content and everything. And they're like, just throw us,
Speaker 6: throw us.
Speaker 1: Out of the office. Yeah, you know, like no, and
Speaker 1: how do you even suggest this?
Speaker 3: Extraordinary?
Speaker 1: And we're like, okay, I guess we'll just build it
Speaker 1: and we're Yeah.
Speaker 3: But it's been interesting to watch over the years where
Speaker 3: like in PayPal, the competitors were not uh banks, you know,
Speaker 3: even though that should have been the competitive No, there
Speaker 3: were there were banks that try to compete, but wasn't
Speaker 3: it eBay mostly that was sort of the band.
Speaker 1: Bull point.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that which but it wasn't exactly like PayPal. But
Speaker 6: generally EVA had an issue with trying to get payment
Speaker 6: for stuff like like two.
Speaker 1: People would have to mail checks to each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's gonna work.
Speaker 6: If you have mail a check and you receive the
Speaker 6: check and how do you know the checks real? Then
Speaker 6: you've got to you know, cash check and take you know,
Speaker 6: two to five day for the money to transfer. So
Speaker 6: it could take two weeks before somebody had confirmed payment
Speaker 6: and then I then they would ship you the item
Speaker 6: and so that the transaction velocity was very low. As
Speaker 6: a result, if you had instant payment, you improved transaction
Speaker 6: velostity dramatically, like factor of you know, maybe three to five.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've just sort of seen that the when you when
Speaker 3: in into industry is disrupted, that you worry about the
Speaker 3: major players. I mean, when we saw a test that
Speaker 3: we were aspiring to be the GM of the twenty
Speaker 3: first century. Four years later, GM went bankrupt. You're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: we don't we don't read. We're good, We're good, We're good,
Speaker 3: and uh and and it's you know, whoever is going
Speaker 3: to be the main competitors. You know, we don't know yet,
Speaker 3: but uh, it may not be the entrenched players, may
Speaker 3: be sort of other companies. And so so that happened
Speaker 3: it up two where we we we tried our our
Speaker 3: best to partner with the industry because that seemed like
Speaker 3: the best way to make some money and actually have
Speaker 3: a revenue model. And we ended up finding the newspapers
Speaker 3: to be a better partner because they didn't have the
Speaker 3: Yellow Pages business, and I think they seem we're smarter.
Speaker 3: Their classifized business was getting eaten away by Craigslist. You know,
Speaker 3: before craigslist classifies, was the bread and butter of the newspaper.
Speaker 3: And of course anyone who used Craigslist would never use
Speaker 3: the newspapers. So it was it was those folks seemed
Speaker 3: to have a better Uh, at least some of the
Speaker 3: players had a more more vision of the future, and
Speaker 3: so our business became putting major newspapers in New York
Speaker 3: Times to all of the Philadelphia acquirers, Chicago Tribune or whatever,
Speaker 3: all the main players, all the Alley Times, everyone, and
Speaker 3: then we started going internationally doing the same thing. So
Speaker 3: if you went on to the New York Times website
Speaker 3: and you wanted to search for a restaurant, of course
Speaker 3: have all these reviews. Or if you wanted to search
Speaker 3: for a home, then you could. You could. We tie
Speaker 3: the mls together with maps and directions. So all of
Speaker 3: these services that we now use and take for granted
Speaker 3: that use maps and directions, we we did that all
Speaker 3: in the nineties to find a business model.
Speaker 5: Yeah you do PayPal after zup too, Why do didn't
Speaker 5: you go like straight into sustainable.
Speaker 1: Energy, right, so.
Speaker 6: Kind of recall things that are quite a while. So
Speaker 6: it would have been like ninety eight when Compact offered
Speaker 6: to acquire zip to, and which I think it was
Speaker 6: a good thing to put them to acquire it because
Speaker 6: as I mentioned that, the newspapers actually when the media
Speaker 6: companies had too much control over zip too, so they
Speaker 6: were not we had great technology that was not being
Speaker 6: deployed effectively, and they would just generally be averse to
Speaker 6: anything that could remotely be competitive with their new papers.
Speaker 6: So so we're sort of trapped in this situation and
Speaker 6: they think of Compact came along and bought the company
Speaker 6: in late ninety eight and the deal closed early ninety nine.
Speaker 6: So that as a result that Kim that I had
Speaker 6: some capital twenty million dollars with something out of it.
Speaker 6: And I think the thing that was frustrating to me
Speaker 6: was that we're built incredible technology and it had not
Speaker 6: been used. It was just sort of like very disappointing.
Speaker 6: You know, we put a lot of work into this
Speaker 6: technology and just wasn't being used. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 6: I'm going to I want to do one more thing
Speaker 6: on the Internet, just to show that we can make
Speaker 6: technology that is, when it's used properly, can be extremely effective.
Speaker 6: So I thought about what what's digital? Essentially, what's what's it?
Speaker 6: What's what exists in the form of information and is
Speaker 6: also not high bandwidth because it in ninety nine people
Speaker 6: still mostly had modems, so you couldn't like video is
Speaker 6: not really feasible in ninety nine, so but money is
Speaker 6: low bandwidth and digital effectively mostly digital. So it's like,
Speaker 6: what can we do to make money work better. And
Speaker 6: the money, in my views, is essentially an information system
Speaker 6: for label allocation, so it has no power in and
Speaker 6: of itself. It's a it's like a database for this
Speaker 6: for guiding people what what as to what they should do.
Speaker 6: And so you can think of banks as a set
Speaker 6: of heterogeneous databases with that that are actually not very secure.
Speaker 6: And certainly the the monetary system, the transfer system of
Speaker 6: checks is not is very insecure. Still isn't secure, so
Speaker 6: our credit cards and and it's it's still mostly batch processing.
Speaker 6: And it was entirely batch processing that day, so it
Speaker 6: was not so payments were money. It was just like
Speaker 6: hitero geneous, high latency, low security collection of databases. That's
Speaker 6: what banks are. And so just from an information three standpoint,
Speaker 6: there should be something that could be much better if
Speaker 6: it could be real time uh secure and you know,
Speaker 6: just very fast. Essentially it's just one real time database.
Speaker 6: So it's like, okay, let's tradable that. So that's that's
Speaker 6: that's what x dot com was.
Speaker 7: And then.
Speaker 6: At the time I also thought what we should try
Speaker 6: to do is just do all the financial things as well,
Speaker 6: not just payments. I still think that's really what PayPal
Speaker 6: should have done, but whatever, it's what areuner the bridge
Speaker 6: at this point. And then there was a company that
Speaker 6: was formed around the same time called Confinity, which was petertialed,
Speaker 6: Max Left and Luke Nosak, David Sachs, Ken Howard and
Speaker 6: neberthos and at x dot com there's also like Jeremy.
Speaker 1: Stuffleman and.
Speaker 6: Who created yelp roll off Botza, who then went on
Speaker 6: to run Sequoia and and found YouTube that was it
Speaker 6: was x dot com.
Speaker 1: So we just had this like.
Speaker 6: Two companies with like a crazy amount of talent. X
Speaker 6: dot Common Confinity and Confinity started as a palm pilot
Speaker 6: cryptography company. Back when you you could communicate via the
Speaker 6: infrared port of a home pilot, Yeah, they had one.
Speaker 6: So it was like, so you could you can basically
Speaker 6: communicate cryptotokens between pompouts using the infrared port and then
Speaker 6: reconcile them on a piece on a PC. And obviously
Speaker 6: that's they evolved to go on the in the payments
Speaker 6: direction as well. And we were both in Palo Alto,
Speaker 6: like literally block away from each other. I think at
Speaker 6: one point we're briefly even in the same building that
Speaker 6: was you know, yeah, so, so we were just competing
Speaker 6: with each other like maniacs and and and then we
Speaker 6: had uh a coffee and University Avenue and said, hey,
Speaker 6: when don't we just combine our efforts or we're just
Speaker 6: gonna bludge each other to death here.
Speaker 1: So we merged Confinity and x dot com.
Speaker 6: And raised million dollars in the space of three weeks
Speaker 6: in March of two thousand. Yeah, and then April of
Speaker 6: the market went into free fall.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I was like, I remember that that was
Speaker 6: insane and we kind of thought it was going to
Speaker 6: go into free fall, but like, we better get this
Speaker 6: thing done fast or we're both gonna die.
Speaker 1: So and so.
Speaker 6: Xo com was technically the acquire of Confinity, but it
Speaker 6: was a you know, fifty point one and forty nine
Speaker 6: point nine or something like that. And and then there's
Speaker 6: a lot of drama that there was so much drama
Speaker 6: at at x dot com. And the company was called
Speaker 6: x dot com for about a year and then we
Speaker 6: changed the company name to the product name. The product
Speaker 6: the product was PayPal, but all the incorporation documents and everything,
Speaker 6: it's all my incorporation.
Speaker 4: Documents that came up with PayPal name.
Speaker 1: I actually don't know.
Speaker 4: People call you guys the PayPal in mafia. Now, you know,
Speaker 4: deal with that in this book.
Speaker 6: You know, I don't know who did the PayPal. I
Speaker 6: was never a huge fan of PayPal as a name,
Speaker 6: the reason being that I thought it made sense for
Speaker 6: the company to kind of broader, be much broader. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: I mean, if you don't know yourself to payments, then
Speaker 6: necessarily people want to transfer money out of the system.
Speaker 6: And as soon as they transfer money out of the system,
Speaker 6: the efficiency of the database drops dramatically because now you're
Speaker 6: in the traditional banking world. So if you just offer
Speaker 6: all the things that if you just basically address all
Speaker 6: the reasons why people are taking money out of the
Speaker 6: PayPal system, so you have to provide them with checks
Speaker 6: so that you have a bridge to the legacy transaction system.
Speaker 6: You got to provide them with a debit card, provide
Speaker 6: them with the ability to.
Speaker 1: Get a loan, and that kind of thing, and.
Speaker 6: That these were all ancelary to accelerating the velocity and
Speaker 6: accuracy and security of payments. Then if basically payper would
Speaker 6: be all the money is, it would just suck all
Speaker 6: the money out of the banks. And they wouldn't be
Speaker 6: the banks would go away. Yeah, so any plan you're
Speaker 6: going to do with the I wrote, if they're just
Speaker 6: execute the business, you know, the product plan I wrote
Speaker 6: in July two thousands, let's just do that.
Speaker 1: But they I talked to them several times, but they
Speaker 1: didn't do it.
Speaker 4: So why did you? And PayPal kind of part way
Speaker 4: of what was really the drama that led to that,
Speaker 4: you know separation.
Speaker 6: Ultimately, Well, things were very dicey in two thousand. You know,
Speaker 6: companies were dying like all over the place, so obvious
Speaker 6: here of the combined company, and we're doing quite well
Speaker 6: from a growth standpoint. We're like adding one hundred thousand
Speaker 6: users a month type of thing, which back then was
Speaker 6: a lot. But financially things were tough and we needed
Speaker 6: to raise financing around We're also like there's some technical
Speaker 6: questions around what what code architecture would we go with?
Speaker 6: And then there's also a branding question, like I said,
Speaker 6: like I think we should not use PayPal as brand
Speaker 6: because this is not consistent with being where all the
Speaker 6: money is.
Speaker 1: We want to centralize database.
Speaker 6: So so I was kind of against the PayPal branding
Speaker 6: and and I wanted to Basically, I wanted to do
Speaker 6: a bunch of things that seemed extremely risky, and I
Speaker 6: think those things would have would have worked out. But
Speaker 6: at a time when companies are dropping like flies, and
Speaker 6: I'm proposing that we do all these things that sound
Speaker 6: very risky, this is this is just much too scary
Speaker 6: for the rest of the team.
Speaker 4: You seem to be attracted to crazy ideas that other
Speaker 4: people are like that, like, you know, I think the
Speaker 4: Autopilot one is a great example where everyone's kind of
Speaker 4: trying the spatial approach to self driving. You know, they're
Speaker 4: doing way more for ten years nobody cares, and you
Speaker 4: come out and say, hey, we think vision is the
Speaker 4: way forward and deep learning and vision you know, will
Speaker 4: take us all the way there. How do you find like, yeah,
Speaker 4: the courage inside to I mean.
Speaker 10: People have to be coming up with you all the
Speaker 10: time and you know, thinking that you're an idiot or
Speaker 10: it's never going to happen, and you know, how do
Speaker 10: you find that in yourself to like go through all
Speaker 10: that resistance and still be confident in you know, your thesis.
Speaker 6: I mean I try to be hyper rational, so it's
Speaker 6: not you know, it's like if this is if the
Speaker 6: reasoning fits, and you're not violating loads of physics or something,
Speaker 6: then that the thing you should do. So and I
Speaker 6: guess at the other day, if we lost all the money,
Speaker 6: I wouldn't as long as we didn't lose other people's money.
Speaker 6: I guess I just lost lose my money out of mind.
Speaker 6: These things just don't seem that crazy to me, so
Speaker 6: like I think, if
Speaker 1: If Thanks for listening, See you in the next episode.