Milken Institute Global Conference

their accomplishments are a study in opposites out of this world down to earth High-Tech high touch but while Elon and Kimble musk's means May differ their end is the same to push Humanity forward to greener pastures and Beyond they were born and raised in South Africa but Elon came to America First earning undergraduate degrees in both business and physics before briefly attending Stanford in 1995 my brother was in Canada at the time and I said look I think we should try to create an internet company so he came down and joined me Elon was more the the business Mastermind I was more the sales guy their first Venture zip 2 sold to compact in 1999 Kimble was an early investor in elon's next company which would eventually become PayPal and sell to eBay in

2002 in the Years following Kimble pursued the culinary arts eventually Landing in Colorado I'm one of the founders of the kitchen which is a restaurant in Boulder Colorado it's a nationally recognized restaurant while Kimble was pioneering local Farm totable cuisine at what would become a family of four renowned restaurants brother Elon was charting a different course when I was in in University I thought about what what are the problems that are most likely to affect the future of the world in 2002 Elon founded SP space exploration Technologies SpaceX continues America's mission to resupply the international Space Station from us soil I'm talking about sending ultimately tens of thousands eventually millions of people to Mars and then going out there

and exploring the stars in 2003 he founded Tesla Motors to build all electric cars so we had a $100,000 sports car which was the Roadster then we've got the model S which starts at around $50,000 and our third generation car which will hopefully be at in about 3 or 4 years uh will be a $330,000 car the winner by unanimous decision to a Model S in 2006 he became chairman of Solar City the largest fullservice provider of solar power in the country meanwhile Kimble while also serving on the boards of SpaceX and Tesla found another cause obesity is the epidemic of our day so I created a nonprofit called the kitchen community and what we do is we help put Learning Gardens in schools around the country to fight childhood obesity and to improve test scores when

you teach kids in the garden you can increase scores by over 15 points on a 100 point scale restur literally means restorers let's energize and connect our community let's do it with kids let's do it with real food with their unique forms of disruptive innovation the musk brothers are creating the future while holding fast to the ideals of family teamwork and service that got Humanity this far in the first place pretty amazing you you you think their mom's proud so leading the conversation with Alon and Jeff Alon and Kimble is is Jeff skull as you as you all know Jeff is one of the planet's true Visionary leaders in a number of fields as a business innovator he was the first full-time employee of eBay and he led the company's emergence into a transformative

trading platform The democratized Economic Opportunity throughout the world in 1999 Jeff founded the skull Foundation which quickly became the world's largest foundation for social entrepreneurship and in 2004 he founded participant media with the belief that a well- told story has the power to inspire change Jeff has been the executive producer now in over 39 films which have garnered five Oscars and 35 nominations in 2009 Jeff founded the skull Global threats fund with a focus on the five issues that if unchecked could endanger the future of our planet his many awards in include Time magazine's 100 most influential people business week's 50 most generous philanthropists and the John W Gardner leadership award we're honored and delighted truly delighted

to welcome Jeff skull and his conversation with Lon and Kimble Musk thanks very much thank you very much Paul for the uh the very generous introduction um my name is Jeff skull and I'm delighted to be here with my good friends Elon and Kimo musk uh in fact we're in for a I'm I'm not I'm usually the one that gets asked the question so this uh is is a chance for me to put the shoe on the other foot and it's also the first time Elon and Kimble have been on a panel together uh I first met Elon in 1995 when he was dating a classmate of mine um not long after that I I dated the same girl and and I realized then that Elon always likes to be first uh I've known Kimble for about a decade uh Kimble runs four restaurants in Colorado and he's invested heavily in

Learning Gardens which I hope he'll talk about uh at length tonight uh Elon is the CEO of both Tesla Motors and SpaceX and he's the chairman of Solar City but the first question for both of you what what do you admire about each other I do it first um so I I uh you know knows this but the um the advantage of being his younger brother is is I kind of used to get what he wanted and he wanted a lot of stuff and so uh the one time I remember we we we he wanted motorbikes I was too young I was he was seven I think and I was six or something like that which in this country it's not very common to get motorbikes but one of the one of the great things I admire about Elon is when he when he wants something he really wants it and he goes and gets it and it's amazing

to watch him do that as his as his brother and and he's done it throughout his life interesting um well I think um Kimble uh is just one of the the the the nicest people I I know in the world um i' I've never in all um all my life seen Kimble intentionally do a mean thing um so I admire that a great deal uh the the the two of you as I understand it I mean on entrepreneurs are interesting because they often get started at a young age uh doing entrepreneurial ventures of some kind and uh I understand that when you were still in South Africa you had a a venture of some kind yeah the uh the video arcade yeah the yeah we This brilliant idea to start a video arcade um because we really knew what games were popular yeah um and also we were video experts uh at

14 and 15 and the reason we had to stop was because we went to the city to get a a code variance and you need to be 18 to sign and we had never told our parents and uh we already had a lease we had games coming and now when the parents found out they put a stop to it which is a real bummer because it would have been very successful yeah well uh I'm glad that wasn't the uh the the fin barrier to success um but you you that that was the first time that you worked together uh as brothers and um eventually that led to a company called zip 2 uh I I I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking about zip 2 how did it come about uh what was the idea what was the what was the whole process like for you uh sure um well and Kimble do you want to do you want to start off

or should I well I mean I would start with the road trip the road trip yeah yeah okay so a year before this is 94 we took Elon was working at some video game company in uh there's a theme Here what D I actually working assuming two jobs one was at a video company a video game company that was ironically called rocket science um and and then working on Ultra Ultra capacitors during the day for electric cars and so uh we went on a road trip from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia and it was in '94 and we were both I'm younger than Elon but we were both finishing school at the same time because I'm much smarter than him um um Elon actually was doing a double major so that's why but anyway so uh we ended up doing that and um the uh uh we went we started with

a medical Network medical database remember that yeah well there bunch of iterations uh but um I think the the the the thought in 95 was that the internet was going to be something really that fundamentally changed Humanity it was like Humanity acquiring a nervous system you know previously uh people would communicate information almost by osmosis relative to how the internet works um you know if you wanted to have access to a lot of information like you go to like the Library of Congress but um unless you're a physic where the books were you you didn't have access to that information but with the internet um you could be anywhere in the world and if you connected to the internet you have access to all the world's information so it was really just like

the humanity was almost becoming like a super organism with um a nervous system so we wanted to be part of you know building some elements of that and it was a funny time because it made so much sense to us but we had literally had a guy throw us throw a Yellow Pages book at us he was a very senior executive and um tell us do you ever really think the internet is going to replace this yeah and literally and you're kind of looking at them going this guy's screwed yeah yeah he didn't and people didn't know what the internet was yeah including in Silicon Valley yeah yeah there was like something that universities and like the government used and nobody was really doing anything on it and you certainly couldn't make money yeah yeah so did did you know that

you were on to something right away or did people just think you were crazy and pursuing some bizarre dream uh when when did it occur to you that zip 2 might be a success well I mean when we first started out I think our Ambitions were really quite quite low um it was really to make enough money to pay the rent yeah we we we got a v give us money that was yay we thought it was all over then yeah it was pretty crazy I mean when we started out at 95 we literally at the beginning we had one computer which um would be the web server during the day and and then at night I'd program on it um and and we'd sleep in the office we couldn't afford to to yeah an apartment it was cheaper to rent the office than to rent an apartment so we just rented the office and

stepped in the office and showered YCA and for me the worst part was eating a Jack In The Box three times yeah man this this like it's really diff difficult get food at paloalto after like 10: p.

m.

um it's like Jack In The Box and a few other options so we rotated through the Jack in the Box menu I remember the one time I was literally at Jack In The Box hopefully you guys aren whoever's from the companies not here and it was it was one of those like 3: in the morning things and it was I took a milkshake and I was so tired and there was something in the milkshake and I Lear like this yeah that's your standard just dropped to to nothing yeah so so uh yeah in through through the end of 95 where're that's essentially we're just sleeping in the office and Ching at the YMCA and then um and around the end of 95 is when net skate went public and and then whether or not somebody knew what the internet was they knew that you could make money on the internet

somehow um or even if it's only on the greater fool Theory so uh when we went and talked to VCH capitalist in uh early 96 there was a much greater um interest in what we were doing um in fact the round closed in like maybe a week or something it crazy yeah we went from sleeping in the office to people throwing I mean at again this is a financial crowd so you guys see these numbers every day but for us to hear we'll give you $3 million yeah sound extremely we thought they were crazy like why would they do that it was literally like these people are insane they obviously do not realize we're sleeping in the office in fact when they when they did fund us they they realized that we were illegal immigrants well I mean yes we were i' say it was a great area

yeah yes we were I was we were illegal immigrants we were sleeping in the office we didn't have a car we had one car where the wheel kept falling off well actually yeah the the the wheel did actually fall off the car yes exactly um and and the Venture capitals actually bought us cars yeah well they they gave us 40 Grand it was 40 Grand to go buy cars which was at the time was more money than we ever seen yeah and and I bought a uh I spent 35k on a series 167 um Jager e type um which didn't drive but but he got what he wanted yeah it looked really great by the side of the road um he he he got it he was driving it home from the dealer and it and it broke down and he had to actually come to the house with on a flatbed truck right it didn't and it didn't

improve from there I mean it was really BR should have kept the truck yeah it it it reminds me in some ways of uh you know eBay went public 1998 and we had kind of the scrappy startup mentality as well and uh the first time I ever saw Elon on on TV was uh when you took delivery of um McLaren Supercar that's right um so yeah um right so so so presumably somewhere between sleeping on the floor of the office and the McLaren uh something happened yeah um yeah so at sub2 we basically created uh software to help bring the media companies online so we um it was sort of Internet publishing software it was the Yellow Pages White Pages uh maps and directions that kind of thing and um and we helped bring some of the major media companies online or at least a portion

of what their online presence was and so we had as customers and investors uh New York Times company night rder host and most of the major media companies um and then in fact the guy that threw the telephone book at us eventually became an investor yeah right and then the company sold uh to compact uh for a little over 300 million yeah uh Circa 1999 late late '90s yeah that's right it was uh yeah think the deal was sort of struck late 98s and then it concluded early 999 and so so then what happens to you guys I mean at that point you're 23 24 years old give or take and you you've gone from uh being barely able to pay the rent to having uh substantial resources how how did that influence your paths in what you did next the way I I like to think about it

is I was like a dog in a cage getting beaten for four years and then they let me out and hear all the T-Bones you can eat uh so it was a very weird experience actually because you don't think I I thought I was building that company for life and then boom they you know they give you lots and lots of money and easy to carry bags and you leave it was totally surreal and and what did you do so I went to New York so I I I was done with Silicon Valley I think technology is is my brother's thing he loves it and I I enjoy it too but but honestly for me food is what I've always been passionate since I was a kid I was a cook in a family and it's ironic he's much thinner than I am you know it's true I can eat anything although I'm finding out as you get older it

doesn't work out that way yeah uh but no so I went to New York uh and I learned to cook I went to the uh you know I was young and I I figured you know what what else do you do when you have enough financial resources to do whatever you want uh and I always wanted to learn to cook so I enrolled in at a cooking school is one of the top schools in the country in New York City and had this incredible experience of uh cooking with some of the best most talented chefs in the world and um it was a unique circumstance for me personally because I was there in New York during 911 and and I graduated from cooking school just before 911 and I lived right by the World Trade Center so I saw the everything happened it was a very big event in my life uh but what the

rare opportunity it gave me uh was the opportunity to cook for the firefighters so I spent six weeks at Ground Zero cooking for the firefighters and that's when I kind of my I always loved food but my passion for community and connecting uh people to to each other through food was just an I mean I literally couldn't even describe how incredible this experience was and so I came out of that with a very strong intention to to start a restaurant and uh having been part of a company that just sold for 300 million and investing in PayPal which at the time is worth billions of dollars doing a was a weird decision but for me it was the right decision so for you it unlocked uh a path to dreams that maybe you had beforehand or just opportunistically you just said

this is what I want to do and and you you still uh not only run the the restaurant you began but there's more to it uh yeah well uh you mean the nonprofit or do you mean no I mean just in terms of there are more than one restaurant oh yeah sure so you know uh I I um turns out I'm actually pretty good at cooking I didn't I didn't really know I was good at cooking but but when I opened the restaurant with I had two partners uh Hugo and Jen opened the restaurant we were supposed to do 60 people a night and it was just going to be the SL project for me because I was still involved in elon's companies Tesla and SpaceX and uh you know today we serve 10,000 people a week you know and it's just just continues to grow um uh Elon for you uh ZIP 2 happened you sold

it and it and bought the McLaren yeah um and if I'm not mistaken you you invested most of that money into your next uh your next venture uh x.

com that's right um so uh yeah most the most of the funds went into x.

com which was later renamed PayPal um and uh uh yeah and that worked out pretty well it worked out pretty well but looking looking back on it um would because you put a lot of your eggs in in that basket would you would you advise entrepreneurs to roll the bones quite the way you do yeah absolutely I think so um I think I think I think it's worth investing your own capital in what you do I I don't believe in the sort of other people's money thing um you know I think if you're not willing to to put your own um assets at stake then you shouldn't ask other people to do to do that um so eBay comes along buys PayPal um and then I I I remember 2003 give or take uh meeting Elon at a at a coffee shop in paloalto this was not long after the PayPal uh deal had

closed and I said to Elon what would you like to do next and and you had three things to say right do you remember what they were well um yeah but yeah uh I mean there basically you know space solar and electric cars space solar and electric cars yes two point yeah um wait space electric cars what was the middle one uh well so uh I asked you on what he wanted to do and he um he he said he wanted to do something in solar power he wanted to uh colonize Mars eventually uh but to but to get there by uh building a rocket business a sustainable business and and building electric cars and uh let's talk a little bit about uh about Mars uh so where did where did this come from when when did you have that dream how did that come to be um well um I guess you know

when I was in college that I thought about things that would most affect the future of humanity and and there were three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and those were the internet sustainable energy of which uh solar power is the production side and um electric cars is the consumption side and then um Humanity becoming a multiplet species I think our future will fundamentally bate to one where we are space breing civilization or one where we are confined to Earth until some eventual Extinction event although I'm quite optimistic about life on Earth I should point out I want to people think that that by that uh I expect some imminent uh catastrophe but um I I think that the probable probable outcome for civilization on Earth is is quite

quite good for a long time um but I still think that we should uh try to extend life beyond Earth and have a and the thing to do is to establish a base on Mars and ultim and try to make that a self- sustaining base as soon as possible um so uh I don't expect that SpaceX is going to do that sort of single-handedly but I think we're we're going to try to advance the technology of space travel to the point where um we can at least send some number of people to Mars which is not currently possible um as recall uh when followup question Jeff uh when when SpaceX started I think the first three rocket launches weren't successful and and the and the fourth one was um what would have happened if the fourth one hadn't worked we would have failed yeah but but let's

talk about the one of the the failures were spectacular so I mean I so I would go out to the island quajon with El and seeing giant exploding Rockets is quite an amazing site uh and I was one of the early investors in SpaceX and I said you know what if all I get to do is to see these rockets explode well worth every dime I put into this there there's something to be said about brotherly support but it was an amazing thing to watch uh what Elon would had built with those rockets in I mean on a Sho string in the middle of nowhere and literally the middle of the Pacific 2,000 miles from Hawaii uh and uh that exper we'd fly in these these what are they called the what are those helicopters Hues you're flying the Hues you feel like you're right out of out

of Apocalypse Now flying to Dr Evil's Island uh really amazing I mean and again with every penny still to this day I'd say so uh I I think the failures were actually unbelievably exciting to be part of yeah yeah thank you Eli you're welcome um I mean the the the the point the point being that um these Ventures now seem to have a wonderful momentum and things are going well but I I remember well there was a point in time when when each of them uh had their their Tipping Point and could have gone either way I wonder I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the origins of Tesla sure um so with the um I as mentioned I was quite interested in electric cars from when I was doing my undergrad physics and um in fact I originally came out to California to

do PhD at Stanford and applied physics and Material Science to work on Ultra capacitors and electric cars um so it was a a longstanding interest of mine and um and the internet kind of put that on hold for a few few years but then once after PayPal icid I want to get back into um electric vehicles and um make something happen in that Arena particularly since um GM had come out with the ev1 and and I thought okay well there's not really a need for a startup company to develop electric cars because obviously GM is going to create the ev2 and the EV3 that's logical sequence and um it we get increasingly you get better and better with each iteration um and so not really need for for for a new company in that Arena um but but actually what happened was that

after California changed the regulations to no longer acquire electric cars uh GM recalled all the ev1s and then just to make sure that nobody could get them back they crushed them in a in a in a lot somewhere um and and in fact um while they were being crushed the the people who had been the ev1 owners who did not want those CS recalled actually held a candle at vigil as though somebody was getting executed basically um and it's like that just seemed extremely crazy that GM would ignore this because um you know it's quite rare for people to hold a candle at digital about a product um and particularly a GM product so so if if if people are doing that you should really pay attention um but but they they they wanted to just sort of erase all that and uh

so I thought okay well we got to try to create an electric car company but it wasn't as though in creating these companies that we thought that we would be successful um I thought that the most likely outcome was failure um but but it was still worth doing even though the the odds of success were low in fact even for for for SpaceX the originally what I started doing was not creating a rocket company but but actually was going to do um a small mission to M which was just a philanthropic mission where you we would send a small Greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated gel and the would um upon Landing hydrate the gel and you'd have this cool picture of green plants on a red background and the public tends to respond to precedents and superlative so this would

be the first life on Mars furthest the life have traveled um and you'd have this great money shot of green plants on a red background so um yeah I thought that would that would get people's attention so so um but but the expectation for that was was no return so I I thought we wouldn't get any uh you know just spend the money on that and it wouldn't wouldn't happen and um it was in the process of trying to do that mission that I concluded that um I'd made a mistake with respect to uh my assumptions about why uh why why why are there no people on Mars um CU I I started off thinking that it was because was a lack of will um and that if you could reignite the will then then it would happen so my initial thing with with even with the space side was was really

to get the public excited and to to get people to um uh essentially vote NASA to have a bigger budget that was my goal initially um and um but as I try to do try to do that mission was able to compress the costs of the uh the satellite or the spacecraft and and the um the greenhouse and everything and the communication costs but I wasn't able to compress the the rocket the rocket costs and I actually tried uh had some Adventures along the way trying to trying to get a good deal on Rockets I actually flew to Russia three times to try to buy some icbms and I negotiated a deal too actually um but um after the third trip to to Russia uh uh which is it was very very strange I was like there in 2001 2002 um and uh I I thought well if if we do this well it's

it's going to generate a lot of interest but um if the if there's still a fundamental technology issue with rocket transport then it's not going to solve the problem so I decided that um it was it was not a question of well it was a question of of way and if if people thought there was a way to do it without it fundamentally affecting their standard of living then they would support such an Endeavor particularly in the United States which United States is a um is a nation of explorers I mean it's a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration people came here from other places and uh and so that I think that that that exploratory spirit is is actually very strong um but people need to know that that it's possible this this can be done without materially

affecting their standard of living so uh I mean what what you've accomplished uh is is amazing um between linking up with the with the space station on launches and uh the model S winning carve the year and and and being just a phenomenon um but good yes so um I mean it's it's amazing it's amazing and and we'll come back and talk about Solar City in a second but you you mentioned uh Gardens and I think that's a a natural segue we're surrounded by some uh beautiful gardens here on on stage and kimle I wonder if you might want to talk a little bit about about these sure um so uh the restaurants that we do in Colorado are uh before Farm to Table was a turn we we' work with local farmers and bring local food to the tables and we really considered ourselves

a community restaurant and one of the things we did as part of the community was to reach out to kids in the community and schools and get them connected to food through school Gardens and we you know we bring them into to the restaurant and we you know do everything from give them chicken liver pate without telling them what it was and they would you know thoroughly enjoy it and and then you tell them then they spit it out of their mouth and you know like fun things like that that we would we just did as a as a as a great way to connect into the community and then um I I had a personal accident um a very severe accident I was paralyzed my left and horizontal for two months after breaking my neck and uh just it really helped me focus on well let me go

back to having more of an impact on society and I know there's a lot of philanthropists in the crowd and I have a lot of respect for that but for me it was very much about how can I give back but in a way that really I understood and and could could really see the see the impact and I'd been working with these School Gardens for many years and so I came up with this idea called The Learning Garden which you you see beautifully presented thank you very much Nancy for for for doing this uh and what we do is it's a nonprofit uh we go to schools around the country and we install these Outdoor Learning environments that are School Gardens and they're very different to Traditional School Gardens the Traditional School Gardens being in the corner of the schoolyard

with a fence around it these are designed to be in the schoolyard on the playground where the kids will see it every day they hundreds of kids will enjoy it and and and play with every day and it's made out of the same material as playground equipment so it will last for decades unlike Traditional School Gardens which are very temporary uh we also came up with this idea to make it more modular so that you could fit it in any schoolyard uh rooftops asphalt there's a lot of toxic soil sadly in our cities where you literally couldn't put a garden there if you wanted to and these are all were designed to be FDA approved just for food for growing food and so what I did was um really look at the problem based on the experience that I had uh working with Elon

and working in whether it's manufacturing or operations or uh uh uh politics frankly which is is a very big political problem and you know what what could I add and uh there are lots of great gardeners out there and I'll be first tell you I'm not a gardener uh but I but I really believed in the impact that these were having and and the data is amazing I mean we we see a doubling of vegetable intake when kids have a learning Garden on their schoolyard literally a doubling from Two and a half to five portions a day uh we see test Tes scores particularly in science go up by 15 points on 100 point scale when they get taught the same science lesson in The Learning Garden versus in the in the classroom this incredible impact on their lives and the challenge

was not a question of school Gardens that had already been proven the challenge was how do you scale how do you get something that will reach a 100,000 schools within a few years because that's the problem we have childhood obesity is today's problem it is not tomorrow's problem 20% of underserved kids go are going into kindergarten obese uh it's an awful tragedy we have these poor children that are not only obese but they're actually starving because the food we're giving them has no nutrients it has calories but no nutrients and it's just this awful awful situation a real tragedy that we've that we're creating and so for me what I wanted to do was how do I come in and say okay I know what I know uh I know what I think I can do well let me see what I

can create that could actually go into a 100,000 schools within a few years and so so I created The Learning Garden with this idea to by the end of this decade to to reach every child that want one or every school that wants one um and we have that we have the capacity now what we need is the political will to to go do it and so we'll have about 200 installed this year and we started two years ago and uh we did One two years ago we did 50 last year we'll do about 20000 this year hopefully a thousand next year and then many thousands after that uh Kim Kimble if people are interested in finding more out about the learning Gardens um where would they go uh the kitchen community.

org please go if you're a superintendent and I know there's some superintendents in this room because I had a some heated conversations with you guys earlier uh please go learn about it because there's no better way to teach kids about science which we all understand is a massive problem in this country getting our kids to love science is so important and childhood obesity is so important we need to fix this problem we are creating expensive unproductive people let's just stop that let's fix the problem let's fix it now AB absolutely um I I I think we'll we'll talk a little bit about uh Solar City uh and then maybe open up uh to questions uh from the audience um Solar City uh I mean your your family is a remarkable um maybe you want to talk a little bit

about how Solar City got going and your your role as and and uh sure that so well uh So Sol city was founded by two cousin of ours lynon and Peter RI who were really great guys um and before Sol City they did a company called everdream which did large scale management of computers and and other assets electronic assets which was sold to Dell um and that that did pretty well so uh and the Genesis of of Sol city was actually um you know we were bu winning man with our cousins and and and uh they they were thinking about what to do next and I said well I think there's um a real need for um for great entrepreneurs in the Solar industry and um and I said if if if they were willing to start a solar power company then uh I would completely back them on that

so they they took me up on the offer and uh created Solar City which um what Solar City is essentially is a giant giant distributed utility uh or it's I'd say right now it's a small distributed utility but it will be hopefully a giant distributed utility um and uh and it's obviously one that's based on on the Sun that giant Fusion reactor in the sky um so it's it's something that'll last for for a very long time um I ultimately think that uh we will generate uh more energy from solar power than from any other source in fact it's worth noting that the the planet is already almost entirely solar powered um in that we would be a frozen ice ball at 3 Kelvin if not for the sun and the sun Powers our whole system of precipitation and the the ecosystem so um

so really we're just talking about a little bit of extra power that um Humanity uses for to to run civilization essentially but it's really quite a small amount um relative to the amount that actually hits the Earth right and and Solar City went public uh a few months back yeah went public in in December it was quite a difficult IPO um and uh were able to get it through um and now it's doing doing reasonbly well well they are amazing successes uh on on both your parts um we're going to go to questions from the audience assuming uh these monitors work um as as of the moment they're not and if not then uh I will oh I I I see a monitor coming on here um all right what what are the key traits skills or circumstances that have allowed you to be so successful

uh I don't know why don't you answer for me or do you what do you I'll that's a great idea so the uh I live in a small town in Colorado called Boulder and uh my my joke is I grew up in South Africa during the collapse of AP parite very very difficult time then I went to California during the rise of the internet exciting but difficult time then I was in New York City during 911 difficult time now I'm in this little small town of Boulder waiting for some serious to go down uh so I think those had very big impact on me and I think the the impact personally is constant uh uh paranoia I guess maybe better I hate to say that not in a negative way but it's uh you're just kind of you know you're waiting for something really intense to happen all the time so

I think that just keeps you on your toes and and keeps you moving forward um yeah I think uh just a ob being being tenacious and um uh being well I I think just being super focused on on the truth is extremely important and looking for uh feedback from all sources um I think those those are really key yeah yeah uh I I'd also add know knowing both of you is that you're very detail oriented uh there there's no small part uh of the experience that doesn't get attention from you um so uh uh another question that I had you know uh Elon you've you've been compared to Henry Ford Richard Branson um you know Steve Jobs uh who do you compare yourself to um I I don't really compare myself to anyone um I mean it's not um I mean there's certain people that I admire

from history that I think are you know I think are great um so of certainly many of the scientists and engineers and literary figures and so forth um and uh like I'm I'm a big big fan of Ben Franklin you know who was a scientist and sort of thinker and I mean he was kind of guy who who did did did what needed to be done you know so guys like that I right I wouldn't say I compare myself in any way but I certainly admire them are are there people you you look up to I I think the the two that I look up to in my way I look the same thing as you know kind of look back uh I love Winston Churchill yeah he's cool he's the that guy I think is was one of the greatest gifts to Mankind and I think Steve Jobs right yeah and I think the thing that that makes me like

to these people is that they put their passion into their work and it's not about the job it's not about coming to work it's about creating making a difference in in your society and I think that that's what what I have always admired with my brother and with anyone else you know one one thing I've observed from my own entrepreneurial history is that uh people that start out building a company to make a lot of money uh almost invariably fail it's it's people that start out uh with with a a dream or something that they're passionate about and they care about and the money just kind of comes as as I think if you think about it you can get money both ways but if uh we have a mutual friend of ours Bill Lee who has this phrase that doing starting a business

from scratch is like chewing gloss and looking into the abyss it is really really hard and if you don't like like your glass sandwich you're going to have a miserable miserable life and so it's a very important lesson do what you're passionate about because no matter what you do if it's making a difference it's super hard to do it and so you better enjoy you better be passionate about it Le let's see if we have any other questions uh from from the audience yeah uh next next question please for Kimble uh what role and impact do you see impact investing and social Ventures having and solving the world's major problems um so I actually get this question asked to me a lot I was literally had this conversation with a major social investor a week ago u i really

struggle with it to be honest um I think the idea of uh obviously investing as a philanthropist I love I think that's really great but if you're looking for a financial return it is super hard to not have that as your key driver uh I get the idea of double bottom line or triple bottom line and I I live that life all day long but it's a personal decision of mine and um I I really do struggle with the right answer because the more money you make the more difference you can make in philanthropy and you can separate the two and you can be quite impactful as a philanthropist if you're a financier on Wall Street you can choose to I me I'm sure once you reach a certain point everything you do will be for philanthropy after that and that makes a big difference

in the world if you chose to invest in Social Ventures and get a smaller return I think you you struggle you actually success is very important and so I really believe in isolating uh the the problem focus on success getting it done and in the case of investing that means focusing on investing and getting the highest possible return within reason you know human rights and all that stuff but but um social investing I think is a very difficult space to to uh make work and actually maybe Jeff you should answer that question because you you do that all the time uh yeah um except I'm sitting in this chair um well I I I I agree with you I I think you know so social investing has all the rigor and challenges of uh for-profit investing but added into that is

the qualitative sometimes unmeasurable uh aspects of dealing with some sort of social change or or social good uh so one of the things I actually I mean on the nonprofit side I was specifically referring to for-profit social Adventures which but on the nonprofit side I get really frustrated because there is no measuring stick it's how are you doing you get to measure yourself that's you need to have you need to have some measuring some some common grounded measuring stick and in the in in the for-profit world you've got profit and in the nonprofit world it's very weird it's my first nonprofit so I'm I'm learning as I go I don't know what the answer is you Lear anything to add on that um well um I mean um but I think generally anything that that if it's

possible to solve a problem um with a with a profitable Venture then it's that's the best thing to do so it's only when like the there's some failure in the market um and and there are some but actually aren't that many but grand scheme things there are some failures in the market that have to be addressed with with a with a nonprofit um and uh but but generally I'd say are on the side of I mean I do have a small Foundation no no as not as I against giving stuff I do El's the biggest donor to the nonprofit yeah I mean yeah generally if there's a way to fix the market system that's the better way to do it um but sometimes there isn't or the complications in doing it how how is the Elon of 2013 different from the Elon of the zip 2 days uh what have you

learned uh well we learned I think well quite quite a lot a lot of scar tissue between now between then and now um I think you I've mentioned this at uh at when I was gave my talk at sou by Southwest but um I think the uh I I I've made several hiring decisions in the past which where I I valued um intellect over heart and I I think that was a mistake um and so I've try to try to adjust accordingly um you know it actually matters whether somebody's a good person Beyond just you know goodness itself it right yeah uh Kimble same question the Kimble of 2013 uh how are you different from the zip two days yeah as I say as said that is a long time time ago um the um uh I I would I would say I'm uh much more comfortable with myself I'm much more able to say no

you know so if there's an opportunity in front of me that is very financially attractive or whatever and it's not what I want to do I just I know to say no you know in the past I I I would always say yes and I would get involved in things that that weren't what I was passionate about so I think that's probably the most valuable thing I've learned I think I I've have a lot to learn so that's uh I think we have time for for one last question uh if we got anything please wrap up um in that case um my last question is are are uh are are you uh are you guys going to go to Mars together we might uh I think we I mean when we're 95 what the hell else are we going to do yeah exactly I think that'll be fun um I don't think I would want to go before that but well

Elon has has a famous line uh about going to Mars right would you mind repeating it uh okay I mean so yeah I mean I think um I would like to die on Mars but just not on impact all right I I I think on on that note I'd like to thank Elon and Kimble for a wonderful panel thank thank you to the mil pretty extraordinary let's have one more time for Elana and Kimble and Jeff thank you all right before before you all all leave we have a great late night show for you in the Beverly Hills Ballroom Lionel Richie David Foster and Paul Anka I'm reliving my childhood uh and and a series of special guests so it's gonna be a lot of fun Beverly Hills ball room right down the hall thank you so much