Stanford eCorner

[Music] good morning Stanford I'll tell you seeing so many students up this early in the morning is really a great experience for the president of the university and I'm so delighted you're able to join us here and I can tell you're going to be in for a fascinating discussion this morning if you think about our University and what makes it unique it is that bold entrepreneurial spirit that pioneering spirit that Jane and Leland brought to us when they marched across the country to come to the West Coast and help found this University today we remain committed to pursuing opportunities that will change the world to using our knowledge in important ways to work on the grand challenges we face but that entrepreneurial spirit is about more than just launching

the next startup it's also about training and educating people who will go out and make our world better and those Innovations come in all war Walks from the medical care we do and new ways of dealing with health problems to Energy Efficiency to robotics to Art to everything we do but every Innovation begins with an idea and every idea began with somebody who imagined it and that's what today is about the Stanford technology Venture program's future Fest is an opportunity to examine and celebrate the impact of breakthroughs and pioneering Technologies on our world and I'm delighted you could all join us this morning this is organized by stvp in collaboration with Stanford Arts the future Fest will be the place where discussions about futuristic Technologies

occur and today we'll hear from two far thinkinking individuals Alon musk and Steve jersson Steve is a Stanford Alum and a partner at Draper Fisher jinson he was recently hail in the New York Times as a space investor and Rocket maker his firm has invested both in SpaceX and a satellite company Planet Labs Steve is a Stanford alumnist three times over and he also has the important characteristic that he was once my adviser despite that disadvantage he completed his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in two and a half years was the Henry Ford scholar went on to earn his Ms and despite my attempts to convince him to pursue a PhD went off and got his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an RJ Miller scholar he's recognized

widely for being forward-thinking the San Francisco Chronicle and examiner named him as one of the 10 people expected to have the greatest impact on the bay area in the early part of the 21st century now Alon musk I think is a name known to everybody who thinks about the future he is a Serial entrepreneur inventor engineer and investor he was born in South Africa attended Queens University in Canada before moving to the US where he earned his undergraduate degrees in economics and physics from the University of Pennsylvania he arrived at Stanford to pursue his PhD in physics but left after two days I said what was wrong along was the food the water the weather no he left to launch his first startup zip 2 a successful internet-based City gu and then he

went on to launch PayPal he founded his third company SpaceX in 2002 and six years later NASA awarded him a contract for cargo transport to the International Space Station he was an early investor in Tesla Moda and now leads the company as its CEO and product architect but Alon dreams big as he told CNN a few years ago we should not be afraid of doing something just because some amount of tragedy is likely to occur if our forefathers had taken that approach the United States wouldn't exist Amen to that I think when you see the kind of work that Alan's doing and I still remember my first trip down to Los Angeles to visit SpaceX and to see the first Tesla prototype before came out I realized he was going to change the world this will be a wonderful exchange

after stepen Alan's discussion Matt Harvey executive director of stvp will close the program but now please join me in giving a warm Stanford welcome to Alon musk and Steve jersson [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you president Hennessy and uh this is a daunting venue I feel like we should sing or something dance perhaps wow okay so uh future Fest uh today is all about the future and uh I can't imagine a better person to speak with about that than Elon Musk he is forging the future as you all know across multiple Industries repeatedly in the most spectacular way in a way that others have failed before him and uh perhaps unprecedented in history so I'm a big Fanboy future Fest originally I think bounced around and why this month because this

is a special month for future Fest is that uh for those of you old enough and it looks like maybe five or six of you in the audience to have been around when Back to the Future the movie came out they had this vision of the future in the second edition of that Series where they fast forwarded in a Time Warp to the Future and it was October 2015 and uh they had flying cars and hoverboards and Biometrics and video calls and what looked like Google Glass a lot of the times and a lot of other stuff that was completely cockamamy but um some of those dreams were true some were not and as a framework for future Fest we can think to the past and our dreams that did or didn't come true I think that's what we'll start and then move to the Future we're sitting here

today what do we think the future may Bode so turn Elon maybe as a as as a starting point as you think back to your high school days 30 years ago when we were both there and dreaming of that future what about today is or isn't in accordance to what you thought back then I mean where where have your dreams the future the Bold Visions met or not met reality today I think the the most remarkable thing that we we do have today is the the internet um and access to all the world's information from anywhere so that that's having a superc computer in your pocket is I think something people wouldn't have predicted um you know in Back to the Future yeah um so that that's the that's the biggest thing um and uh and probably the the what they would be most surprised

at is that we haven't progressed more in space um so the people would have expected I think to have a space hotel in fact oy Clark 2001 should yeah exactly um thought 2010 was really crazy you know space advancement so it would like be going to Jupiter and that kind of thing so that that's probably like the most surprising thing like particularly if you go back even further if you say in ' 69 when um people first landed on the moon um if You' asked people if You' asked the the public what uh what would the situation be in 2015 I think they would imagine that we're we would have a base on the moon a base on Mars and be you know all over the solar system by now mhm that's probably V what happened I mean is there any pattern you can sense for where our dreams

and science fiction realities Drift from reality and where they are reality is there is there some reason you think like as you because because we have dreams today of where that you know that we're going to have these Mars colonies in the near future and uh yeah well unless something jumps to mind let me let me I have a bunch of questions by the way from the audience as well here I want to I want to move to something a little more current as we move forward in time 20 years ago when we first met you were starting your first internet company of two the one before PayPal U zip 2 and I know that in your youth you envisioned a variety of industries that needed to change um when you were pursuing your first one did you imagine you would get to the next one

and the next one no I mean when I was in college I just thought well what are the things that are most lik to affect the future of humanity just in you know at a macro level and um it just seemed like it would be like the internet and sustainable energy uh making like multiplanetary um and then genetics and Ai and I thought the first three if you worked on those there were like almost certainly going to be good and then the the last two a little more dodgy in terms of the net benefit yeah for the double-edged sword and you're not sure which Edge is the worse interesting so it would it seems like begging the question are genetics and AI the ones that are right for students today to be thinking about as they look I mean they are yeah um my my cousin I a

younger cousin who's just finishing up um uh sort of physics and computer science degree uh actually Berkeley um we we know and um and he's uh he says everyone there is in the computer science department is working on AI so I mean I think we're going to see some crazy breakthroughs in the next few years on that front yeah I want to come back to that later as we look more to your vision of the future as you as you think back though to your younger self but you know many of the people in the audience are themselves college students and either under atrad programs and are thinking about the world they're entering and I'm curious this may be an odd question but one that I find fascinating as you think here today back to your younger self is there any advice

you wish you could have given your younger self in with hindsight given what you know now well I mean I give like a lot of advice I yeah dating a whole bunch of things like that yeah I got got you but just in terms of how to how to think about a life trajectory perhaps or um how to pursue your passions I mean I I'm reasonably happy with how things turned out um so it's like touche not terrible um yeah that's a good point uh I I think if there's anything um I'll let you if something jumps to mind let me know but let me uh I mean apart from the obvious like just telling telling my younger self exactly how the future will unfold which is right but but that that you know wouldn't be that that that's not exactly advising more has been encapsulated into non

time warping wisdom yeah yeah exactly like wisdom um um I mean I mean there there there's a lot of things I mean it's sort of I mean certainly um yeah I mean uh you know listen listen more to critical feedback um know uh I mean like a lot of things I learned in college actually were pretty helpful I mean I think the physics approach to thinking is very good like the first principles approach um and you applied that broadly yeah appli applying the first principles approach to thinking um is I think a good way to figure out a counterintuitive um situations um and um you know so thought that was that was really a helpful thing to learn um that's good yeah I mean yeah right go ah no no feel free to jump in because I don't know how I'd answer that question

I mean other yeah what would you do what would you tell your in yourself it'll be all right you weren't as dorky as you think advice like that nothing really too actionable don't worry about it well just don't be so insecure about everything you're insecure about yeah we'll probably be advice to myself but uh but let's move on this more I'm not used to thinking about me um so you I I may be roughly overgeneralizing here but it seems to me that there's some often a trigger problem that generates in your mind a great solution for when you come up with new company so for example when trying to negotiate with the Russians for launch capacity the the AHA that we should just build a better rocket to solve this problem comes forth or when you uh deal with the

commute on the 405 or whatever in La it's like my God what is wrong with mass transit and and perhaps hyperloop and then you know with with uh with a variety of ideas there seems to be some trigger something that's broken in the world that and you have an idea of how to fix it and I guess what I'm curious about is not how you've picked the areas of interest and the solutions but how have you decided what not to per fix and other words there's many things that need fixing in the world and students here probably could think of a long list many of which you could probably imagine solutions to using the physics first principal approach but has there been any framework or idea you've used to filter out what you don't do what you don't pursue um yeah I mean

well if if sort follow the what I did initially was um you know well you go back to like college times I was working on um energy storage Technologies for electric vehicles um and that's what I was going to pursue at Stanford actually was work on um like Advanced capacitors and batteries to improve uh the energy density for electric vehicles um and then the internet was kind of happening it was clear like the internet was happening like back in like ' 9495 and uh and I wasn't sure if what I worked on in the PHD would actually be useful so I was like I was really concerned that if I timing or what was your intuition meaning I think like it could be academically useful but not practically useful um like I think it could result in a PhD and adding some Leaf

to the tree of knowledge um but then then discovering that well it's not really going to going to matter like that's you know is it is it going to be a a good enough thing to actually be used in an electric vehicle I wasn't sure I mean so there was like I was uncertain as to whether success was one of the possible outcomes like I thought maybe it was but I wasn't sure and and then I thought well if I watch the internet get built while I'm doing this um that that that would be really frustrating there's a sense of that eminent timing that like that was the time for the internet and maybe the other stuff could wait or be on the back back burner of your mind was it always there as like one day I'll get back to that or was it um yeah I thought probably I'd

get back to it and did end up doing that um but yeah I thought sort of the the the internet was was happening like really taking off um although most people weren't aware of it in '95 um and uh and so I figured like electric vehicle Technology Energy stor technology will there will be some sort of natural progression in that and I could come back to it later um but the internet you know was was really that was the moment to to really do something um Al although in '95 it wasn't obvious that you could actually make any money on the internet this was like no Nobody Until Netscape went public I think at the end of 95 um nobody even thought there was like uh you could make a valuable company on the internet wasn't as obvious as it seems now yeah like now

it seems really obvious but back then it was not at all um so it was really from the perspective of it wasn't like oh I want to make a bunch of money it was actually from it's like I want to just be part of fing this thing that I thought it was like like a nervous system it was like previously people had communicated effectively via osmosis and um you know you'd have to like basically physically you know connect with somebody to to really communicate um you like a letter like you send letters like on paper um and with the internet anyone who had a connection anywhere in the world would have access to all the world's information just like sort of a nervous system in a so like so Humanity was effectively becoming a superorganism um and and qualitatively

different than uh what it had been before and so I wanted to be part of that and uh um yeah so but but initially the goal was just to make enough money to pay the rent it wasn't um you know to do anything beyond that interesting and then as many know that much of that capital got ploted back into your next businesses right right EXA exactly so then they and and then the Internet it's also helpful because it's anything to do with software is a low Capital Endeavor so I didn't have any money um I just had a bunch of student debt and um so but but software you can just write like by yourself um and you don't need a lot of atoms like you don't need a lot of tooling and equipment and um so it's not Capital intensive um so the ability to start a company um

if it's software related and it's the first company is much much easier right right and it seems obvious now but of course the easier place to start and then as you gain more of a personal reputation and have more personal Capital as some Mar I know SpaceX was almost was entirely funded by Elon for its first period partially from you know and in an era when others probably wouldn't have funded it right and those are right and actually I mean the precursor to to SpaceX was not the the idea wasn't really to create a company it was um it was to to try to figure out why we hadn't um gone send people to Mars so um so so we went from sub2 to to PayPal and then um and then going from PayPal to sort of the next thing I was sort of thinking well um is there some

way to reignite the dream of Apollo um and I thought well it was maybe a question of like we'd lost the will to explore it um but actually think that that that my original premise was wrong we had not lost the will to explore but people did not think there was a way and if people don't think there's a way then they they just they won't bash their head against the wall continuously they'll you know they'll sort of give up so um but but but in the beginning I thought it was a question of will so so if we can send a small Greenhouse to the surface of Mars and you and you have seeds and uh nutrient gel and you hydrated upon landing and then you'd have this little green house on the surface of Mars and people tend to respond to precedents and superlatives

and this would be the first life on Mars as far as we knew for this that life's ever traveled you have this great shot of green plants on a red background and I thought well that maybe that would get people excited about sending people to Mars so the headlines were clear in your mind once you had success on what that would lead to to catalyze action and and actually the goal was was to get the public excited about that and get um NASA's budget increased so that that was actually the the original goal and um so I went to Russia to try to buy some icbms in 2001 um it's interesting experience a lot of vodka yeah a lot of vodka yeah it's crazy um and uh I couldn't afford the regular Rockets like the Boeing and lock heed Rockets are too expensive and uh still

are yeah still pretty expensive that's true I had to sorry wait may I jump in here for a sec because the anecdote you brought up of wanted to change government policy and Inspire the world to have a Mars program if you will whether it's popular Uprising or or space programs at the government level I think it's a fascinating anecdote because in a sense what you were saying is I as an individual want to start a entity business or otherwise that will catalyze change even beyond the company level or the industry level and I see a parallel in other initiatives you've taken on in that if you look at uh the goal of Tesla under your leadership it is to assure the transition to all vehicles being electric not just the cars that currently are produced by Tesla

and uh with power wall and Solar City arguably the the description is one of ushering in a a wholesale shift to renewable energy many of the solutions required wouldn't be provided by the companies you're starting and so as I as I deal in entrepreneurship as a venture capitalist every day we we see this incredible scope of ambition here that is breathtaking like change the world with Steve Jobs and others talk about in a company maybe shifting an industry but we're talking about shifting like the entire Zeitgeist of the world in a sense and maybe eventually other worlds so my question is do you do you start always in your mind with that as a like I where's the starting point is it okay I see this Arc of a story like like the Mars example or renewable

energy and then do you pull back to where's the best product to un get it unstuck like why isn't this happening and like if I solve that problem then it unlocks value like how does that happen in your mind um sure so um I mean I should say like the when when we started SpaceX and Tesla I I mean I really thought the probability of success was very low I mean it wasn't like I think oh we'll definitely be successful I thought I thought we' be like maybe 10% likely who uh yeah um and and they we came very close to both companies not succeeding in 2008 you know we had the we had three failures of the SpaceX rocket um so we were zero for three um we had the crazy Financial recession like the Great Recession um the Tesla financing round have fallen apart because

like pretty hard to raise money for the startup car company FGM and chry are going bankrupt um like people it's poly for the upside yeah it's that was tricky one um and um you know unfortunately at the end of 2008 the the fourth launch which was that was the last launch we had money for uh worked for SpaceX and um and then we we closed the Tesla financing round as you know uh Christmas Eve 2008 last hour of the last day that it was possible yeah and thanks to you for those who don't know it's the most extraordinary Act of entrepreneurial Zeal and commitment I've ever seen where El un personally saved Tesla in those hours like when no one else would write a check he spoke for it all and that flipped the mentality from Fear to Greed and everyone joined

the bandwagon and and everything changed from you know dividing into the ground to success but you were willing to go like net negative personally of of his entire net worth and it's it's un remarkable story um oh thanks for supporting by the way that was much much appreciated yeah we were happy to fall right behind in line but but it was all him um so I guess on this this aide though of the big picture I'm curious in the way I heard you just now described the greenhouse and the headlines is interesting do the marketing headlines flash through your mind as you introduce new products that are a step to a much grander Vision I'm curious because it seems like it has two purposes like getting employees customers everyone really gung-ho about the vision but

it also makes it larger than life in so many ways well I if you're trying to convince the public to do something you have to say okay how's this going to read um and what message are we going to try to convey um what will people respond to what would I respond to if I was you know sort of an objective member of the public and um so that's that that's really you know if you're trying to change people's minds or get people fired up about something um then you got to think okay what's that message what what's going to get them really excited um I think that's really good advice by the way for all the engineering students here yeah that's I was wi as well I'm I'm curious there's a as an adjunct sometimes to these Grand Visions like making it a multiplanetary

species or shifting us to renewable energy or making all vehicles electric that has a purpose-driven element to it there's a higher calling than the quarterly bottom line in fact there was a Tesla quarterly report I remember famously where the opening the literally opening line was uh while profits are not a priority comma you know never nevertheless exactly and it occurred I was struck by it at first and it did occur to me that it's not like a Mis some sort of misdirected fiduciary question to me it seems like how could you lead an industry transition if your business model was worse than what's already there I meaning like if you weren't more profitable in the long term and a better business why would anyone shift right so it almost seems like with

the right purpose profits follow yeah well if if if you make a if the you know if the output is more valuable than the inputs which is really that's that's that's profit like the output is more valuable than the input um that that that says you you have a use company um so but you know in a high growth scenario you have a lot more inputs for for future outputs so that you have negative cash flow and lack of profitability and which we currently have at Tesla um but in the in the long term of course that has to be that that has to be fixed that there can't be negative cash flow in the long term um and that there needs to be um a net positive output um which is sort of profits in in the long term um but in the short term when this high growth that that that

doesn't it isn't the most sensible thing and then there's also related things like open sourcing patents and acts that to me relate to the purpose let's let the whole Auto industry do this and so I'm curious what do you see from your Vantage Point as the benefits of a Purpose Driven company meaning when you have this thing that every employee and customer knows is the purpose of the company how do you see that flowing through the benefits for the company well I think I think having a propose certainly is going to attract the the very best talent in the world because um if if people can if there's something that's intrinsically enjoyable and the financial rewards are good but then also it's something that's going to genuinely change the world then that's

I think that's a pretty powerful motivator um and um but I don't think like everything needs to change the world you know I mean honestly like there's lots of like useful things that people do and I mean I think really it should be like a usefulness optimization like just say like is what I'm doing as useful as it could be you're talking about the the goal of an organization or goal in general yeah and um you know just even if something isn't changing the world if it's Mak making people's lives better I think that's that's great and uh you know if even if something's like making all people's lives only slightly better but it's a large number of people then kind of like the area under the curve sure is is quite good um is that mathematical first principles

Point utility and number yeah okay like I mean so like one could say like say like is like some app really making people's lives better it's but if it's affecting a lot of people uh even in a small way then yeah the sort of area is good interesting so let's shift gears a little bit since it is future Fest um looking to the Future right we we started 30 years in the past but the future keeps accelerating so let's maybe look 20 years in the future for an equivalent leap arguably five years in the future might be equivalent to the past 30 but let's say 20 so the year 2035 what does the future look like as far as you can tell what would you uh 20 20 years yeah 20 35 yeah 20 years um it's always really tricky to predict the future um um I mean some of it's

pretty obvious like computing power is going to be just crazy um the really the big change is the c cost of computing power um not so much the sort of circuit density sort of the M law thing but if you if you look at say what is the actual um you know dollars per you know per instruction um and and that that is Dr I mean that that that cost is is dropping exponentially I you think about it like like if you're making a computer just you're rearranging silicon and copper you know so if on on a little chip and once the capital cost of the development and the the chip plant is paid for uh the ACT I mean the marginal cost of a chip is very very tiny um so I think we'll see massively parallel computers um and and computing power and storage being you know as

really as much as you want MH um and it's interesting I too start with that like if I I don't know what else to predict but as a foundational thing this seems like the safest starting you know premise but then what does that Ripple through to in fields like genetics and AI which you mentioned autonomous driving space related topics I mean just ubiquitous Computing everywhere um I think I think AI is going to be incredibly sophisticated in 20 years um the when does the first W up it like it seems to be accelerating and the tricky thing about predicting things when there's an exponential is that an exponential looks like looks linear close up that's right um and and but it's actually it's not linear so uh and AI appears to be accelerating um from what I

can see um and do you for that do you look at autonomous driving and point AIS like the Siri like functionality as your guide post um well I had sort of debate about someone like is AI accelerating or not and the like he was saying well what's the Y AIS you know if if it's accelerating um you got T on the X AIS but what's what's the y axis is well thought about that I think you could have a recursive y- axis so that uh if if if at any point in time your your predictions for AI are coming sooner or later um that that actually would help find whether it's U accelerating or not whatever that access was so you might just look at the recursive access like so if if in any given year if you if you find your predictions are are um going further out or coming

further or coming closer in that that actually you know is one way to think of acceleration cuz like cuz otherwise what's the what's the qualitative or quantitive measure of of AI um saying like if a given technology is always 20 years in the future yeah if it's always 20 years in the future it's like more logarithmic um so does AI seem like it's one of the most fastly accelerating things that you're aware of yes um and I I can certainly see that with with autonomous driving where um you know 3 years ago I thought it was 10 years away and then two years ago I thought it was 5 years away now I think it's 3 years away or less than three years away wow so and when you say away like like like release to Market available for Consumer adoption because as opposed

to prototyping no I mean like like the technology works there's a sort of second question as to when Regulators would approve it yeah yeah yeah yeah um but but like i' like with that the technology works and in a technology works as a general solution so like autonomous driving like basically anywhere so it could be sooner for Point things Highway only or I mean Highway only we're already in public beta with this at Tesla so um we'll be hopefully in the next several weeks releasing to to all of the cars that have the autopilot Hardware which is all cars buil in like roughly the last 12 months wow wow and so it this seems like one of those things that once you've experienced it the inevit ility of it becomes more apparent kind of like first time I sat

in an electric vehicle it's just so clear and same with autonomous vehicles um do you think that will help persuade public opinion and like like that the regulatory question is an interesting one because as technology continues to accelerate human nature doesn't and acceptance of change I'm just not sure if there's like as we look out in the future should we assume that no matter how fast something like mors law accelerates there's always the counterbalancing force of human nature and habit that um yeah I mean yeah I think yeah there's always going to be the sort of um there's always going to be human nature um and it's difficult to predict I think what what what that will how that will affect things um but um I I'm not sure if I fully answer your question

so in terms of what what I think 20 please um so for for sure you was Computing um AI that's beyond anything uh like the public appreciat today um I think we'll have um most of the new vehicles being produced uh being electric um and we'll be probably have a super majority of energy being produced being uh sustainable so I think I think we're on headed solar primarily in your mind primarily solar yeah um and um so I think those I think those are sort of some good things like I think we'll be on hopefully on a good path for sustainable energy um sooner is always better but I think by 2035 I think we'll be substantially um like most of Transport most of new energy being produced will be sustainable um Broadband everywhere Broadband everywhere y um Mars

colony and hopefully hopefully a small base on Mars a small City on Mars in 20 years yeah I city did I hear well okay fine Town Village Hamlet I mean that's exciting I mean that could get people fired up about the future yeah I do I I agree exactly I I think that uh the idea of being multi Fant of species and getting out there and exploring the stars is one of those really inspiring exciting things I mean just as Apollo was incredibly inspiring um to everyone around the world and even those I mean only a very tiny number of people went there but I mean vicariously we all went there and and I think that's true of of if we have a Mars base as well um and it's very important that we have things that are exciting and inspiring in the future because otherwise

why get up in the morning you know if it's just about one sort of sad problem after another it's like life life's not worth living are there are there any other things that excites you a lot about the future beyond the multiplanetary species perhaps AI uh UL May Scare You as well as excite you um the autonomous vehicles are there any other planks that you think looking for 20 years like this is what I really get excited about well um I mean for sure for sure Mars and sustainable transport like those items I think are really sustainable energy those are I think really cool things um and uh I mean in terms of getting excited about I mean it's like uh I I think we'll probably start seeing like more like truly cyborg activity like human brain inter like like

brain computer interfaces okay um like there's alongside the AIS that are purely pathetic yeah I think so it's the only way we can relate I think you know and have a conversation and there were amazing things happen like happening these days like this um they've been able to figure out how to do an artificial hippocampus um in in rats and monkeys and um and now they're looking at uh doing that to solve severe epilepsy uh about half of severe epilepsy cases originate in the H um s hippocampus and uh and by having sort of an artificially augmented hi hippocampus they can actually solve um the severe epilepsy cases wow that's amazing so it's like I'm like wow and you can you can write read and write information back to the chip from your brain at the individual

neuron level like today pretty exciting yeah the whole field of biology and things inspired by biology and the information systems biology fascinate me personally as a as a computer science oriented person um before I go to the student questions um which I'm about to do there was one last story I wanted to share that we experienced together and ask your thoughts about it we were in Hawthorne Texas when the grasshopper vehicle oh yeah occur happened I mean yeah spectacular explosion right in front of us and right exact I like I brought the SpaceX board out to take a look at one of the vertical takeoff and Landing tests and of course that's the one that blows off we're all in a tent you know with a glass of water like whoa I mean you feel the repercussions

and then walking call that a rud it's a rapid unscheduled disassembly that's right a rud yes rapid unscheduled disassembly anyone rocketry like a hobbyist or or professionally knows what that one is every component part is just strewn strewn across and as we walked one of the other board members asked maybe in a cheering up kind of method was some quoting Bill Gates or somebody that said you know if you haven't failed and you're not learning that's a paraphrase of the quote and I remember your reply and I have it written as a quote cuz I want to put it on a placard given the options I prefer to learn from success which I think is a great comeback and so I guess I was curious in general what do you think of the silon valley Mantra fail fast fail often

or as Esther Dyson says always make new mistakes as as if failure is The Crucible of learning I'm curious if you had any further thoughts on that and that maybe off the cuff comment you made out there I mean there there are many that sort of I mean I think there sort of there's like some entropic basis for this like there are many more ways to fail than to succeed so you I me you have to explore I mean particular like for a rocket there's like a thousand ways that thing can fail and like one way it can work so uh you could you could have a lot of Rocket failures to explore all the ways in which it could fail um so but I do think that one great thing about silic Valley is that failure is not a not a big stigma so it's like if you if you try hard and it

doesn't work out account uh that's okay like you can um learn from that and you know do another company and it's not a big deal and I think that's that's really one of the great things about Silicon Valley interesting do you also I'm curious if either on the well it seems to me that on the system design side you can accommodate a a likely failure of subcomponents and and so much of the Elegance of let's say a falcon 9 or a falcon 9 heavy as as an ultimate incarnation of this vision of how the rocket should be built to say hey parts will fail thing but here's how the system can succeed and I'm curious if there's any other thoughts along that how to how to accommodate anticipated failure and then also maybe inter like managerially is there ways that you

motivate the team either in advance a failure to to coach them on hey this is going to happen or in the aftermath of failure to get them fired up to solve it and and move forward when it might be dark times and like for example when you Notions like Failure to Launch uh uh you know exploding on the pad you know there's all these it's a very visual it's public spectacle when you have a setback in the rocket industry and I'm curious how you manage round failure uh I mean I think it's it's like quite quite painful and difficult honestly um and it's it feels terrible um uh but uh yeah I mean the the company's sort of looking to you know me to you know rally them and so I do um but I honestly feel super bad like a punch in the gut yeah yeah um remember it's

almost like a time like the stages of grief I remember in Texas is kind like sort of denial and it sort of hits as at dinner it's like oh my God what just happened yeah I mean it's just I mean it it's particularly with rockets it's it's just a really like rockets Rockets space is hard and Rockets tend to fail unfortunately um and even when you've got like a lot of really smart people working super hard to minimize the probability of failure it's still still there and it's uh um and it's you know it's it's quite significant um and um you know people have asked me like well why why a Rockets you know especially hard um and and you know part of it is like everything has to work the the first time like there's there's no you can't do a recall you can't patch

it it's got It's like 9 minutes to orbit or it's over um and uh and then the you never you can't you can never test the rocket completely in the environment that it's actually going to experience you can't fully recreate something that's moving super fast in a vacuum um on the surface of Earth like you can only really recreate that on in space so that a limit of the simulation tools what me is that a limit of the simulation tools today or is that a absolutely the if if there's any error between the simulation and reality and there's always some amount of error um then then that that can result in a failure y um so it's a really really tricky one it's like um in a soft software analogy it would be like if you had to write a whole bunch of software modules

um and you could never run them together um and you couldn't run them on the target computer like like when you're testing them you'd have to test them individually and not in the actual computer that they're going to run on gotcha then you put them put all the modules together run it for the first time in a in a completely different or very different computer and it has to run with no bugs that is difficult the software analogies to Rocket design are deep the modular reuse I mean there's many of these for those who aren't familiar with it's not like this is an aerospace engineer by traditional training coming but but is in fact radically changing the industry I think applying a CS perspective to Industry after industry and like how would how would you

know a computer scientist or a physicist approach the problem which oftentimes is a solution very unlike the industry incumbents there's there's a certain Elegance to it um at least from the outside outside Observer like myself um let me switch if I may to some student questions which will be completely in a different direction um first one comes from NIU in uh an architectural design c-term so this will be switching more to the other side of our brain for a moment what do you look for in design and related if you'd like what do you look for in art design might be more immediately relevant but that's where he's coming from sure um I mean I I think there's um I mean you you want to make something beautiful I mean you want to to trigger what whatever fundamental

esthetic algorithms are like like in your brain there's you have I think some intrinsic uh elements that that represent beauty um and and that that trigger the the emotion of appreciation of Beauty in in your in your mind um and I think that these are these are actually relatively consistent among people I mean not not completely um some people like not Everyone likes the same thing but there are there's a lot of commonality um and and and and there yeah and there there but but I think it it is important to com to combine aesthetic design with functionality like the the thing that's like if you say like what was really hard about say the model S or the model X um was to combine Aesthetics and um utility so to to balance the two um you can make a car look

very good by giving it sort of um certain proportions like making it sort of low and slim and and and um uh but if you uh if you do that the the utility is is significantly affected um so the big challenge with the say the model S was trying to figure out how do we get five adults plus two kids cuz I want to have seven seater it seems like the dragon and every Tesla has room for seven seven five children I can see that might be important the N perimeter I definely don't think we should take the whole family on the spacecraft um but but uh but like the big challenge with the like with with the S was having a car that had high utility and look good um and the same with the X um so like like with the to make a sports car look good is relatively easy um but

to make a sedan look good or an SUV look good is is quite difficult um and um and I think another principle is you want to have it feel bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside um and that's also a really hard thing to do um and then really pay attention to the little details the that the nuances of of design and shape and form function and um the you know just the the way it looks in different lights and when something's off the little thing how do you experience that it it drives me bananas yeah um I mean it's and it the problem is like if you you can train yourself to to pay attention to the tiny details I think almost anyone can um although it it it this is a very much double-edged sword because then you you see all the little details um

and then little things drive you crazy um so but like most people don't they don't see they don't consciously see the small details but they they do subconsciously see them like you you you sort of your mind takes in a result of the overall you know the an overall impression and and you you know if something is appealing or not even though you may not be able to point out exactly why um and it's it's a summation of of these many small details so most of us experience it as a oh I think that's ugly or I think that's beautiful or like wow that's elegant but can't break it down you mentioned something in passing like you can train yourself in this though yeah you can train yourself I think you can make yourself pay attention to to why um you essentially

bring the subconscious awareness into conscious awareness I wish I could do that how do you do that just just pay really close attention almost like a meditation on the object and trying to find the details like why do I not like this is that what yeah just look look closely and carefully mhm um and you know for any given object it's that it's geometry it's uh um I heard someone whisper Steve Jobs and that thought occurred to me as well I worked briefly with him and I I could only experience it as a visceral agitation with imperfection and and like that's just wrong like that has to be fixed I I I have to turn it off otherwise it's I can't go through life it just yeah it's yeah it's the world around you or even in yeah yeah if you because there's there's

always something wrong somewhere all the time and so um it you really have to turn it off otherwise you know God you just get the like the list of the mental list of things that are wrong just drives you crazy I just wish there was way you could just like record it for everyone else to go fix cuz like this running tally right oh my god um so uh let me go to one other question I I found that one interesting I I had no idea where that was going to go so I really appreciate that question Nick thank you um let's see which one of these do there's some combination of questions let me mention both and you can pick which one you like more because they both relate to colonizing Mars one comes from Henning rodo a PhD candidate in civil and environmental engineering

which just asks Elon given your plan to bring a bring a million colonists to Mars what are the pressing future technologies that need to be developed in order to support a robust and thriving surface Colony so technology for I guess survival and then maybe related from the Stanford space initiative students how do you envision humans governing a separate Planet I'm not sure if you had to think about that yet thought a little bit about those things I mean the obiously like the first challenge is just getting there at all and like that's you know so SpaceX is working super hard on figuring out just how to get large numbers of people and cargo to Mars um and I think know we've got something that I think works at a sort of fundamental physics and economics

level so it's like a question of figuring out the detailed design um which we're working on we're only spending like half an hour a week on it because we like pressing near 10 priorities but I'm kind of excited about how it's coming together um so so getting just getting that transport thing solved I think will will then open up a tremendous number of opportunities for people on Mars you know just like you know having the Union Pacific Railroad to California um and the you know and look at what what you know resulted after whole ecosystem of other companies figured out like get there then you get then the opportunities for entrepreneurs are are tremendous um that ranges everything from you know everything you can imagine like starting the fir you know

like the first Italian restaurant or something on Mars you know it's like somebody's got to do it and it'll be kind of cool um you know like a iron iron Refinery you know like found you know the like the the entire base of Industry um and um and then there probably be things like that are just unique to Mars um but but we we got to we got to get that you know effectively that Union Pacific Railroad there in order to get get the entrepreneurs there that and and and then create a fertile environment for them to U create uh companies um so that that's that's MH so so once you're there it's it's going to be I think a lot of exciting things that can be done um and and in the beginning you know people would live in kind of glass domes uh but but over time it

would ter for Mars and make it like Earth um and uh so so I think there just be a lot of super exciting things that are hard to predict just like when they're building you in Pacific they it would hard nobody would have predicted Silicon Valley in Hollywood right you know that that's would have been like and urbanization in general yeah yeah well that California would be like the most popul state in the country like they like that sounds crazy for them gold was discovered right yeah um so and so the yeah that I think like it's it's really in common on SpaceX or you know maybe other organizations to figure out how to get there otherwise nothing else matters right U and then once you get there there's a lot of sort of yeah a a lot that can be done um from

a governance standpoint um I mean obviously ultimately the governance of Mars will be up to the Martians but the um cool that we have a name for him now you become a martian when you go there um but but I I think if you said like how would you do drop democracy 2.

0 you know or like some new new version I think we' probably have more of a direct democracy than a representative democracy um and you know when the when the United States was formed it was really it was impossible to have a direct democracy like like you even sending a letter took weeks um so there was no way that people could like vote directly on issues you had to have Representatives interesting so I think um I think probably there would be more direct democracy and is this thing about the latency of communication fromation latencies and just communication errors and communication latency uh when you have letters that that take weeks to get anywhere uh would would have made um governance almost impossible I think if if it hadn't been a representative

democracy you had a lot of people who couldn't even read or or right you know so H that's fascinating I was just wondering if if you were to start over with a clean sheet of paper on governance is there do you think a framework that could be envisioned that encompasses other sentin beings to come meaning the AIS and others who might clamor for their rights along um yeah it's difficult to predict but I can say think probably we would would aim for a more direct democracy um and then and I was talking to Larry Page about this and he had a like a good suggestion like we should limit the number of words in a law um because like we have these like thousand page laws that get passed and like nobody's read them Twitter equivalent of parsimony yeah like I don't

know thousand word letter count or something like that like if you can't if you can't write the law in a th words then probably it shouldn't be there um um and you know just we shouldn't have you know a single law passed that's like the size of Lord of the Rings that's right and and like literally not a single person in Congress has read the whole thing like a tax code it's unscrewable yes exactly so so there's that and then I think um laws also have an infinite lifespan unless they're given some sort of you know Sunset period so probably be good to Def laws to to have a a sunset period like and if it's not if it's not good enough to be renewed then it then it goes away um and uh and maybe some hysteresis um in that in making it easier to remove a law

than to put one in place um you can just imagine cuz like over time like the the body of LW just gets bigger and bigger and bigger so like you like how do you avoid that um and and you have inertia associated with lws and and so maybe you know would take 60% to create a LW but only 40% to remove a LW um how interesting how fascinating yeah something like that those are like the the the rules of a constitutional democracy have such a profound impact and uh to have a a new playground would be fantastic um there there's something embedded in what you said a moment ago that that I want to highlight on a transition to perhaps a closing question uh I heard in passing you know I think about some of these things about a half hour a week if I heard you right and

um this is I think a profound thing to to to dwell on is that you know he's changing the world in so many areas and not many entrepreneurs I see get and myself and included enamored with all of the possibilities of a future Mars base of the terraforming of the every aspect of it that might need to come into being and and I find myself often distracted by those future questions that are a little less relevant today what you just heard was we got to solve the railway first like let me put 90% 95% of my effort into that and not get distracted by all the other interesting questions that need to come later and I remember a few years ago maybe three or four years ago trying to get you to brainstorm with Craig Venter about you know doing a sample return from

Mars and sending a genetic sequencer there to help understand life there that might exist Etc and I remember profoundly that the response was that is a really interesting topic but I got to get these Rockets to work first before that's going to be relevant to me and let me hunker down on what's important here and that ability to prioritize it uh on the Stepping Stones to a huge vision it's this it's this interesting dichotomy like not just pure Visionary scattered across many things alone it's clear sense of where we're heading chaining back to the present and making sure we're taking the right steps to not in a fumble to future if you will I think I wish we could all do that uh in the way we try to implement change um so let me move if I may to one last

question which could be broad or not which is there's a lot of people here from all kinds of parts of the world and I think everyone who hears your story uh you know an immigrant from South Africa AFC through Canada to the US taking on four or five different Industries with great a plum and success um is inspiring uh but it's not just that you've had business success or technology success it's that you really are changing the world for the better in these areas um and so I guess maybe for as a closing question again looking from the present to the Future what do you see as the sort of the biggest pressing problems that need to be addressed this may in fact require you pull that filter off for a moment on the things of the world that are broken and if

if everyone here in the audience could be a change agent themselves in their area of passion what would you hope to catalyze today if you can say guys go solve this big hairy problem and figure out why it's broken um I you know I say I don't think everyone needs to go you know try to solve like some big big world changing problem I mean I think that like if I really think like we should just think like are we doing something that's useful mhm um to the world like if you're doing something useful that's great imagine it's like animal some things are more useful sure um sure but but maybe your personal P like I just think that like sort of a usefulness optimization is is like that's like a really good thing um you know if you if you've done something that's

useful to your fellow human beings that's you've done a really good thing um and uh people should feel proud of doing that um you know it doesn't doesn't always have to be something that's going to change the world I mean sometimes the world should just keep going in a particular direction help the world um yeah might people might be going in the right direction in and I mean in a lot of ways the the world is in we're we are in in great shape and that if you look at say violent crimes um you know um per capita in the world it's at an like alltime low um uh we're actually quite prosperous uh uh and you know compared to history um and um you know I think there's a lot of things to feel good about in terms of how the world is today um access to information

is incredible I mean uh anyone with like a $100 device could has access to basically all the worlds of information which is an incredible thing um and um yeah so I I honestly I just think like the best thing for to try to do is say like hey what is something I can do that would really be be useful uh to the world and just do that you know and it's great well fantastic thank you so much for being with us today and future Fest and forun your [Applause] future so just very quickly uh on behalf of all the faculty and staff affiliated with stvp uh we'd like to thank president Hennessy uh the School of Engineering and our home Department of management science and engineering uh Matthew tw's Stanford arts and the amazing staff here at Bing that was so helpful

to us this morning uh dfj obviously for your incredible sponsorship of futurefest and also for your continued long-term support of stvp and our hope to create entrepreneurship education opportunities for Stanford students and of course we offer our most sincere thanks please help me in thanking again Elon Musk and Steve jinson [Music] [Applause]