Naval Ravikant tells the Elon Musk story he likes best — an illustration of Musk's willingness to throw out sunk costs and start over from first principles when the situation demands it.
There was a story that I read about him that really affected me, which was when he was talking to Bill Gates. And Bill Gates had just taken out some huge short on Tesla, like a billion dollar short or something. And Elon was like, why would you do that? Why would you short Tesla? And Bill goes, well, I talked to my financial advisors and I looked at the math and there's no way it's overvalued. And so I'm going to make money on the short. And Elon goes, what do you care about making money? I thought you were into electric cars and climate change and saving the world. What are you doing trying to save a few bucks and betting. And he just walked away in disgust. And I think he never talked to Bill Gates after that. And that's when I realized Elon's a purist. You know, he means what he says, like the money is a tool for him to get what he's trying to do. And so I take him at face value, which is the crazy thing, because a lot of people who set these audacious goals to inspire people, but you kind of know they don't really mean it, Elon, and take it face value. So I really do think he intends to get to Mars. I don't think he's joking about that. And I think he meant to get. He means to get there within a defined window of time. And I don't think it's just like an inspirational, faraway goal. I think he's very, very concretely going to do whatever it takes. Because Elon doesn't want to go down in history as the electric car guy or even the guy who saved America guy. He wants to go down as a guy who got humanity to the stars and everything. Again, I'll give him more credit than that. I don't even think he wants to go down as the I got humanity to the stars guy. He's just like, I want to get to the stars. And so I have to make it happen in this lifetime. The only way that I get to experience the science fiction world in my head is if I get to the stars. And so that's so inspirational. I think that drives everything. So I think the government was just a thing that got in his way. Well, the way it's.