00:18:54 · Ty Morse, Eric Jorgenson
[00:18:54] S0: Yeah. I think Brian Armstrong even talked about this during the interview that we did where he basically said, if you want people to go, like, join a company or something or start a company, it's much easier to just get them to agree to a dinner than to like say, hey, let's go start a startup. Because sometimes I think this, I was listening to, how OpenAI was started too recently and they just got a bunch of the best people together on some like, I don't know, camping trip or something and just had them all talking and then they just enjoyed it. Yeah. They were like, oh, this is kinda cool. People kind of vastly underestimate how powerful having, like, a visual cue of, like, seriousness is for, I don't know, like, evangelizing action. [00:19:32] S1: And here's the thing, even shitty demos work. Like, there's a story in the book of him giving Larry and Sergei a demo of the early Roadster with, like, the, the very early, like, handmade kind of electric motors and basic batteries, and the car only went, like, 10 miles an hour or 15 miles an hour or something, it was, like, a terrible demo. But they still agreed to invest because they were like, you've covered a lot of ground. You're not telling me what you would do. You're showing me the progress you've already made, and that is just a world of difference.
00:19:32 · Eric Jorgenson, Ty Morse
[00:19:32] S1: And here's the thing, even shitty demos work. Like, there's a story in the book of him giving Larry and Sergei a demo of the early Roadster with, like, the, the very early, like, handmade kind of electric motors and basic batteries, and the car only went, like, 10 miles an hour or 15 miles an hour or something, it was, like, a terrible demo. But they still agreed to invest because they were like, you've covered a lot of ground. You're not telling me what you would do. You're showing me the progress you've already made, and that is just a world of difference. [00:19:58] S0: Yeah. I think at one point, it almost basically saved Tesla because they were gonna run out of cash. Daimler, obviously, basically made this, like, $50,000,000 investment, I believe, in in Tesla. And it was over the fact that he had just built a smart car using some... I think he, like, imported a little smart car gasoline from Mexico and then retrofitted it with EV batteries, and then the Daimler executives show up. And they're in the board meeting. He's very... They're they're very bored. And then he's like, alright. Do you wanna just go try it? And they were like, what do you mean? And they're like, we have a test in the parking lot, and they just zipped it around and then made the investment. [00:20:34] S1: Yeah. I think... And I think they built that, like, while the Daimler execs were on the flight over or something. It was on some insanely short timeline. [00:20:41] S0: It's like a few weeks. Like, I I it might been... Maybe it
00:20:41 · Ty Morse, Eric Jorgenson
[00:20:41] S0: It's like a few weeks. Like, I I it might been... Maybe it [00:20:43] S1: was even shorter than that. It might have been, like, days. Like... Or some number... Some dozens of hours where they were like, this is not compelling what we have to show. So, like, this is our move. It's, like, we've gotta go straight to [00:20:52] S0: a zero to 60 in four seconds, you know, on this smart little smart car. [00:20:56] S1: But that that... That's so much of what gave Tesla traction in the early days, I think, is people just had never felt, like, silent and immediate acceleration from torque like that. Like, you... And it gave so many people the sense of, like, oh, shit. Like, electric cars are not these, like, kind of wimpy, like, things. Like, this can be cool and performant and, like, maybe the electric car era has some, like, has some sauce. Like, this is gonna be awesome, not terrible, that helped, you know, car people and engineers and nerds, like, get excited about the prospect of actually building one of these things.
00:20:56 · Eric Jorgenson, Ty Morse
[00:20:56] S1: But that that... That's so much of what gave Tesla traction in the early days, I think, is people just had never felt, like, silent and immediate acceleration from torque like that. Like, you... And it gave so many people the sense of, like, oh, shit. Like, electric cars are not these, like, kind of wimpy, like, things. Like, this can be cool and performant and, like, maybe the electric car era has some, like, has some sauce. Like, this is gonna be awesome, not terrible, that helped, you know, car people and engineers and nerds, like, get excited about the prospect of actually building one of these things. [00:21:27] S0: There's this idea of action produces information. There's also something slightly different, which is just action produces action, where if you take the first step, normally, it's easier to take much more, you know, more steps. And so I feel like when he has a situation where he wants, you know, when he comes into the environment like a factory or something and there's not enough action happening, he gets worried. I I think a lot of people see this as him being an asshole calling in people at midnight or 2AM, but I almost feel like this is part of the game and people don't understand how powerful this is.
00:21:57 · Eric Jorgenson
[00:21:57] S1: Yeah. More than worried. That's it. Like, there's stories of him being, like, blowing up, basically, when he, I think he went to Starbase or something, and there was, like, five people working at the Rocket, and he went off. He was like, it is fucked up that there's only five people here. I've got, you know, 300 people on payroll. This place should look like a beehive, I think, twenty four seven is, like, actually his... Like, the way he talked about it, at least in that moment. And he's like, I'm setting up a camera, and I'm gonna... I want it to look like a time lapse beehive all the time. And, you know, reasonable people can say like, well, you're just like, that's an asshole thing to do. What matters is X, Y, Z. Like, you're... You could be more elegant and, you know, why do you need people to be working at 2AM? And I think that that sort of misses the point that, like, the cultures that Elon builds are high intensity, maximum effort at all times cultures. And the surges at many times have saved the company, like the Tesla Model three production surge or, you know, the the Starship surge, but there's also ones where he's, like, not... You know, in in the Isaacson book in particular, Isaacson seems to hard judge harshly some of the surges that he called, which is like there's no point in stacking the starship, on the booster at that particular time. And I think Elon would say, yes, but it's a very powerful demonstration to have this thing that looks like a skyscraper and have people be able to take photos of it and have it closer to ready because it manifests and catalyzes us to to get that work done. And so, you know, I kinda say I I would trust Isaacson less than Musk to decide which surges are gonna do the best for his company.
00:23:32 · Ty Morse
[00:23:32] S0: It's kind of funny when you have some, like, third party that hasn't ever built anything like that come in and be like, here's what I think makes sense. And it's like, but you have no track record to prove that it... Like, your thing works. So you're just talking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.