creating a company is almost like having a child so it's sort of like how do you say your child
should not have food so one once you have the company you have to feed it and nurse it even if
it it ruins you i think when i was i don't know five or six or something i thought i was insane
it was just strange because it was clear that other people do not
their mind wasn't exploding with ideas it was like hmm and strange
i don't think i don't think you'd necessarily want to be me
it's very hard to turn it off it's like a neverending explosion all the time
you've said that this has been the toughest year for you the most sort of taxing year for you
like why 22 hours a day or like what i mean i was just working instead seven days a week
sleeping in the factory uh i worked everywhere from the i worked in the i was in the paint shop
general assembly body shop you ever worry about yourself
imploding like just too much absolutely no one should put this many hours into work
this is not good and people should not work this hard i'm not they should not do this this is very
painful painful in what sense it's because my ears my brain and my heart so it's this is not
recommended for anyone i just did it because if i didn't do it then tesla good chance as i would die
i mean tesla really faced the severe uh threat of death uh due to the model 3 production round
essentially the company was bleeding money like crazy and and just if we didn't solve
these problems in a very short period of time uh we would die and it was extremely difficult
to solve them how close to death did you come we are within single budget weeks
i mean when we started tesla i thought maybe our chance of success was 10
well i mean i can tell you my original plan um was i thought okay i had like 180 million dollars from
my percent my portion of the sale of of uh paypal
and i thought you know if i invest half of that uh in creating these companies then
i still have the other half which will be fine yeah but of course that's not how it worked out
we used up all the that the you know you've invested 100 million then
still need more money uh and then there was the big recession of 2008 and nine
and in the end i had to invest everything and um i
was borrowing money from friends to pay the rent you were on the edge of actually and i didn't even
i didn't think it would be easy
like i said i thought they would probably fail but you know like creating a company is almost
like having a child so it's sort of like how do you say your child should not have food
so one once you have the company you have to feed it and nurse it
and take care of it even if it it ruins you yeah
but supposing there wasn't tough times in
2008 end of 2008 how did you get through that period of crisis do we just break for a second
i think that probably they shouldn't want to be you it i think it sounds better than it is
not as much fun being me as you think this definitely could be worse for sure
but it's um i i'm not sure i would i'm not sure i want to be me
it has actually been a very difficult journey i have to say my priority right now is to try to
add some more management been strength to tesla in particular so that i can take a vacation and
in the last 12 years i've only tried to take a week off twice the first time i took a week off
the orbital sciences rocket exploded and richard branson's rocket exploded in that same week
second time i took a week off my rocket exploded the lesson here is don't take a week off
well when my brother and i were starting our first company
instead of getting an apartment we just rented a small office and we slept on the couch and we
we showered at the the ymca and uh we're so hot up we had just one computer so the
the website was up during the day and i was coding at night seven days a week all the time
and i i sort of briefly had a girlfriend in that period and in order to
be with me she has to sleep in the office so i work hard like i mean every waking hour that's
that's the thing i would i would say if you particularly if you're starting a company
trying to build a company and have it succeed is like eating glass and staring into the abyss
i mean what tends to happen is it's sort of quite exciting for the first several months
of starting a company and then then reality sets in things don't go as well as planned customers
aren't signing up the technology or the product isn't working as well as you thought and i think
that can sometimes be compounded by a recession and it can be very very painful for several years
when you had that third failure in a row did you think i need to pack this in never
why not i don't ever give up i mean i'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated
you know there are american heroes who don't like this idea neil armstrong gene cernan
have both testified against commercial space flight in the way that you're developing it
and i wonder what you think of that i was very sad to see that because those guys are
yeah you know those guys are heroes of mine so it's really tough you know i i wish they would
come and visit and and see the hardware that we're doing here and i think that would change their
mind they inspired you to do this didn't they yes and to see them casting stones in your direction
it's difficult did you expect them to cheer you on so they're hoping they would
but there are a lot of negative things in the world a lot of terrible things that are happening
all over the world all the time uh there are lots of problems that need to get sold
there's lots of things that are yeah they're miserable and kind of get you down
but that life cannot just be about solving one miserable problem after another can't
that can't be the only thing they need to be need to be things that inspire you that make
you glad to be to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity that's why we did this