←back to thread

Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

(www.ycombinator.com)
1106 points sama | 5 comments | 15 Sep 16 18:05 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
rpedela ◴[16 Sep 16 02:06 UTC] No.12511432[source]▶
I would be far more interested in how to build a successful business. Everyone asks Elon about his big ideas, but how do you turn those big ideas into reality, specifically? I have never seen anyone ask him those questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with Jessica Livingston because that was the primary topic. A missed opportunity in my opinion. I hope the rest of the interviews are more about the nuts and bolts of how to build a successful business.

EDIT

Ask him about the early days at PayPal. What are the lessons he learned that he applied to Tesla and SpaceX? What worked for PayPal but not the other companies and why?

replies(6): >>12511537 #>>12511687 #>>12511933 #>>12511941 #>>12512705 #>>12513223 #
1. contingencies ◴[16 Sep 16 02:49 UTC] No.12511537[source]▶
The way I see it PayPal essentially helped an established incumbent monopoly (US credit card companies) with issues at the time maintain and extend its global relevance, lock down domination of cross-border consumer payments, meaningfully extend US intelligence sector surveillance, and continue to fuck the little guy. Only Europe and China are building a resistance now, 15 years later. That you have 5 or 10 rich people coming out of that little cash-cow who feel like publicly playing god with humanity's future or that they deserve some kind of respect for the 'achievement' is pathetic. Any number of people could have built that better, or with morals. If they had any sense they'd be ashamed at what they've done, and how it has seemingly irrevocably crumbled in to bigcorp screw-the-customer service mode. Besides, we all know the real e-vehicle revolution has already happened, right here in China.
replies(2): >>12511896 #>>12512794 #
2. pkinsky ◴[16 Sep 16 04:47 UTC] No.12511896[source]▶
When you say resistance, you mean 'implementing a locally controlled version of the problematic US-controlled system they're resisting', right?
replies(1): >>12512553 #
3. contingencies ◴[16 Sep 16 08:00 UTC] No.12512553[source]▶
That would be the cynical (and probably realistic) interpretation, however because both the European (most of Europe, nearby countries) and Chinese network (nodes across much of the world, particularly Asia) are relatively internationally distributed (and thereby subject to multiple bureaucracies) they are somewhat less prone to centralized interference/monitoring. Further, neither region has as bad a record as the US in using financial systems for aggressive political gain.
4. pms ◴[16 Sep 16 09:21 UTC] No.12512794[source]▶
It sounds interesting. Could you give some pointers to read more about this?
replies(1): >>12512940 #
5. contingencies ◴[16 Sep 16 10:11 UTC] No.12512940[source]▶
There are numerous reports from NGOs about the social impact of the credit card system and some reports from European Parliament detailing the use of financial systems for US surveillance, most recently around the fiasco resulting in SWIFT2 (aka SWIFT1 with a different name and more servers). A key recent instance of the political use of financial systems is the blocking of Iran from SWIFT, well documented to have been campaigned by Israel via the US defence establishment. They eventually convinced Europe to sign off on it too... amusingly India just said "we'll stop using cash for oil and ship them gold instead". Also http://www.scribd.com/doc/215642587/Finance-and-the-Future-B... (my talk from HAR2009)