TED2013

• Venue / interviewer: TED Conference, on stage with curator Chris Anderson
• Format: On-stage interview, about 20 minutes (“The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity”)
• Date: March 1, 2013
• Trust tier: High-trust full transcript. This is the official TED.com transcript.
• Quotes: from the official TED transcript. Two people speak here, Chris Anderson and Elon Musk, and only Musk’s lines are quoted, never Anderson’s questions.

Summary

This is the earliest interview in the collection, three years ahead of the 2016 Code Conference and Y Combinator appearances, and it doubles as a baseline. Read it and you see how much of Musk’s thinking was already in place. The setting is a 20-minute stage chat with Chris Anderson, billed as a showcase for Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity. Alongside the product talk, Elon Musk lays out, often in seed form, the beliefs his later interviews only sharpen.

The sharpest moment is the close. Anderson asks how one person can pull off so many hard things at once, and Musk answers with the first-principles formulation that became his calling card: boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up, instead of reasoning by analogy. He adds a step most later accounts leave out, which is going out of his way to solicit negative feedback from friends. Around that close sit the earliest spoken versions we have of the rest of his worldview. The sustainable-energy mission arrives as a resource problem, “independent of environmental concerns”. The high-end-to-mass-market plan comes with its three steps spelled out, Roadster to Model S to a $30k car. The multi-planetary case is a survival argument: stay on one planet and you wait for “some eventual extinction event”. The reusable-rocket thesis runs on a simple observation, that every other way we travel is reusable and rockets are the holdout. And one of the earliest first-person notes on sheer hours that we have slips out: “I work a lot. I mean, a lot.”

Key quotes

First-principles reasoning — his calling-card formulation

Closing the talk, asked how one person can innovate across so many fields, Musk names his “framework for thinking”. It is physics, applied as first-principles reasoning:

“Well, I do think there’s a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning.” ↗

Then the definition, the line people quote most from this talk:

“boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy.” ↗

He limits when you actually need it. Ordinary life runs on analogy; the physics approach is for doing something new:

“But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach.” ↗

And the piece of method most later accounts drop, actively hunting for criticism:

“and then also to really pay attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends.” ↗

The sustainable-energy mission, framed as a resource problem

His earliest spoken statement of the mission. The striking part is that he keeps climate politics out of it and grounds the case in the simple fact that hydrocarbons run out:

“That sort of overall sustainable energy problem is the biggest problem that we have to solve this century, independent of environmental concerns.” ↗

“In fact, even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we’re going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.” ↗

Then he reframes solar through physics. The sun is the fusion reactor already powering everything, and we just have to draw on it:

“I mean, it’s really indirect fusion, is what it is. We’ve got this giant fusion generator in the sky called the sun, and we just need to tap a little bit of that energy for purposes of human civilization.” ↗

He is flatly sure solar wins outright:

“Well actually, I’m confident that solar will beat everything, hands down, including natural gas.” ↗

The high-end-to-mass-market strategy, stated with prices

The earliest spoken version of the down-market sequence, and unlike the 2006 plan, this one carries concrete prices:

“The goal of Tesla has always been to have a sort of three-step process, where version one was an expensive car at low volume, version two is medium priced and medium volume, and then version three would be low price, high volume.” ↗

Multi-planetary survival — the earliest version we have

The earliest spoken version of the civilizational-survival case, and he puts it as a stark either-or: explore the stars, or go extinct on the one planet we have:

“And I really think there’s a fundamental difference, if you sort of look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that’s out there exploring the stars, on multiple planets, and I think that’s really exciting, compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.” ↗

He stages the goal: first a base, then a species:

“of establishing a base on another planet, on Mars – being the only realistic option – and then building that base up until we’re a true multi-planet species.” ↗

The reusable-rocket thesis

The one thing he says SpaceX has to crack:

“which is to have a rapidly and fully reusable rocket.” ↗

The argument leans on every other way we travel:

“Every mode of transport that we use, whether it’s planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, horses, is reusable, but not rockets.” ↗

“So we must solve this problem in order to become a space-faring civilization.” ↗

He puts a number on the prize. Propellant is a rounding error, so reuse moves the economics by orders of magnitude:

“So it’s possible to achieve, let’s say, roughly 100-fold improvement in the cost of spaceflight if you can effectively reuse the rocket.” ↗

The one limit he grants is physical: rockets are the lone holdout against electrification:

“all modes of transport will become fully electric with the ironic exception of rockets.” ↗

Psychology and method, in his own words

Asked the secret of his output, he refuses to theorize and names the one thing he is sure of:

“I don’t know, actually. I don’t have a good answer for you. I work a lot. I mean, a lot.” ↗

He tells the SpaceX origin as a joke against himself, turning the risk into a punchline:

“And so I tell people, well, I was trying to figure out the fastest way to turn a large fortune into a small one.” ↗

And why SpaceX does not patent, which comes down to who the competitors really are:

“Since our primary competitors are national governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable.” ↗

Connections (pages touched)

• Elon Musk — extended with a “TED2013: every later theme already in seed form” section: the earliest interview we have, tying together the calling-card first-principles statement, the mission-as-resource-problem, the multi-planetary case, and “I work a lot. I mean, a lot.”
• First principles — the formulation he is best known for (“boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there … as opposed to reasoning by analogy”) plus the under-noted “solicit negative feedback from friends” method, three years before the 2016 “entropy is not on your side” framing.
• Sustainable-energy mission — the earliest spoken mission statement, kept clear of climate politics (“independent of environmental concerns”; “run out of hydrocarbons”), and the “indirect fusion” reading of solar.
• Down-market strategy — the earliest spoken three-step sequence, this time with real prices ($100k Roadster → ~$50k Model S → $30k third-gen).
• Mars colonization — the earliest statement we have of the multi-planetary survival case (“forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event”; “a true multi-planet species”).
• SpaceX — the reusable-rocket thesis (the “vital” problem, the every-other-transport-is-reusable argument, the 100-fold economics, and “no patents” because the competitors are governments), plus the “turn a large fortune into a small one” origin joke.
• Work intensity — the earliest first-person line on his work ethic, “I work a lot. I mean, a lot.”
• Humanity’s bright future — the 2013 case for how fragile civilization is, exploring the stars set against an “eventual extinction event”.