Elon Musk Leaves the Audience SPEECHLESS | One of the Best Motivational Speeches Ever

i try to think what did i say that could actually be helpful or useful to you in the future and i thought perhaps tell the story of how i sort of came to be here how did some of these things happen and and maybe there's some lessons there um because i often find myself wondering how did this happen so when i was young i i i didn't really know what i was going to do when i got older but but then eventually i thought that the idea of inventing things would be would be really cool the reason i thought that was because i i read a quote from author c clock which said that efficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and and that's really true um if you think if you go back say 300 years the things that we take for granted today uh would be you'd be burned at the stake for you know being able to fly that's crazy being able to see over long distances being able to communicate having um effectively with with the internet a group mind of sorts and having access to all the world's information instantly from almost anywhere on the earth this is stuff that that really would be magic it would be considered magic in times past in fact i think it actually goes beyond that because there are many things that we take for granted today that weren't even imagined in times past they weren't even in the realm of magic so that it actually goes goes beyond that so i thought well you know if if i can do some of those things basically if i can advance technology then that that's like magic and that would be really cool and i always had sort of a slight existential crisis because i was trying to figure out what does it all mean like what's the purpose of things and i came to the conclusion that if if we can advance the the knowledge of the world if we can do things that expand the scope and and scale of consciousness then we're better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened and and that's really the only way forward so i i studied physics and business because i figured in order to do a lot of these things you need to know how the universe works and you need to know how how the economy works and you also need to be able to bring a lot of people together to work with you to create something because it's very difficult to do something as as an individual if it's if it's a significant technology i originally came out to to california to try to figure out how to improve the energy density of of electric vehicles basically to try to figure out if there was an advanced capacitor that that could serve as an alternative to batteries and that was in 95 and that's also when the internet started to happen and it i i thought well i can either pursue this tech this technology where success maybe may not be one of the possible outcomes which is always tricky or participate in the internet and and be part of it so i decided to to drop out did some internet stuff what one of which was paypal and i think maybe it's helpful to say one of the things that was important then in the creation of paypal was was kind of how it started because the initial thought was with paypal was to create an agglomeration of financial services so you have one place where all your financial services needs would be seamlessly integrated and and worked smoothly and then we had like a little feature which was to do email payments and whenever we showed show the system off to someone uh we'd show the hard part which was the um the agglomeration of financial services which was quite difficult to put together nobody was interested then we'd show people email payments which was actually quite easy and everybody was interested so i think it's important to to take feedback from your environment you know it's it you want to be as closed loop as possible so we focus on email payments and really try to make that work and and that's what really got things to take off but but if we hadn't if we hadn't responded to what people said then we we probably would not have been successful so it's important to look for things like that and and focus on them when when you when you see them and you correct your prior assumptions going from paypal what what are some of the the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity it really wasn't from the perspective of what what's the rancor best way to to make money um which which is which is okay but what i think is going to most affect the future humanity so i think the biggest terrestrial problem we've got is uh sustainable energy but the production and consumption of energy in a sustainable manner if we don't solve that this the sensory this is the century we're we're in deep trouble and then the the other one being the extension of life beyond earth to make life multi-planetary so that's the basis for that the latter is the basis force for spacex and the former is the basis for tesla and solar city and when i started spacex it actually initially i thought that well there's no way one could possibly start a rocket company i wasn't that crazy but but then i thought well what is a way to increase nasa's budget that was actually my initial goal so i i thought well if we can do a low-cost mission to mars something called mars oasis which would land seeds with with dehydrate wood with seasoned dehydrated nutrient gel and you hydrate them upon landing and then you'd have this great sort of money shot of green plants on a red background and the public tends to respond to precedents and superlatives and this would be the first life on mars the furthest that life's ever traveled as far as we know and and i thought well that that would get people really excited and and and therefore increase at nasa's budget so so obviously the financial outcome from such a mission would probably be zero so anything better than that was on the upside so i actually went to i went to russia three times to look at buying a refurbished icbm because that that was the best deal and uh i can tell you it was very weird going there in 2000 late 2001 2002 going to the russian rocket forces and saying i'd like to buy two of your biggest rockets but you can keep the nuke that's a lot more um and uh that was 10 years ago i guess so they thought i was crazy but but i did have money so that was that was okay after making several trips to to russia i came to the conclusion that that actually uh my initial impression was was wrong about because my initial thought was well that that there's not enough will to explore and expand beyond earth and have a mars base and that kind of thing but i can't conclusion that that was wrong um in fact there's plenty of will particularly in the united states uh because the united states is a nation of explorers of people who came here from from other parts of the world and i think the united states really a distillation of the spirit of human exploration but but if people think it's impossible then or it's going to completely break the federal budget then they'