#172 Elon Musk (Early Days of SpaceX)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like The Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high. So I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show. So we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today. And I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. To understand SpaceX, where it aspires to go, and why it just might succeed, one must voyage back to the Falcon 1 rocket and dig up the roots.
The seeds for everything SpaceX has grown into today were planted during the early days of the Falcon 1 program by Elon Musk.
Back then, he sought to build the world's first low cost orbital rocket.
All of the aspirational talk about Mars would mean nothing if SpaceX could not put a relatively simple rocket like the Falcon 1 into orbit. And so, with a burning intensity, he pressed toward that goal.
SpaceX began with nothing but an empty factory and a handful of employees.
This small group launched its first rocket less than four years later and reached orbit in six.
The story of how SpaceX survived those lean early years is a remarkable one.
Many of the same people who made the Falcon 1 go remain at SpaceX today. Some have moved on. But all of them have stories about those early, formative years that remain mostly untold.
Okay, so that was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today. And it's also the author telling us what the entire book is about. And that book is Liftoff, Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX, and it was written by Eric Berger. So there's a few things I want to tell you real quick before I jump back into the book. Well, one, I found out this book. This is another recommendation. It came from a subscriber named Joseph. I didn't even know that this book just came out. It's relatively new. Didn't even know it existed. And so he put me onto that. So that was very helpful. If you have book recommendations, obviously keep sending them to me. But really, it was interesting. As I was reading this book, I was rereading highlights from past books that I read. And there's a book, there's an autobiography. It's one of the first books I did. I think it's like Founders 20, something like that. And it's on one of the, I would say, most influential restaurateurs that's currently living today. And that's Danny Meyer.
And I read just a random highlight that I took in that book.
And he's talking about the people that had influence on the way he built his company. So his grandfather was a successful entrepreneur, and so he learned a lot from him. His father was a failed entrepreneur, so he learned a lot not to do from him. But he also learned a lot from Stanley Marcus, from the company Neiman Marcus. So let me just read this to you real quick. It's going to relate to why I think studying the early days of the companies and the struggles they had to go through is so valuable. So this is Danny Meyer writing. He says, Stanley's lesson reminded me of something that my grandfather told me. So his grandfather says, the definition of business is problems.
His philosophy came down to a simple fact of business life. Success lies not in the elimination of problems, but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving. The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively. So the way I would distill that down even further and the way I thought about it when I read that, I was like, oh, if you think about what he's saying, business is just problems, then that means companies are just effective problem solving machines. And so this book is all about the problems that SpaceX had to solve to become SpaceX. And in case this also applies to not only what the actual product and service company does, but the problems that a company has to deliver that product and service. So again, SpaceX's case, if you want to get to Mars, or if you want to start making initially making more money by delivering goods to space, well, then you have to the problem you have to solve is how do I get a rocket? The first thing you have to do is how do we get a rocket to orbit, right? A large part of this bit of this book is about the financial issues that SpaceX had to overcome. And the president, Gwynne Shotwell, I think it's how you pronounce her name, the president of SpaceX in the early days. And I'll talk to you a little bit about that today. She's very integral in getting the early sales contracts. So it's like, OK, not only the company has to solve the product and service they're building, but also how do you get customers? How do you hire the right people? These are all problems that everybody's going to run into, whether you're building a space company, whatever it is that you're doing during the day. So really think about companies are just effective problem solving machines. And then the second or the last thing, I don't even know how long this list is, that I want to tell you before I jump into the book is, if you are interested like I am, I find the early days of companies by far the most fascinating because it's when they're laying the foundation to become what they are in the future.