YouSaid · the spoken record

Ashlee Vance

lines on the record: 51
first: 2015-07-15
most recent: 2015-07-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I always get my hopes up, and then my dreams get dashed, but I mean, it seems like we are actually on sort of this personalized. People get a sentient being actually. Someday you'll have a robot. No, no, I don't want that.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He kind of pushed back on me on a couple things, and then he came back and he said, look, I think it's well done, and most importantly, it's accurate. He gave me a 95% accuracy rating. And then the three weeks passed, and then the press started doing the most salacious quotes from the Elon Musk book. Now the press. He did react. I think, I don't know why, because he had read some of that stuff and he had not commented on it to me. And then I think just seeing how people were reacting to it sort of set him off. And I don't know exactly where we're at now.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Well, there were like stages of our relationship. I mean, right after I finished the book, it was like three weeks before he came out. He couldn't make any changes, but I let him see it so he didn't have to buy it at Amazon or whatever.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anything like Buffett or Gates or anything, I think he sees building a colony on Mars as like his contribution to the human species if it's if Tesla and Solar City sort of curb greenhouse gases. I think he would see that as a huge achievement in his contribution. I mean, he's still to be determined exactly what he is. I think he was a dreamer. I think he's proven that he can do a lot more than maybe most people would have given him credit for, but like all this stuff is still a work in progress as to whether it has a real dent on the planet or people. And so unlike a Steve Jobs, there isn't this obvious sort of huge hit that everybody has in their hands.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think so. I mean, I think for Elon, because I have people, I see them on these Elon Musk fanboy boards. Why won't he cure cancer? As if he could just do that if he put his mind to it. But I mean, I think for him, you know, because he doesn't do philanthropy.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He wants millions of people on Mars. Interesting. So, last question. When you look at someone like him, I mean, I think it's hard to, it feels very genuine. It does feel very genuine. At the same time, there's been a lot of dreamers, which is not a bad thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Do you mention I'll do something else, the sea, food, poverty?”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, he wants to build a colony, so it's nuts. So he says. He goes through it in this very logical way. Every two years, the Earth and Mars get kind of close together for about a month. And so he's talking about in that month, you would have to do hundreds, if not thousands, of launches of millions of pounds of equipment, and you would have to do that for like three or four decades.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, well, Elon, no, he has a thing where you would have, it's pretty crazy. So he thinks, and this is not totally borne out by the physics yet, but he thinks he has a rocket that you would send up. And they would actually, he goes into this in the book. They would be able to make fuel on Mars and like a methane sort of thing. And you would have like a one or two day window where you could decide if you wanted to stay or come back.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Car and the space thing. Definitely his aim. No, I completely believe that's authentic unless he's lied to everybody he's ever talked to and himself on a really deep level. I mean, he... Colonizing Mars, he's this very logical guy. It's like, we need a backup plan for the human species. I think Again, he's talked about 2024, sort of for flights to Mars, so in Elon time, again, you've got to push that out a few years, I think. As far as will SpaceX send something or someone to Mars, I would give it a pretty high probability there's this guy, Tom Mueller, that SpaceX who designs all the engines. He's very capable. He's told me they have the engine in CAD that would take them there. They can't come back.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So we're going to finish up in a second. Talk about what he's going to do next. It's plenty for him to do a car and the space thing. You know, he has this very big joke about, I don't, I want to die on Mars, just not on landing, essentially, which is a very cute joke and stuff like that. Is he good at really colonize Mars? Is that really his aim, or is it just like a little PT Barnum kind of?”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All the lower Earth orbit satellites, you've got people that want to do the internet in space, that want to do all the imaging in space. From these guys OneWeb. So, like a company like Arian's boss or SpaceX, which are their leaders in their field, would launch once a month, that would be a banner year to have 12 launches. And this company, OneWeb, is calling for hundreds of satellites to be sent up. I mean, you would have to be launching like once every week. And so the aerospace industry, I still don't fully understand how they're going to have to change dramatically and really up their game. But if they did that, this is like a booming business, a booming multi-billion dollar business”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think it was like the highest risk thing he could have done, and it ended up being pretty consistent. And they have, I mean, it's pretty funny too. In 2012, when I really started the book in earnest, they were still sort of this underdog and were really dismissed by Arian Spas and the Russians. Subsequently, every single major space program has had to start a reusable rocket program. They've all had to bring their costs way down. Like SpaceX is usually about like a fifth of what other people charge. So they have changed the aerospace industry”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They couldn't find anywhere to launch in the beginning days of the rocket company, so they were out on this island called Quajulane that's in the middle of the Pacific, and these young engineers had to live there for like two years. And the rockets would blow up there. They would get salt on them and horrible things would happen. And so it was like this very unlikely tale that it's come to be. And then, like we were saying, I mean, they started to get really consistent. They were launching a rocket almost every month. They got like $8 billion in backlog of launches. It's not space tourism. It's sort of taking satellites up and supplies for the International Space Station.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like a private company like this should not really exist. They're competing against nations that have been at this for decades with billions of dollars. The way they started, I mean, Elon wanted to be like the southwest of space”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the owners do have this autopilot feature, but it seems to be sort of comparable to what you could get from other high end cars, sort of the automated cruise control. In my neighborhood in Mountain View, I see Google testing dozens of cars all the time. I don't see any Tesla cars, so I don't know where they're doing all this stuff. It just strikes me that Google would be ahead on that type of technology. But Elon keeps claiming that they're ahead”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's pretty funny because we didn't hear any rumbles about self-driving cars from Tesla. And then all of a sudden there was an event like two or three months ago and Elon announces this autopilot feature. Then he talks about you're going to summon your car to you. And I'm still not.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I mean, I'm way more positive on Tesla than when I started doing the book, I think. I mean, they need to get over this hump, get this model X's, like this SUV they need to get out. They need to prove a lot of stuff.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they're too expensive to get bought now. I mean, they're like half the value of GM, so you would have to be, I mean, it's like a pretty short list of people. And then, you know, I think Elon has until they get like a mainstream electric car and Elon feels like I did what I promised I would do. I don't think he trusts anyone else to run the company. I mean, that's what he would tell me. There's a story in the book where he almost does have to sell to Larry Page at Google because Tesla's running out of money right before Wright is the Model S is coming out. And Elon was agonizing even that Larry Page, who's kind of his buddy. He put all these terms, he'd set up all these terms where Elon would get to keep running the company for like five years and to see things through”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we have not seen a mainstream 30 to $35,000 car at all, and that's supposed to come in like 2017, which in Elon Time is probably like 2019. So until that happens, I don't know that we could. Declare Tesla some sort of success, but Detroit's responding to them in a big way, especially the software and the technology inside the car.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's not, no, I mean, it's still just as pugnacious, I think. It's interesting now. So their second car, the Model S, I think it did better than even Elon would have thought. I mean, it's still a niche car. It's very expensive, but they're selling 50 or $60,000 a year. The car could have been a total flop instead. Even the Detroit reviewers hailed it as maybe the best car ever built. So this was a success. They've struggled a lot since then to get a follow-on vehicle. They're taking on all this other stuff with battery factory. I mean, Elon's essentially bet the entire company again. He sort of has this moment of success, and now they've had to raise billions of dollars for this battery factory and to produce their other cars. And so...”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“20 to 30 clever kids from Stanford who sort of bring this thing to life and then it ends up just being the roadster, the first car, the sports car was such a disaster from a cost perspective and it was so Hard to build that Elon eventually ends up becoming CEO of the company after three or four years and deciding that he has to take it over”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tesla's kind of, you know, Elon had always been into electric cars. I found these papers he wrote in the college where he was looking at this stuff. And then there's kind of a funny thing that happens around 2002 where this guy, J.B. Strobel, who's now the chief technology officer at Tesla, he was this clever Stanford kid who'd been looking to do an electric car startup. And these two guys, Martin, Eberhard and Mark Tarpening, they were looking to do the same thing. Elon was looking to kind of fund one, and these guys all get together, and no VC would put any money into this thing, so Elon bankrolls the entire thing. And then for the first few years, I mean, it's your Silicon Valley garage story, although actually a car garage. And it's basically”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, he was one of the more irritating people, as I recall, but has changed rather dramatically. Talk a little bit about each of the companies, Tesla, the impetus for doing it, and then where it is right now.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's actually the best thing ever is if you Google this, there's a CNN video where Elon gets his first McLaren after he's made his money. And I mean, he's just starting PayPal. And, I mean, if you Google sort of Elon McLean started X. Right, right. And it turns into PayPal. I mean, this is sort of like...”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To do what I want. So, talk about the beginnings of Tesla because he was kind of a playboy. I remember him here. He wanted a picture in the journal in front of a Porsche, and I thought, what a douche, really. I was sort of like, he was sort of blowhearty, the same thing.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, yeah. But I mean, that's, you know, I think he had sort of a wake up call of I have to be, at least on some level kind of a better, if I'm going to do the things that I want to do, I'm going to have to be a better manager of people and sort of figure this out. And this was like a conscious thing. I mean, he would talk to Justine, his first wife. It's kind of weird. I mean, he's having a conscious thing. I need to learn how to be kind of nicer to people to get them.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think Zip2 and PayPal when he was sort of Forced out. What you saw was this guy. He had been a know-it-all growing up. He was always sort of the smartest guy in the room. And, you know, I think he thought he could manage people in sort of that way at Zip2 and PayPal. And I think what he found was that when he was like berating people in a meeting and telling them how smart he was and how they were wrong, that it so demoralized them that they couldn't get anything done after that and that he, I think it was a real wake-up call when he ate the PayPal coup in particular. He basically gets on a plane to go on a honeymoon with his wife and the second it takes off everyone he knows stabs him in the back and throws him out of the company and we see after that he totally leaves Silicon Valley. He goes to LA Before he even gets”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He grew up relatively wealthy, but he totally did when he was 17. I mean, he ran away from home. He ends up backpacking through Canada for a year, working really crappy jobs, and sort of has to find his way into school. And there's no question. I mean, he wasn't poor growing up. Yeah, even just, you know. Leaving the country where you're born and just going to the unknown at 17. I mean, I think that sticks with you.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think there's no question. I think he's been on a quest to show people how special he is and also that he... Sort of like suffering and risk and all that. You know, Elon ends up running away from home at 17.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's in tears. He's about to say what it is. And he says, like, you know, I don't know how a person becomes like that. Like, really horrible things without ever telling me exactly what it was. So abusive. You're talking about abusive.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Elon and Kimball and a couple other people, Kimball's Elon's brother, they would sort of get to the edge of it and never fully tell me. I mean, Kimball said that his dad would sit them down and lecture at them for hours on end and not let them speak. And Elon talked about his dad playing all these sort of psychological games with him. Elon always wanted to go to America, and his dad was like, well, you know, in South Africa, they had all these housekeepers and everything. And he's like, well, if you want to go to America, you're going to have to do everything. So he would make Elon clean the house and cook and do everything in the house to sort of teach him a lesson. And then in the book, there's a couple parts where Elon...”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, and even Bezos jobs, Larry Ellison, it's all fairly similar kind of story in some ways of sort of like a rough relationship with the parents. And then, you know, and his family was just not, you were talking about love, I mean, it's not like a warm, cuddly family at all. And so did you.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I mean, he has got a bunch of things going on. He was a bright kid and was super into books and everything. But the sense that I got was certainly like his family loved him. But outside of that School, he was either being bullied really badly, like kicked downstairs and kicked in the head, or he was being completely ignored. You know, I couldn't find one person that counted him as like a close friend or hung out and everyone in fact said he was the guy that nobody thought about. He didn't really piss people off or make them. He's just the guy that nobody thought about. And then at home, you know, he has this horrendous relationship with his dad today his dad's not allowed to meet his kids or anything like that. And Elon's a little”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even like Jeff Bezos sort of messing with him around rocket launch pads and things like that, I mean Elon in the press is sort of like ripping him to shreds. He doesn't mince words on any of this stuff. I mean, he's tough.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You've seen it throughout. His companies throughout all of his companies. I mean, it zip two at PayPal. He was essentially thrown out of these companies where he was the largest shareholder and the co-founder of the company. So that gives you a sense of, I mean, to throw out the largest shareholder and CEO is not an easy thing to do. At Tesla, you've seen this huge battle between Martin Everhard and Elon over the years about who founded the company. Then what we've seen is with the rest of his companies, he puts all of his money into them, A, yeah, as their high risk ventures, but also so that he has total control of the companies and nobody can ever do this to him again.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He certainly outworks people. I mean, is this sort of outwork, out hustle kind of out-compete? I mean, he is ruthless on a level that I don't know most people are kind of willing to go to. Like business is war for Elon.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think part of him does want to be like that for sure. Elon's got a huge ego. He enjoys, I think he enjoys all that. I mean, I think as his celebrity and wealth has risen, he's fully enjoyed all that. I was outside of a movie premiere with him one time and I said, you know, you're not really like Tony Stark. He's in the back of the Humvee drinking scotch and all that stuff. And then Elon kind of took offense at it. He said, you know, I've been to Haiti and I drank some drink called the zombie while I was canoeing down this river. So he seems to, he didn't deny it or anything. I think.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He just doesn't have that sort of, he's not like a smooth operator kind of guy. He can't get a suit or anything like that. Right. Yeah. But I mean, you know, in some ways, he lives up to it. In some ways, he's like... The guy who still has fun just going to the Lego movie with his kids or whatever. And it's probably like”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it's kind of jokey on one level. On the other level, you know, Elon's the only guy we have that actually lives in Hollywood and hangs out with movie stars and dates them, presumably. Yeah, yeah, well, his on-again, off again wife is a British actress. And then he's the guy, he is the guy that has this, he's got a rocket factory in the middle of Los Angeles. It's not like It's right by LAX. It's insane. And so, and then he always, he likes to be at the Super Bowl and the big fight. And he seems to always want to be where these big events are. He's definitely not as kind of suave as Tony Stark or sort of hazard that. He has a charismatic.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's funny because I mean, Silicon Valley always seems to have had sort of it was like Bob Noyce and then obviously you get jobs coming along and there seems to be kind of this leading Hewlett and Packard before Bob Noyce. I mean it seems to be this. Figure that sort of either setting the trend from like a cultural standpoint, you see it as well with Google. Like this is how you should run your office. I don't know why. I mean, the valet, probably shame on Silicon Valley because there's sort of a follower kind of mentality. One company does something interesting and then everyone seems to mimic it a bit. But I don't know. I mean, I guess they want to have this larger than life character to sort of believe in.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think you're exactly right. The interview was great that you guys did. I mean, I get these emails from people all the time. I see it at these events. I go to the Tesla events. You know, when I first started the book, it would be like a couple hundred people and Elon would come out on stage. And they were already, Tesla's always had these kind of true believers that have really bought into Elon when it made no sense because the cars were crappy and expensive and they still sort of Young entrepreneurs all the time. It's like, we want to be like Elon, and it's kind of funny because they're not sort of making anything like what he does. But I think in Silicon Valley, at least for certain class of people, he completely is.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it really was fascinating because people were looking for a hero, I think, since Steve Jobs died, or someone to look up to. And they just, you know, he acts sort of like the Tony Stark character. He's got elements of, you know, there's exoticness with his being South African. He's funny, he's self-deprecating, he's a little pompous. And so he really wowed the Roman in a way that was fascinating. I found it really interesting. And I understand that fanboy. Talk a little bit about that because Silicon Valley does not have a hero. And they sort of need one. It's kind of inane and juvenile, but at the same time, it's important.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so. Well, yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, Elon's sort of like the hero of the book and stuff, but I'm not in the Elon fanboy camp, I guess. But I am into what he's making. I mean, to me, one of the thesis in the book is that he's kind of the best guy we have right now at combining atoms and bits together. If you look at aerospace and automotive, I mean, the state of the software in those industries is pretty poor, and he's definitely had this huge modernizing effect on all that. Taken kind of consumer electronics into these areas where they hadn't played before, and I mean, it's really interesting what they've done. And then, you know, I mean, Tesla gets a lot of attention, but SpaceX is probably sort of maybe his biggest and most unlikely achievement. And that was the story that I really was into as well.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was pretty well behaved about it. He said, I won't change your text. I just want to set the record straight and read it first. And then we had this long dinner. And I had this like 45-minute speech prepared to talk him out of all that. And I got like five minutes into it. And I don't know why, but he just said, okay, just do your thing, and I won't read it. And off I went.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I feel I would like to see some people doing some stuff with machines. I mean, I'm like a Silicon Valley history buff, so I miss all the semiconductor fabs and all that. So, no, he didn't cooperate at the beginning. I told him what I wanted to do. He said, no, I think I want to write my own book. Which he is. Yeah. But this was like a couple years before you even set out on that. And then I sold the book in New York and then I went back to him and I said, I sold the book. Now will you cooperate? And he turned me down. And then I just spent 18 months interviewing hundreds of people. And then he called me at home one evening. I was just on the caller ID, Elon Musk. And he said, you know, he had read this book that somebody had done on Larry Allison called Soft War. I think where Larry got to put footnotes in the book and Elon liked that idea. Yeah.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it was mostly about this. I mean, I focused on the machines and the factories. Here's this industrialist that he's kind of like the new industrialist we've been looking for type thing. Have you been looking forward to looking for”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, yeah. And you know, and when you go, you've interviewed a lot of me when he, you know, he answers your questions. He sort of put some thought into it. So he was a much better interview than I thought. And then sort of exactly to your point, I mean, I'd grown cynical about the valley, was sick of apps and web services and all this stuff. And here was a guy with factories. And so that's what I wanted to do.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That guy because you would not spend time with him? I hadn't spent time with him, and then just when I'd hear him speaking in public, it always sounded sort of in that, I mean, I do, I like Peter Thiel and stuff, but that same sort of camp, we're gonna, Tex going to fix everything. And then, you know, I mean,”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For ages, it's finally coming true and in pretty good shape. And then I did a cover story on him for Business Week, and I'd been looking for a book to do. And, you know, when I went to see the Tesla factory and the SpaceX factory, those both blew me away. And then Elon was much more interesting. I sort of chalked him up to just total techno-utopian, kind of a one note.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, even I'd even thought Elon had never even been on my radar. I thought he was more of like a blowhard than everything else. And then in 2012, I mean, SpaceX docked with the ISS. Tesla came out with the Model S and SolarCity went public. And I thought, okay, all this stuff this guy's been talking about.”
2015-07-15 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Elon Musk biographer Ashlee Vance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT