Peter Thiel: Everyone Thought Elon Was Crazy—Then Tesla and SpaceX Both Succeeded

Peter Thiel: When Elon was building Tesla and SpaceX in the 2000s, people thought he was really crazy.

“When Elon was building both Tesla and SpaceX in the 2000s, people thought he was just really, really crazy, even a lot of those of us who'd worked with him at PayPal.

There was this PayPal book that David Sacks and I thought of writing, and the Elon chapter was, I think, entitled something like The Man Who Knew Nothing About Risk. There are all these crazy Elon stories I could tell.

If one of the two companies had succeeded, you would say maybe he still got really lucky. But when two out of two companies people thought were completely harebrained both succeed, you have to somehow reassess it.

The rest of us somehow are too risk-averse, or there's something about risk he knows that we don't.”

The Aspen Institute, June 28, 2024