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Paul Buchheit: What are some things successful founders have in common?

1 minutes 43 seconds

🇬🇧 English

S1

Speaker 1

00:06

So this was actually where the focus frugality obsession and love thing came from, is I was actually trying to distill it down into a small enough number of words and then I was going to try to translate it into emoji but I failed at that part. I couldn't figure out the I couldn't figure out what is the emoji for obsession. They're like love I'm like okay a heart. But there is I think like this obsessive focus there's There's almost an irrationality in some of these founders.

S1

Speaker 1

00:35

Like the example that comes up as like the most insane version of it is probably like Elon Musk. So I actually he came into Google, gave like a tech talk. I want to say 2003 or something like that. And it was after he had started SpaceX, but before they had done the first rocket launch.

S1

Speaker 1

00:56

And someone is like, what are you going to do if the rocket explodes when you launch it. He's like, well, I have enough money for 3 launches, so I hope 1 of them succeeds. Like, he literally plowed his entire fortune. The first 3 blew up too, I think.

S1

Speaker 1

01:12

Yeah, the first 3 did blow up. They managed to scrape together enough money for like a fourth rocket but if that fourth rocket hadn't gone there would be no SpaceX and Elon would be bankrupt right like he like that is insane I would not take all of my money and plow it into like some her brain rocket scheme right like That's like a level of irrationality that is, I think, wonderful.