Elon Musk: “Be useful… Stuff doesn’t need to change the world to be good.”

Sam Altman asks Elon what he would work on today if he was 22 and looking to have a big impact.

Elon responds:

“First of all, I think if somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society, I think that’s a good thing… Stuff doesn’t need to change the world to be good.”

In college, Elon thought the five most important things to work on were making life multi-planetary, accelerating the transition to sustainable energy, the internet, genetics, and AI. But he did not expect to be involved in all of those things.

“At the time in college, I thought helping with electrification of cars was how I would start out. And then I put [pursuing a PhD at Stanford] on hold to start an Internet company in 1995 because there does seem to be a time for particular technologies… and I wasn’t entirely certain the technology I’d be working on [in the PhD program] would actually succeed. You can get a doctorate on many things that ultimately do not have a practical bearing on the world. I really was just trying to be useful. That’s the optimization. What can I do that would actually be useful?”

When Sam asks what the best way for someone to be useful is, Elon responds:

“Whatever the thing is that you’re trying to create—what would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect? So that’s why I think something that makes a big difference but affects a small or moderate number of people is great. As is something that makes even a small difference but affects a vast number of people… The area under the curve would actually be roughly similar for those two things.”

Full video: Y Combinator “Elon Musk : How to Build the Future“ (Sep 2016)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Elon Musk insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Elon Musk"