Gmail creator Paul Buchheit on the “obsessive focus” of founders who build $100bn companies

When asked about the common denominators of founders who build $100 billion companies, Paul gives the following response:

“There is this obsessive focus. There’s almost an irrationality in some of these founders. The example that comes out as like the most insane version of it is probably Elon Musk.”

Paul recalls how Elon gave a tech talk at Google around 2003 - after he had started SpaceX, but before they had done the first rocket launch.

Someone asked what Elon would do if the rocket explodes when it launched, and Elon replied:

“Well, I have enough money for three launches, so I hope one of them succeeds.”

The first three launches blew up too and SpaceX only barely scraped together enough money for a fourth launch that ultimately succeeded.

Paul comments:

“If that fourth rocket hadn’t worked, there would be no SpaceX and Elon would be bankrupt. That is insane. I would not take all of my money and plow it into some harebrained rocket scheme. That’s a level of irrational that is I think wonderful.”

Full video: Y Combinator “The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit“ (Oct 2018)