Keith Rabois tells the story of Elon Musk observing interns waiting in line for coffee at SpaceX

Keith is asked how Elon Musk gets so much done, to which he replies:

“If you approach every day and every week of your life with the question, ‘What did you accomplish this week?’ I think that compounds, and very few people do that. I think that’s the number one ingredient.”

As for the second ingredient, Keith tells a story he heard from some friends at SpaceX where Elon observed a line of interns piling up around the coffee machine. This prompted Elon to send a memo to the company asking:

“Why are all the interns wasting all this time? If you feel like you have nothing better to do than waiting in line, you’re at the wrong company. And by the way, I’m installing cameras to make sure that we don’t have lines at the coffee shop.”

Keith believes that stamping out entitlement and expecting people to accomplish things every day also compounds over decades in Elon’s career. He recalls a principle PayPal cofounder Max Levchin taught him where he compares startups to gas in chemistry:

“Gas expands to the size of the container… If you tell people they have a month, it’ll take a month. If you tell people it takes two weeks, it’ll take two weeks. Tell them a week, it’ll take a week. So you want to constantly compress the container size because those accomplishments add up over months, quarters, years, and decades.”

Full video: Chris Vasquez “Keith Rabois on Trump Vs Kamala, Founder Mode & Mastering time like Elon Musk“ (Oct 2024)

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