On making $1M in 3 months, being a target for luck, and the idiot index

“To get people to notice and become curious about the app, they would first create instagram accounts with the high school and brand name together. For example, @gas.georgiahigh

They would make the account private, then follow everyone associated with that high school. As the students would request to follow back so they can see the profile, they would not accept anyone.

Second, at 3:00pm on the day before launch, when all the teens got out of school at the same time, they accept everyone at the same time.

So every student is getting the same notification at the same time, showing each other and talking about it, to then go to the profile directing them to download gas to ‘see who likes you.’”

“When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved.

They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up.

So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious.

Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions.”

Elon developed what he called the “idiot index”, which calculated how much more costly a finished product was than the cost of its basic materials.

Rockets had an extremely high idiot index. Musk calculated the cost of carbon fiber, metal, fuel, and other materials that went into them. The finished product cost at least 50x more than that.

[…]

At one point SpaceX needed a valve, and the supplier said it would cost $250,000. Musk declared that insane and that it wasn’t more complicated than a garage door opener, and told one of his engineers to make it for $5,000.

After a few years, SpaceX was making in-house 70% of the components of its rockets.