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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

Imagine what we could do if it was possible to identify and fund a thousand Elon Musks with hundreds of millions each?

He's eliminating gas vehicles, improving solar adoption, fixing rural internet, improving space science, making life interplanetary, etc.

It may be that Elon Musk types are extremely rare but I doubt they're as nearly as rare as most people think and we only need a thousand out of billions. The thing that makes him extremely rare, I think, is that he lucked upon a windfall of $200+ million from PayPal, a startup success that he had almost nothing to do with.

Now that I think about it, an Elon Musk Prize funded and designed by Elon Musk would be viable. His current net worth could fund 600+ Elon Musks. Elon Musk could create more Elon Musks...it's almost too simple!

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Well, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Fellowship but there aren't many of them and the funding is a few orders of magnitude less. Perhaps somewhat made up for in social network/connections.

I've wanted to read about what happened if anyone ever decided to apply Asimov's filter at earlier ages. His filter was simply having interest in particular science fiction. https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/1963-asimov

I think the amount makes all the difference. A $200 million windfall is enough for FU money AND and investing. SpaceX and Tesla would not have existed, or would have failed, had Elon Musk not have his own fortune to call upon. He had planned to invest a portion but ended up needing all of his money.

that's to identify and fund a thousand Peter Thiels. I'm not sure we want that

Peter Thiel is a big part of why PayPal succeeded. PayPal enabled Elon Musk. I think Thiel also invested in various Elon Musk projects, so we probably do want more Peter Thiels.

He also lucked out on inheriting fortunes from his parents diamond mines. But, there are lots of people who inherit fortunes and do nothing with it. There are lots of people with drive and intelligence comparable to Elon Musk who don't have the privilege necessary to accomplish anything. Seems we're still a long way away from a meritocracy.

Maybe you're thinking of someone else?

“You get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after awhile,” he said. “And of course pasta and a green pepper and a big thing of sauce. And that can go pretty far, too.

“So it’s like, ‘Oh, okay, if I can live for a dollar a day then at least from a food cost standpoint, well it’s pretty easy to earn like $30 in a month anyway, so I’ll probably be okay.’ “

This isn’t the only example of a young Musk roughing it. When he started his first company, Zip2, he and his brother slept in their office instead of renting an apartment. They showered at the YMCA.

“We were so hard up, we had just one computer so the Web site was up during the day and I was coding at night,” Musk recalled during a commencement speech at USC. “Seven days a week, all the time.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/03/2...

This is bollocks and the sort of mythology that CEO's also love to create about their "beginnings." Read up on Elon's family background and father, he didn't grow up on a farm or in an orphanage in darkest Congo... he lived a well-off and privileged childhood.

His father was a seed investor in Zip2.

"We started Zip2 with ~$2k from me plus my overclocked home-built PC, ~$5k from my bro & ~$8k from Greg Kouri (such a good guy — he is greatly missed).

My Dad provided 10% of a ~$200k angel funding round much later, but by then risk was reduced & round would’ve happened anyway."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211064937004589056

Also relevant in that thread:

"He didn’t own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt. I couldn’t even afford a 2nd PC at Zip2, so programmed at night & website only worked during day. Where is this bs coming from?"

"This is a pretty awful lie. I left South Africa by myself when I was 17 with just a backpack & suitcase of books. Worked on my Mom’s cousin’s farm in Saskatchewan & a lumber mill in Vancouver. Went to Queens Univ with scholarship & debt, then same to UPenn/Wharton & Stanford."

>Worked on my Mom’s cousin’s farm in Saskatchewan & a lumber mill in Vancouver.

This is pretty intense myth-making. He worked 4 days at a lumber mill.

Not a rebuttal of the Zip2 seed investment point, but the ability to leave SA when he was 17 for CA/USA with a suitcase of books is not something most South Africans would be able to do. Kudos to him for doing it, but most of the population of SA wouldn't have even seen that many books.

It's pretty clear that Elon was from a wealthy*N background so the details are kind of irrelevant. Who bought the plain ticket?

There is also security, it's easier to take risks with strong familial support and fallback. Not saying this is a bad thing at all, it just is what it is.

This old bullshit anti-Musk propaganda nonsense again. Some people will just do anything to prove that actually there are no special people. Everything is just privilege, we would have 100s of Elon Musk if only not for income inequality.

And if reality doesn't actually line up with that, hey why not just invent a bunch of stuff.

We can do this infinity. Somebody that grew up poor in the US has success. Well, he had food as a child, 100s of starving African could have done the same, but 'who don't have the privilege necessary'.

So lets not give credit to anybody ever. If you were not a slave in Somilia at 13 that swam across the ocean by yourself and then build a new technology from the ground up, you deserve nothing and you are just one of those no good privileged people.

> a thousand Elon Musks

This may well be his next project.

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