Valuetainment - December 19, 2025


"Musk Turned $180M Into $600B" - Elon’s Empire SKYROCKETS Before SpaceX Goes Public


Episode Stats

Length

18 minutes

Words per Minute

207.74803

Word Count

3,786

Sentence Count

293

Misogynist Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Musk's fortune soars above $600 billion on new SpaceX's valuation.
00:00:08.800 You ready for this, folks?
00:00:10.200 Elon Musk is about to be a trillionaire.
00:00:14.040 Okay, this is page nine.
00:00:15.380 Do I have page nine?
00:00:17.760 He's underpaid.
00:00:18.880 He's underpaid.
00:00:19.580 You think he's underpaid?
00:00:20.720 100%.
00:00:21.200 I don't know if I disagree.
00:00:22.420 So what is the new deal?
00:00:23.780 The new deal they have with him is if he's able to get this number above $8.5 trillion,
00:00:30.000 I think he's going to end up getting, what do you call it, a trillion dollars in pay?
00:00:34.800 He has to get the valuation above $8.50.
00:00:38.200 But let me read this to you.
00:00:39.060 This is SpaceX for you.
00:00:40.080 That's with Tesla.
00:00:41.240 It's not even with this company.
00:00:42.960 So Musk's wealth has reached over $600 billion.
00:00:45.180 World's richest person in the world is now worth $638.
00:00:48.300 According to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index, the SpaceX had valuation of $800 billion in an hour share sale,
00:00:54.620 a deal that makes the Starbase, Texas-based rocket maker the world's most valuable private company.
00:01:00.940 Musk is its founder and CEO.
00:01:03.380 Musk's 42% stake is now worth $317 billion after a liquidity discount applied to private companies.
00:01:10.020 For the first time, an individual has been calculated to be worth more than $600 billion by Bloomberg's wealth index.
00:01:16.180 Musk, 54, reached the $100 billion mark in 2020 as the value of Tesla, Inc., where he was a CEO.
00:01:21.960 And now you're talking about he was worth just $4.8 billion when he was added to the index in 2013.
00:01:27.480 By the way, just, he was worth just, like, it's just a $4.8 billion out of a guy in 2013.
00:01:33.160 Pop, what's going on with this guy?
00:01:35.200 Well, if you think about how capitalism should work, whoever creates the most value for everybody else should end up with the most resources, right?
00:01:41.840 Should end up with the most money.
00:01:42.940 Yep.
00:01:43.940 Name somebody who's done it better than him.
00:01:45.820 The stat I just constantly cannot get out of my head is Elon Musk, for 30 years, for three decades, he has averaged the creation of a multibillion-dollar company every five years for 30 years.
00:01:56.340 There's nobody in the world who's ever done that before.
00:01:58.300 It is incredible.
00:01:59.260 And it's not like, oh, let me go do a roll-up of everybody else's businesses, and it's like financial engineering.
00:02:03.880 It is, from scratch, we're going to build a product to solve something at scale.
00:02:07.100 That's insane.
00:02:07.560 It's crazy.
00:02:08.420 So who should be richer than him, right?
00:02:11.280 He's created more value for anybody else.
00:02:12.980 Should there be a cap on how wealthy he should be?
00:02:15.680 No.
00:02:15.980 I actually think that if you give him money, right?
00:02:20.540 So think of it this way.
00:02:21.640 When he sold PayPal, he got $180 million.
00:02:24.700 He took that money and turned it into $600 billion.
00:02:27.600 We should be asking ourselves, how do we give this guy more money?
00:02:31.640 I don't know if you saw the recent interview.
00:02:33.320 He was asked if you lost all your money, somebody took it all away from you, and you had to start over again.
00:02:38.340 How would you make $1,000 or something, right?
00:02:40.560 Kind of a normal interview question.
00:02:41.860 And you expect them, eh, I'd go do a lemonade stand or something.
00:02:44.960 And he just looks at the interviewer and he says, well, I don't think it would take very long for me to make money back because I would just go ask people to give me some, and I would turn it into more.
00:02:54.620 And he's like, I've been pretty good at doing that.
00:02:56.400 And his point being that people start to understand this guy is good at, if you give him resources, he will come back with many, many more resources for you.
00:03:05.060 And so if you look at SpaceX, there's only two companies in the world, is my understanding, that have reusable rockets.
00:03:11.960 And the second one, which is Blue Origin, just got it done after 20-something years.
00:03:17.680 Elon is average.
00:03:18.640 I don't know how many rocket launches they're doing on an annual basis now, but it's almost like one a day, I think.
00:03:23.940 I mean, it is crazy how fast they have gone from this technology doesn't exist to being able to do that.
00:03:29.220 And now he's talking about Starlink.
00:03:31.620 He's going to beam the internet down.
00:03:33.140 So if you control the internet, that's pretty valuable.
00:03:35.120 And now he's even talking about doing data centers in space.
00:03:37.700 And so you start to see all this come together and you're like, wait a minute.
00:03:40.340 This guy is basically getting emboldened to be even bigger, to go even crazier.
00:03:47.280 But maybe that's what the world needs.
00:03:49.360 Who else would sit here and say, let's put data centers in space?
00:03:52.360 Maybe the guy who was like, let's launch a rocket and bring it back down to Earth and use it again.
00:03:56.100 Do you think this whole civilization on a different planet is a reality with Elon?
00:04:04.340 I think that he genuinely would like to accomplish it.
00:04:07.520 I think that he understands there's a lot of physics involved in being able to do something.
00:04:15.040 But when you look at the steps that he's taken, it's almost like he pushes from an innovation standpoint,
00:04:22.280 figures out how to make a business out of it.
00:04:23.800 He pushes again innovation-wise, figures out how to make a business.
00:04:26.500 But the businesses are almost being used to drive profit so that he can then fund the next step of innovation.
00:04:33.160 And so one of the things he's been talking about, I'm blown away by the fact that in today's day and age,
00:04:38.700 you can go on YouTube or the internet and you can listen to the world's richest man,
00:04:43.700 the best entrepreneur of our lifetime, in his own words, talk for two hours.
00:04:47.500 A hundred years ago, that was impossible, right?
00:04:50.320 I mean, maybe you read in the newspaper or something and you had no clue, it was a one-line interview.
00:04:55.340 What he's been talking about is all this focus on small reactors, all this stuff.
00:05:00.040 He's basically like, stop fooling around with this stuff.
00:05:02.720 Let's go put things in space and harness 24-7 access to the sun, which has this really powerful energy source,
00:05:08.600 and will be able to use that to power both Earth and space.
00:05:13.000 I'm not a scientist.
00:05:13.860 I don't know what's going to end up being the right thing.
00:05:15.340 But what I do know is you start talking like that, why is the company only worth $1.5 trillion?
00:05:23.360 Right?
00:05:23.680 You almost start to think to yourself, wait a second.
00:05:25.800 I remember when people in the venture community were buying SpaceX stock at $10 billion, $20 billion valuation.
00:05:31.380 How big could it get?
00:05:33.060 There's not $100 billion companies.
00:05:35.520 It's $1.5 trillion.
00:05:36.400 We come back and do this again in 10 years, $10 billion, $10 trillion, $20 trillion.
00:05:42.720 How big could it get, right?
00:05:44.760 Yeah.
00:05:45.120 A lot of it has to do with how, to me, the operator better be protected because he's becoming more powerful than most countries as an individual.
00:05:57.940 The amount of influence he has as an individual, not only financially,
00:06:03.560 because the difference between him and a lot of, like when you said Google,
00:06:07.680 if Sergey Brin and his partner went into the podcast or they tweeted something out or posted something on Facebook
00:06:16.120 or something on their Instagram account versus Elon goes and tweets something.
00:06:20.400 He's not on Instagram.
00:06:21.580 He's not on Facebook.
00:06:22.600 He's not on YouTube.
00:06:23.400 If he just goes tweet something, what is his reach with people?
00:06:27.660 How much of a disruptor is he?
00:06:29.460 What can he change?
00:06:30.880 So to me, you know, it's a very different animal of what he's doing, but he is more powerful than a lot of people.
00:06:37.660 So he better have the best security in the world.
00:06:40.120 He better be protected.
00:06:41.660 He better be taking care of himself.
00:06:43.180 He better have the right people.
00:06:44.620 Like the smartest of the smartest and the most brutal people better be protecting this guy to make sure he sticks around long term.
00:06:51.280 Tom, thoughts on Elon?
00:06:52.640 Well, first of all, I agree.
00:06:54.920 And second of all, I think he is crazily underpaid.
00:06:58.720 If you just did a simple, you know, when you talk numbers that are so big that are beyond comprehension,
00:07:06.240 you get an emotional reaction because the emotional reaction comes from the inability to comprehend.
00:07:11.660 So when the average person thinks a trillion dollars, they're thinking about that from the perspective of a working person that's got good skills,
00:07:21.960 that's out there trying to make a living, and they really can't fathom it.
00:07:25.640 So the knee-jerk reaction is – which the politicos use is that.
00:07:31.020 On the other side of it, I just look at commission-based theory.
00:07:33.660 And commission-based theory says, okay, everything you invent as a founder, a founder's share after dilution at series D, series E, usually hovers around 27.5%.
00:07:45.760 So if you take – right, you go series A, series B, series C, D, and you just look at that.
00:07:51.640 You say, okay, well, let's just lock them at 30%, assuming all these companies, and then just add it up.
00:07:58.060 And it's like commission-based theory, and then you add it up, and you go, wow, that's not so crazy.
00:08:03.200 And I look at it, and I say, that's low because he didn't have to do a series A and give up 20%.
00:08:09.060 He didn't have to do a series B and give up 15% and then give up 12.5% and then give up 10%.
00:08:14.640 The typical flow, he didn't have to do that.
00:08:17.860 And so therefore his commission rate is higher.
00:08:19.780 And you look at it, and you say, wait a minute, I think he's already a trillionaire because when I look at them saying, well, and we apply the private company discount, this is not a private company in a traditional sense.
00:08:32.280 This guy walks up to Goldman the same way IBM walks up to Goldman and says, I need $100 billion in bonds.
00:08:41.080 IBM makes that phone call, and they say, what are you doing?
00:08:43.600 Well, we're doing this thing cloud in the sky and big blue or whatever they call their thing, and they get it.
00:08:48.600 But Elon Musk can do the same thing.
00:08:50.760 So he's not really a private company.
00:08:52.620 So when you apply a private company discount, I think he's already a $1.5 trillion guy.
00:08:57.460 I think he's already there.
00:08:59.540 Yeah, I've been saying this guy's going to be a trillionaire in the next two to three years for some time.
00:09:04.640 I think he is a unique, very unique guy, very, very unique guy on what we have right now as an operator.
00:09:11.920 It's not easy to handle pressure of one company, one board, one investor times the amount he has then to attract and hire people, then to have people move from areas to come to you because they want to work with you and run with you.
00:09:27.080 That's a lot of different moving parts that you got.
00:09:29.560 You got to plot the hell out of it.
00:09:30.560 From an operator to another operator, I have so many friends that ask me, why are you operating?
00:09:35.800 Take your money and just invest and have a better life and stop dealing with the pressures of hiring.
00:09:42.100 If you love it, you freaking love being in the arena.
00:09:45.500 There's something about building businesses.
00:09:47.880 There's something about building businesses.
00:09:49.860 It sucks.
00:09:50.700 It's hard.
00:09:51.260 It's challenging.
00:09:51.980 But if you love the game, you love the game.
00:09:54.460 Nobody plays the game and loves the game more than this guy.
00:09:57.360 You got to respect them.
00:09:58.080 Brandon, thoughts on this?
00:09:59.360 Yeah, just in terms of value creation, look at what NASA has created over the last 10 years, given $228 billion.
00:10:06.140 Then look at what SpaceX has created, given $20 billion over the last year.
00:10:09.260 So it's wasted taxpayer money going towards what?
00:10:11.920 So everybody who works for NASA, for the most part, is paid with taxpayer money.
00:10:15.540 And then Elon's creating jobs for people and then creating a much better product that's going to take us to a place where we could potentially harness the energy of the sun.
00:10:24.160 Which, by the way, I'm not sure if this is the exact step.
00:10:27.980 I heard that if you harness all the energy from the sun for just one day, you could power the entire world for, like, 1,000 years.
00:10:34.720 Because we don't even come close to, like, harnessing the full energy of the sun in a day.
00:10:38.020 So if he starts flirting with that, then, yeah, we have infinite energy.
00:10:41.640 So, yeah, most valuable thing you could possibly do.
00:10:45.080 And I think he's going to have the most powerful private army in the world in a couple years when he gets his robot fleet going.
00:10:50.400 So I think his security will be good with that.
00:10:53.000 Yeah, I appreciate the NASA comment.
00:10:54.420 But just look at this.
00:10:55.460 The Department of Transportation under Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg attempted to build charging stations.
00:11:00.700 Attempted to be entrepreneurial to build charging stations.
00:11:02.960 And look at the multibillion-dollar bill that the American people paid.
00:11:08.480 And I do not think they built their 50th station.
00:11:11.180 Do you think when he went into Doge and he did what he did with Doge, do you think some of his long-term motives were revealed?
00:11:23.180 Like, do you think he thinks that was a good move?
00:11:25.840 Do you think he thinks it was a right move for him or no?
00:11:29.280 He got a lot from that.
00:11:30.400 I think that if he could go in and the only goal was to make the government efficient, he would have been very successful.
00:11:40.240 What I think he realized was there's a lot of people who don't want it to be efficient.
00:11:44.600 There's a lot of people who are actually benefiting from the waste, the abuse, the fraud, all this stuff, right?
00:11:49.140 I mean, if you look at the Minnesota situation, I mean, it's just crazy.
00:11:52.080 And some of it is not even economic, right?
00:11:53.960 Some of it is just I don't want to offend anybody.
00:11:56.760 So I know you're doing something bad, but I'm going to let you keep doing it type thing.
00:11:59.900 So you can't take his skill set, his expertise of going in.
00:12:06.600 I mean, you ever seen the visual of the rocket engine and how it's like really complex and then all the iterations and eventually it's like this beautiful, very sleek, simple thing, right?
00:12:14.800 That's basically what we want to do to the government.
00:12:16.100 But you can't do that because there's a bunch of people at their hand in the cookie jar.
00:12:18.980 Now, I know a number of people who are close with Elon, and I think that they regret all of the wasted time, right?
00:12:28.560 If you think about like what they could have accomplished instead of spending their time doing that.
00:12:31.840 But at the same time, I think that he understands having a monopoly on attention is a very powerful thing.
00:12:38.000 You know, him and Trump, I think, are very similar in that sense.
00:12:40.120 And so Elon Musk is more famous today than he was before, even if some portion of those new people don't like him.
00:12:45.780 But remember when they were protesting outside the Tesla showrooms?
00:12:50.680 They were setting on fire.
00:12:52.160 They were saying he was, you know, a fascist, all this crazy stuff.
00:12:54.820 Stocks at an all-time high.
00:12:56.960 So in a weird way, it actually didn't have the long-term impact that, you know, Tim Wall standing on stage screaming and yelling about the stocks going down.
00:13:03.640 I think it's doubled since then.
00:13:04.500 We ran after party in D.C.
00:13:06.020 I don't know if it was inauguration.
00:13:07.200 I don't know what it was.
00:13:07.980 Was it inauguration?
00:13:09.340 Yeah, it was inauguration week.
00:13:11.020 Inauguration.
00:13:11.400 We're at this house.
00:13:12.660 And Rob, were you with us?
00:13:14.120 Yes.
00:13:14.400 Were you at the house?
00:13:14.960 Yeah, so we're at this house.
00:13:16.880 How do you describe this house?
00:13:18.000 Like a party house.
00:13:19.100 Like it was Dwight Howard's previous house.
00:13:20.640 Like a bachelor pad.
00:13:21.560 It was Dwight Howard's previous.
00:13:23.860 It's exactly a bachelor pad.
00:13:25.620 Like where you like to live.
00:13:27.760 And an awesome word gets said that Elon's coming to the party.
00:13:31.760 Great.
00:13:33.660 My son is there.
00:13:35.060 Tom and my son are on the rooftop screaming at the fascist.
00:13:38.800 I come out.
00:13:40.280 I come out.
00:13:41.280 I'm trying to find my son.
00:13:42.680 I'm like, he's either making out with somebody or he's got a bad influence.
00:13:45.900 Let me go make sure he's not being, you know, taking advantage of it.
00:13:48.360 Because at the time he was 12 years old.
00:13:49.840 Yeah, 12 years old.
00:13:50.540 I thought what we did was funny.
00:13:51.700 We got up on the roof and we yelled back at the people.
00:13:54.440 And we sang to them the old John Lennon song.
00:13:57.600 All we are saying is give fascism a chance.
00:14:03.120 And they're screaming at Tom.
00:14:05.340 By the way, the rooftop's probably five stories high.
00:14:09.100 And they're cursing Tom and my son.
00:14:11.340 And they're just.
00:14:11.560 All we are saying.
00:14:12.280 And so anyways, afterwards, we decide to leave.
00:14:14.580 We go downstairs.
00:14:16.100 We have security with us.
00:14:17.540 And there's, I don't know, 40 cops outside.
00:14:20.880 One guy starts spitting on my security guard.
00:14:23.660 And he lands one on him.
00:14:25.040 And they arrested him right there.
00:14:26.340 They took him.
00:14:26.680 It was pretty nasty on what happened.
00:14:28.380 Because that time, you know, Elon is coming in.
00:14:31.180 And he's doing what he's doing.
00:14:32.260 Yeah, did you find a house or no?
00:14:33.920 That's a good security guard.
00:14:34.920 He's willing to take one for you.
00:14:36.140 Is that the house, Rob?
00:14:37.900 Yep.
00:14:38.320 That's the house.
00:14:39.060 That's the rooftop.
00:14:39.560 So visualize Tom and my 13-year-old son all the way up top right there.
00:14:44.580 Exactly where it's funny.
00:14:46.000 Screaming at these guys and singing.
00:14:47.420 I'm like, what kind of an influence are you, Tom?
00:14:48.900 I thought you were going to teach these guys some good things.
00:14:50.820 But who knows?
00:14:51.760 Maybe they both have an edge of time.
00:14:52.540 Pico said he had a very good time.
00:14:53.520 He did have a very good time.
00:14:54.880 By the way, this is the engine you were talking about, Pomp.
00:14:56.580 So when Pomp talked about it, this is the engine on how the evolution, how far we're going.
00:15:00.480 And that's a visual of what they wanted to do to the government.
00:15:03.000 And, you know, obviously, they ran into a lot of roadblocks.
00:15:04.980 Well, the government employees prefer government people on the top prefer the left.
00:15:09.400 The establishment wants to further respond to the left, not the one to the right.
00:15:12.900 Because you don't want it to be efficient.
00:15:14.420 You want to be able to show we need 200,000 jobs.
00:15:17.220 Not really we can get this thing done with 890 people.
00:15:20.800 No, no, no.
00:15:21.420 We need 200,000 jobs of people who never show up to work.
00:15:25.000 Every time I'm at this campus and I'm in my conference room and I look to my left and I see 15 people walk into the other building.
00:15:30.700 They're getting a tour.
00:15:31.780 That means we've hired 15 new people.
00:15:33.820 Okay?
00:15:34.000 And last week we had 10 new hires that we had 45 job openings.
00:15:38.060 Right now we have 35 job openings.
00:15:39.700 We are hiring.
00:15:40.780 If you're somebody highly qualified, you're educated, you're hungry, you want to be part of something that you want to go on a run for 20 years.
00:15:48.580 A lot of people, if you just watch this, you think it's a podcast.
00:15:50.860 And by the way, you may have a son, a daughter, a friend, somebody that's fully, fully qualified that wants to be part of something and bring their talent to us.
00:15:58.140 Not an easy place to work.
00:15:59.200 But, you know, we work very, very hard at a place like this.
00:16:03.240 But if you think this is just a podcast, I want you to watch this clip to give you a little bit of a glimpse.
00:16:07.220 And then I'll give you a link to go apply for the 35 job openings that we have right now.
00:16:11.460 Go ahead, Rob.
00:16:12.440 Many times when people think about value attainment, all they think about is a podcast.
00:16:15.860 But it's a lot more than that.
00:16:17.240 It's nine companies working together on an 11-acre campus.
00:16:21.120 If I was to give you a virtual tour here, you'll see the HR department hiring, talent acquisition.
00:16:25.720 We have full-stack developers that are working on Manac and higher metrics.
00:16:29.440 We have a full-fledged events team that puts together events with thousands of people.
00:16:33.500 We have a merch department designing the latest product.
00:16:36.140 We just launched EFLB Shoes, made in Italy.
00:16:38.760 We have a marketing department.
00:16:40.360 And if you go to the complete opposite side of the building, 50, 60 people making calls, working for Bed David Consulting, sales, setters.
00:16:47.180 And then on the complete opposite side of the campus, there's a full-on production company with editors, shooters, creating content, doing podcasts.
00:16:53.740 Then you can drive down a couple miles and go to our private boardroom cigar lounge with members only.
00:16:58.760 Regardless of what it is, working at value attainment every day is a surprise.
00:17:02.900 You could be walking into work and right next to you is a governor, is a billionaire, is an athlete.
00:17:07.980 We are hiring aggressively.
00:17:09.900 But value attainment isn't for everybody.
00:17:11.320 For the right person, this could be the last company you ever work for.
00:17:16.120 So if you're watching this and you want to learn more, go to vt.com forward slash careers and apply now.
00:17:23.740 There you go.
00:17:25.160 Go to vt.com forward slash careers and apply now.
00:17:28.280 Rob, if we can put the link below as well, that will be wonderful.
00:17:32.380 Okay.
00:17:32.760 Can I say something about the people I met here?
00:17:34.100 Please, go for it.
00:17:35.120 Excellent.
00:17:35.560 A plus.
00:17:36.320 Every single person.
00:17:37.100 High energy, smart.
00:17:38.600 And I ask every place I go, ask them, what's it like working here?
00:17:42.160 What's the best part?
00:17:42.760 What's the worst part?
00:17:43.420 The woman that I was just talking with, you know what she told me?
00:17:45.980 She said, it's great to have a leader who's pushing forward.
00:17:48.620 There's a movement.
00:17:49.240 You feel like you're contributing, but it's fun as well.
00:17:52.280 It's very rare where you can work really hard and have fun.
00:17:54.580 I love that.
00:17:55.300 I love that.
00:17:55.840 Well, I appreciate you for saying that.
00:17:57.260 Yeah.
00:17:57.580 Whoever said that, can we get that?
00:17:58.620 I might apply.
00:17:59.200 I might apply.
00:18:00.660 She was a good sales pitch.
00:18:03.740 All right.
00:18:04.540 Bring your talents to just north of South Beach.
00:18:07.740 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.
00:18:10.660 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.