David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…I'm learning in realtime from you this episode. It's a very good thing for SpaceX that this is how it should work out. Great thing for SpaceX and the world that he did not do that. Everyone else though is in. Cantrell is in for a few months. He ends up leaving a few months later. In June 2002, they officially incorporated Space Exploration Technologies. The very next month in July 2002, eBay buys PayPal for $1.5 billion. Elon, now, doesn't just have a liquid public stock currency. He has $180+ million in straight-up cash that he gets out of PayPal. Remember, he's been ousted three or four times from the two companies he started in the past. This is going to be his life's work, his next company. He says I don't want any chance that anyone can kick me out here ever again. I'm not taking on any outside investors. I'm putting my entire fortune into this. I will fund it all myself. It's mine. The super interesting thing, Ben, as we're texting about this, all told over the life of SpaceX, I think Elon has only put in about $100 million into the company versus Bezos' Blue Origin puts in $1 billion a year and many other people that have entered into the space industry just became money pets. Let's plant that seed because yes, SpaceX is very revenue-funded instead of equity funded. Of course, it's very equity-funded, too. This is a company that has a $35 billion valuation today and has over $3 billion invested in it from outside of Elon.…

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