What you may have missed from the Uber talked event on Clubhouse, takeaways and fun facts with a plot twist:
A “snowy” usual pandemic Sunday (at least in NYC) suddenly turns into the hottest digital event, with Elon Musk joining a chatroom hosted on the trendsetting latest app on the net, Clubhouse, for 2 hours of entertaining, informative, and revealing banter with a grand finale.
With a max capacity of attendees at 5200 reached within seconds at 12.57 a.m., earlier than the start of the event, and later expanded to about 7k, we at Manintown thought of extending a few takeaways to our readers. The alarm clock set at 1 am, I was one of the lucky ones to join in and listen to Elon Musk’s conversation with the moderators, and it was all worth the effort. Topics of discussion as many as his many endeavors, including the final banter and quite the “entertaining ” unexpected plot twist.
With his profile pic set to one of his famous meme, “The short shorts,” a joke on Tesla stocks from the previous summer, Elon enters the room, setting a friendly tone ahead, claiming he is just trying to look “sexy.” For those who wonder, his sense of humor is, by far, one of my favorite discoveries during this event.
“Hey Elon here, can you hear me?”, Clubhouse is an audio app. The greeting made this geeky girl in love with anything space-related giggle with the thought of the unforgettable song by David Bowie. I found myself wondering if Elon was indeed calling us from Mars, already trying to get connected to the circa 5000 humans in the audience waiting for a signal from him to planet Earth. In all secret, it would not surprise me. This man has embarked on all the futuristic endeavors that we were hoping for in the Age of Aquarius. (yes, we are right in it).
Let’s explore what you may have missed in a summary of 6 fun facts: (and a plot twist)
Mars and the “holy grail of rocketry“
Elon spoke extensively of the mission of developing an alternative planet living on Mars, and his efforts to push forward this colossal project with Space-X. His insight on the future is that it will not be a luxury stay, not at least for the longest of time. When asked if his kids would ask him to go to Mars, he responded, “none of them so far wants to go.”
According to Musk, Space-X will possibly get the first people to Mars in probably five and half years.
“The Earth and Mars synch up every 26 months (approx. 1.5 years)” there are slots of time “when we can do Interplanetary transfers.” According to Musk, the rockets need to be fully and rapidly reusable, or in his own words, what is “the holy grail of rocketry,” and achieve what is now possible with regular aircraft, where the cost of air flight would be majorly covering the cost of fuel. That and local propellant production are, summarizing it, fundamental things that need to happen between now and then. The settlements will also be quite the austere environment for the first at least 3 or 4. Lots of work will have to be done. In brief, as expected, infrastructure to make it a livable place will require a long time. We are looking at about another 5 and a half years before that can be started.
Memes
Elon loves memes. He communicates through them; he dedicates some time off his busy schedule to producing or getting memes from what he called “meme dealers”. How funny is that? How cool is that? And it works. Elon’s memes talk to his audience, primarily on Twitter, where he was a pioneer with 10k followers at the time of his sign up. “People say I went crazy on Twitter, the fact is I started crazy on Twitter,” laughing along with his own funny jokes.
To Start ups and new entrepreneurs – a word of advice from Elon
There is something Elon said that I would not easily or soon forget about being a startup entrepreneur. It is something that entirely resonates with me as co-founder of a young creative agency, and that may also be the answer needed to dissolve a million questions we hear from new company owners all the time. It was:
“If you need encouraging words, don’t do a startup,” the drive to do a thing as Elon has done, founding and guiding multiple ventures, comes entirely from a compulsion to do it, he states. It compared it to a sort of mad demon in the skull.
“Seeing is believing”, he tells us of when he used to sleep on the factory floor (which he still does in times of crisis). People would see him there, and there would be no excuse, and hopefully, they would see also that “if he could take that level of pain, then they would do the same.” No doubt we are talking about a “leading by example” kind of leader here.
The vaccine distribution- “I am not an anti-vaxxer”
Elon is quite passionate about the topic. He suggests that it would work better to expedite the process with less limiting procedures on prioritized categories, entailing opening the vaccine distribution to a first-come, first-serve basis at CVS, Walgreens, like the flu vaccines. Also, we will have more vaccines that we may need by the end of the year, and we will have an excess of them. The good news is more vaccines are on the way. Good news seems to be quite on the way too.
Neuralink is hiring
A shout out was also given from Musk to professionals in AI and those who have worked on phones, robots to join Neuralink, the brain implant company he started in 2017. He then retweeted it, after leaving the conversation also on his account @elonmusk. The company seems to have made quite the progress in its research, and it aims in the first stages to be a way to assist people with brain and spine injuries.
Stocks and Crypto- Bitcoin is a good thing.
Before his intervention, the joke on the net was that most of the audience’s followers would be having Clubhouse on the phone and be on the laptop staring at their portfolios. Elon is known for being a Bitcoin supporter. As expected, he reconfirmed it in the chat, also admitting, “I am late to the party, but I am a supporter of Bitcoin,” probably due to the coin being more and more soon accepted by traditional finance players. With Musk’s track record of success in all he puts his mind to, it seems that Bitcoin may be something certainly crypto to keep an eye on.
Dogecoin also made its appearance. The fun coin of the crypto bunch, Elon explains that was meant as a joke to make fun of cryptocurrencies, but he adds on, “But faith loves irony, and the most entertaining outcoming is often most likely,” he also jokes. Dogecoin has experienced a bullish, quite unexpected wave in the past week, and it seems quite certain that despite its comical origin, it has made itself known amongst the crypto community.
Plot Twist- “Spill the beans man- The people demand an answer”
I have to say this CEO-to-CEO was, without a doubt, quite the plot twist and the highlight and the perfect end to the event. As heard in the news, the trading app Robinhood limiting trade activities to its customers of some stocks in the past few days. Gamestop and AMC, Elon asked a couple of direct questions to Vladimir Tenev, whom he introduced as “Vlad the stock impaler,” CEO of Robinhood. Elon’s is a no-frills, straight to the point, no going in circle attitude and communication style. With straight-shooter, truth seeker Elon calling on stage the CEO of Robinhood, a series of direct and to-the-point questions seemed inevitable in retrospect. Questions on behalf of the people, and investors, like what exactly happened last week? “the people want to know.”
It was quite the show. It seems that Elon on Clubhouse is here to stay, and we look forward to hearing more from him.