Principles: Life and Work

by Ray Dalio

Later on, when I asked him how he came to start his company SpaceX, the audacity of his answer startled me. “For a long time,” he answered, “I’ve thought that it’s inevitable that something bad is going to happen on a planetary scale—a plague, a meteor—that will require humanity to start over somewhere else, like Mars. One day I went to the NASA website to see what progress they were making on their Mars program, and I realized that they weren’t even thinking about going there anytime soon. “I had gotten $180 million when my partners and I sold PayPal,” he continued, “and it occurred to me that if I spent $90 million and used it to acquire some ICBMs from the former USSR and sent one to Mars, I could inspire the exploration of Mars.” When I asked him about his background in rocketry, he told me he didn’t have one. “I just started reading books,” he said. That’s how shapers think and act.