ELON MUSK – The Über Entrepreneur’s Next Ideas

You already know it all about the fabled “Über Entrepreneur” (as he was billed by the Churchill Club yesterday) Elon Musk. How he dropped out of the graduate program in Physics at Stanford after only two days, how he co-founded PayPal and was the largest shareholder when it sold to EBAY in 2002 for 1.5 billion, and all about his latest accomplishments and adventures with Tesla and SpaceX.

At ValleyZen we like to report on what we don’t know about yet, what’s new, what is in the imaginative space. In a Sumi-e painting that’s like the negative space, the space between brush strokes where all possibilities lie. People in Silicon Valley are comfortable with things that haven’t been defined yet and with what is uncertain. That’s exciting.

Yesterday we met with Elon and had a chance to talk with him before his talk at the Churchill Club in Mountain View on the Microsoft campus. In a black velvet jacket and worn down jeans he was cool and softspoken arriving in his dark blue Tesla.

What’s next for Elon?

During the microsecond of free time in your day, what are you dreaming of now?

“My mind is full, with SpaceX and Tesla and family matters, but….

• At some point in the future it would be interesting to take a look at fusion. Smaller scale fusion, fusion at a nano scale.

• When driving to work on LA freeways I think about an idea for a double-decker highway…to create prefabricated sections of a highway, a very efficient metallic structure that can withstand the worst earthquake. The trick would be to make it light and strong and inexpensive. I think I know how to do that. It’s relatively mundane but it would have a huge impact on people’s lives.

• I also have this idea for an electric plane that could be pretty cool – an electric supersonic plane. That’s a lot of batteries…But I have been thinking about the plane more than I should. I should probably ban that from my mind,” he said.

Adeo Ressi, TheFunded.com

ValleyZen also had a great chat with Adeo Ressi, founding member of TheFunded.com and a Trustee of the X Prize Foundation. Although we can’t repeat the conversation, we can say Adeo always has great insights about what’s next as well. Plus he’s dresses sharp in textured black hues.

Kudos to the Churchill Club

Kudos to Karen Tucker, CEO of the Churchill Club and Marcia Nguyen for a seamless evening.