My First Million

The most simplified breakdown of the SpaceX IPO on the internet

My First Million·June 15, 2026

OVERVIEW

This episode of My First Million podcast provides a simplified breakdown of the SpaceX IPO. The hosts discuss various facets of SpaceX’s business, including its core components, historical context, and future aspirations. The conversation aims to make the complex world of SpaceX accessible to a broad audience, focusing on relatable analysis rather than highly technical financial jargon.

KEY TOPICS

  • SpaceX IPO and its significance.
  • Elon Musk's motivation for starting SpaceX.
  • SpaceX's main business segments: Launches, Starlink, X (formerly Twitter), and XAI.
  • TerraFab and chip manufacturing for AI.
  • The concept of data centers in space.
  • The challenge of building Starship.
  • SpaceX's business model and growth drivers.
  • The potential impact of SpaceX on various industries.
  • The valuation of SpaceX and the concept of "Elon Ratio."
  • The role of individual investors and the "cult of Elon."
  • Financial figures and growth projections for SpaceX and its subsidiaries.
  • The long-term vision of making life multi-planetary.
  • The benefits of being an early investor in high-growth companies.
  • The importance of having an optimistic mindset in technology and innovation.

MAIN TAKEAWAYS

  • SpaceX is engaged in multiple ambitious ventures, including reusable rockets, global satellite internet (Starlink), AI development (XAI), and advanced manufacturing (TerraFab).
  • Elon Musk’s initial motivation for SpaceX was a perceived lack of progress in NASA’s Mars exploration, leading him to build his own rocket company.
  • Starlink is a highly profitable and fast-growing internet service, especially valuable in remote and underserved areas, as well as for mobile connectivity.
  • The idea of "data centers in space" is presented as a solution to regulatory hurdles and high costs associated with terrestrial data centers, leveraging solar power and natural cooling in space.
  • The long-term vision for SpaceX extends to making humanity a multi-planetary species and mining asteroids for resources, reflecting a bold, futuristic outlook.
  • The valuation of SpaceX is highly polarized, with some seeing it as overvalued based on traditional metrics, while others invest based on faith in Elon Musk’s vision and execution.
  • SpaceX’s strategy of constantly innovating and reducing costs in space launches has created a significant competitive advantage, enabling its other ventures.
  • The company's future success heavily relies on the development and successful deployment of Starship, a next-generation reusable rocket, and the viability of space-based data centers.
  • The podcast highlights the significant wealth creation for early investors and employees, including cafeteria workers, through stock options, emphasizing the transformative potential of such ventures.
  • The hosts emphasize the importance of an optimistic and resilient mindset, particularly in the face of skepticism and challenges, as a driving force behind innovation and success.

NOTABLE QUOTES

"This ain’t that."
"Two idiots and an S1."
"We promise to be the most relatable analysis you're gonna get."
"I guess I'll build my own."
"Elon and I are basically the same thing just if he is, you know, he's 200 million times richer and 200 IQ points higher. But very similar."
"They do so much stuff and frankly, I don't entirely know how it all contributes to the same thing."
"What do you say SpaceX does? SpaceX builds rockets."
"Let's take man to Mars. So how do we become a multi-planetary species?"
"We just took this other once in a lifetime vacation."
"Going to space, going to the moon, that's a freaking inspiring thing."
"Let's take life to Mars."
"He tries to buy rockets from the guys in Russia like a old ICBM missile basically and uh they laugh at him, they sort of spit in his face."
"Like any good entrepreneur does, doesn't take no for an answer."
"The cult of Elon."
"Price to Elon ratio."
"Wow, so it's 100 times revenue? Like that's pretty insane."
"A trillion is 32,000 years."
"Betting against Elon's technical ability has proven to be like the most unprofitable bet you can make."
"I wanted to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the unsexy business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast."
"All of these, he's just made a super bed."
"Launches they dominate. They're like the Google search of launching rockets."
"Starlink basically gives you internet anywhere."
"Starlink is is very very interesting as like, that's the cash cow of this business."
"What if we funded a mission to take, I think it was like a plant, like a little succulent or something, into space and it'll, you know, let's take life to Mars."
"What if we funded a mission to take, I think it was like a plant, like a little succulent or something, into space and it'll, you know, let's take life to Mars."
"The problem is literally just red tape."
"It is easier to figure out how to launch the heaviest rocket ever and take and build a data center in space than it is to get like, you know, Alameda County to approve of a data center in your backyard."
"The problem is he doesn't have enough users."
"He just turned it into Airbnb. He started renting out Colossus to Anthropic and to Google."
"He's really good at building the machine that builds the machine."
"He’s basically the what he's the best at is building factories at this point."
"The entire game is taking energy from the sun and turning those like photons basically, or electrons, into tokens for AI."
"If I could make this, you'd want it, right? And it's like, yes. Then the only question is, can I make it? And the answer for him has always been, yes."
"The words that are coming out of your mouth right now are are wild to me."
"I just like I've heard you talk German yesterday."
"It's just crazy how fast humans progress."
"How does TV work? And I'm like, honestly, I have no idea."
"Do you know when you invite someone to your party and then they bring that friend? Yeah. That's kind of that's kind of the Twitter problem right now."
"X advertising is at 1.8 billion now. It's down 100 million from last year. And it's half of what the ad revenue was before he bought it in 2021."
"The mission is to make life multi-planetary and understand the true nature of the universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars."
"Make life multi-planetary and make sure that we don't have the same fate as dinosaurs."
"Pessimists get to be right and optimists get to be rich."
"I've bet I've met a few doctors, surgeons that have like kind of a god complex. And in some ways it's like, look, if that's what it took to get you to become the best, you know, I actually want my, you know, my heart surgeon or my brain surgeon to have a bit of a god complex, a bit of a savior complex."
"I don't mind that he's got a bit of a god complex, a bit of a savior complex. It's okay. That's what it takes for to be like, hey, you're already the richest man on earth."
"I'm sorry, you know, I'm sorry. This wasn't this wasn't the episode for you if you hate Elon. Uh, hate to break it to you. Maybe the thumbnail should have given that away, but if you made it all the way here and you hate watched this whole thing, I'm sorry."
"It's not that, oh, they're different types of people, they resist it and we don't. It's we are in the bubble where you hear about people doing these remarkable things. It becomes normalized. It feels possible."
"It's like the Roger Bannister four-minute mile type of thing. Like once you hear that somebody cured their own cancer with AI, guess what? You're going to approach somebody, you know, a loved one with cancer, uh, very differently than you would have if you just not heard that that was possible."
"One of the greatest things about hopefully listening to this podcast but also just generally being around ambitious, interesting, innovative people is that you get that normalization of what's not normal. You get to hear you get to you you get your frame broken enough where you will in your own situations of life approach it slightly differently. And you know, because I think part of this is like, you know, it's just Elon glazing and it's SpaceX glazing, but like another part of it is like, damn, this dude literally called his shot 20 years ago."
"Learn, you know, self-taught, learned how to, you know, build rockets and recruit this team and did what was, you know, pretty much impossible and then today's, you know, the biggest tech IPO in history, you you have to, you know, respect that and also like forget about how good it is for them."
"But like, let it break your frame a little bit so that in your life when opportunity strike or an idea comes, you don't count yourself out. You don't, you don't, you don't miss that opportunity. You don't, you don't ignore what's in front of you and you actually take action."
"One of my biggest takeaways of living in Silicon Valley for 10 years was to use the word mostly and almost more often than not. And what I mean by that is, I used to say things like, that will never happen, or that cannot happen, or that's impossible. And then I and then I started changing this to where I see something that thinks unlikely, I and I I almost always try to say, it almost never works, but sometimes it does."
"Or like, you know, it it mostly ends this way instead of saying, that will fail and it will end this way. I've seen this so many times where I think in my head like, uh, two black and white of like, if A then B, you know, if someone has this idea, it cannot work, or this cannot happen. And that and you have to train yourself to always think in like, um, not absolutes, but like, the odds are this, but those are still like odds that like if enough people try, it could work."
"Well, speaking of the impossible, uh, one thing I wanted to bring up was the uh, his pay package. I didn't know this until I was digging in, so I thought it's kind of new new learning. Um, so you remember at Tesla when he had that like crazy Elon had that crazy pay package idea. And he was like, yeah, like if we if we become, you know, the world's most valuable car company by far, if we get to like, you know, 500 billion in value and we're delivering this many cars and we do this and we do this, then I get this like huge pay package. And if I don't, I get nothing."
"And it's like laughable when they sign it, they're like, yeah, dude, whatever, you do that. And then it happens and people freak out over it. Exactly. There's a compilation of people of mocking it, laughing, being like, this is ridiculous, never going to happen, blah, blah, blah. So ludicrous, but, you know, whatever."
"And then it happens and he gets the money and then a dude with eight shares sues him in Delaware and says, no, he, you know, that wasn't that wasn't he shouldn't that shouldn't have been approved. That's too generous. And it's like, dude, it was seen as impossible before. And he got stripped of the pay package and then blah, blah, blah. you know, he got ended up getting revoted in, reinstated, but the plaintiff was like, uh, nah ah. That that was basically the argument."
"Yes. It's insane. Have you seen what his pay package is here and he has like the same one? Um, okay, so let me just read this to you."
"So the very first one is called the Mars Award. So, Elon gets 1 billion shares in SpaceX. How much what what what many points is that? So it's going public at 135, uh, dollars."
"So that'd be 135 billion at today's value, but obviously if he did all this stuff, it would be worth a lot more than today's value. It would be total grants, uh, are like 750 billion dollars. That's his like hypothetical comp if he if he hits all these things. But now listen to what he's going to hit."
"Two things are required. One, the market cap has to grow to seven and a half trillion, which would be the most valuable company ever. And two, a permanent self-sustaining colony on Mars of at least 1 million people. Both have to happen for him to get paid."
"That's the Mars award. That's crazy. A million people living on Mars. The other one is the AI CEO award. So this is 300 million shares, so a third of that."
"This is kind of like the uh, like the consolation prize, you know what I mean? Like this is like a little ice cream he gets as a treat, which is the company goes to 6.5 trillion in value. And he's delivering 100 terawatts of compute per year from non-earth data centers. So he does the space data center thing and delivers 100 terawatts of compute per year. Now, you might be wondering, 100 terawatts, I don't really know how to put that in perspective."
"Guess how much, so he's trying to he gets if he does a hundred, he gets the award. Guess how much the total kind of current US uh, terawatt production is. I don't even know what a terawatt is. So, so we're talking like you said, 750, is that what you said? Uh, he wants, he if if he does a hundred, he gets the award. So what is that relative to all of the US. So he gets money at 100. What's the current US say? I don't know."
"Take a guess. Fifty. So that would be like if he doubled the the US total electric grid, that'd be pretty crazy, right? It's currently one terawatt. So we'd have to 100 X the entire US grid just to get this award. From space in from space data centers. Yes. From something that doesn't even exist and people don't even believe it's possible. So yeah. Goals. Yeah. He said big goals, I guess. Yeah."
"It's it's it's hard to fathom that. And if he does that, by the way, his base salary on the way is zero. I mean, he owns obviously a huge percentage of the company anyways, but like this is the additional grant he gets for continuing to work in the company."
"This is crazy, man. You I I it goes back to the fact that like the biggest risk is that he dies. That's the The biggest risk is that he dies. That's the biggest risk is that he dies. Like the biggest risk is that he doesn't like, if I'm a shareholder, I'm like, you you must have a dietitian, you must have a sleep coach. Like that's what we're talking here. Or is it like a John Jones situation where like the wildness that creates the fighter? You know what I mean? And if you if you put him on that, you know, sleep at 8:00 p.m. schedule, he's not Jon Jones anymore."
"Dude, I talked to um a person who trains professional athletes and he was like, it's so funny. I used to train these baseball players and the ones that were the most eager and did exactly what I said and came to me all the time and said, give me more. I want more. I want to do this. They almost always were never as good as the guys who were like eating M&M's or doing like eating eating poorly and like going to bed at late because they played video games on the night and they just show up. And like he was like, one guy made like a game winning shot and afterwards, I was like so excited. I ran up and high five them and he's like, what are you doing, man? He's like, you did the shot. He's like, oh, whatever, dude, who cares. And he like kept he's like the guys who cared, you know, treat them mean, keep them keen. The guys who cared the least amount and like tried not exactly tried, but like put brain space on like the effort were the best. And that maybe that's what's happening here. You know, the the the weirder that things are, the better that he's going to perform."
"Yeah. Which is which is but I mean, how crazy is it that when we hear this stuff, it's like, uh, like can he make Starship work, can he make it data center work? It's like, we think the higher risk is just that he dies. Like in the probabilities game or like, I don't know, the bigger risk seems like that. It's just it's you've learned so many times in a row, it's it's not wise to bet against. So I I don't think that like I'm a dumb idiot and I we should preface this before this episode. Don't listen to anything. But the one thing that is true is that he's a challenging person to bet against. And so all these science fiction things. I I I I think that he's bad at timelines, but I think he's good at doing it eventually."
"Um, okay. Well, the Glaze Fest is over. So if you hate Elon, we're sorry. It just this wasn't the episode for you if you hate Elon. Um, hate to break it to you. Maybe the thumbnail should have given that away, but if you made it all the way here and you hate watched this whole thing, I'm sorry. It's like, you know, we you know the that percentage of the population that uh they taste um, what is it like, the thing cilantro. So cilantro. It tastes like bleach to them like genetically. Um, this might have been the cilantro for some people."
"And I'm sorry if it was. All right, that's it. That's the pot. I feel like I could rule the world."
The provided content discusses investment opportunities in SpaceX without offering specific buy/sell recommendations or price targets from the hosts, but rather a discussion of its valuation and potential for growth. Therefore, an "INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES" section is not applicable in the requested format.

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