After chatting with Elon Musk a lot, Li Mu learned that it turned out that the bigwigs and large companies in Silicon Valley like to go to major science and engineering universities to find leaks.

The so-called Taobao leakage, in fact, is to search for students' small entrepreneurial projects or R&D projects in major colleges and universities, like angel investment, as long as the general meaning seems to be more right, the direction is more appetizing, immediately invest a sum of money to buy out or control the project.

Elon Musk himself is a technology maniac and has a special respect for technical things, so according to him, in the next period of time, he is going to run through several top science and engineering universities in the United States, and investigate all the projects related to battery charge and discharge management, motors, transmissions, and dynamic distribution of power.

Li Mu agrees with Elon Musk's point of view, many large enterprises in Silicon Valley, in fact, the source is a small entrepreneurship or R&D project on the university campus, the famous Cisco, originally started by a professor and a couple of professors at Stanford University as a small entrepreneurial project, and now it is a giant in the Internet industry, and as a hardware and solution-based enterprise, Cisco's ability to resist the impact in the Internet field is much stronger than that of ordinary Internet companies.

Thinking of the future development trend of new energy, Li Mu said to Elon Musk: "After returning to Silicon Valley, let's start the company registration, after registration, I will immediately transfer the money to the company's account, by the way, do you have any ideas for the company's name?"

Elon Musk immediately said, "Yes! I want to name it Tesla!"

Li Mu smiled at the corner of his mouth, thinking that this kind of person is really obsessed, if Elon Musk is given ten chances to be reborn, and his memory is reset every time, he should name the company in the direction of new energy vehicles Tesla ten times, Li Mu feels that this buddy's respect for Tesla should have risen to the level of life idols.

However, Li Mu still pretended to be curious and asked: "Tesla? Are you talking about the American electrical inventor in the last century?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" Elon Musk said excitedly: "It's him, Nikola Tesla, the biggest idol in my life, a god-like person." ”

Speaking of this, Elon Musk looked at Li Mu and said seriously: "Mr. Li, I think in a few years, my biggest idol will become you, because I believe that your future achievements will definitely be above Tesla, after all, you are only in your early twenties, which is really terrible, whenever I see your young and even a little immature face, and then think of the huge industry you have created, I feel that life is boring." ”

Li Mu laughed and said: "Don't pat me on the back because I'm your future boss, Tesla is also a great man in my eyes, so I don't accept you to compare me with him, but you want to name the company Tesla, I still raise my hands in agreement, Tesla itself is an electrical genius, and what we want to do is also an electric car, strictly speaking, Tesla is our grandfather, named after him, it is also a kind of respect for him." ”

Saying that, Li Mu sighed lightly and said: "Tesla's global fame is really not proportional to his contribution to the world, he is a great man who has been forgotten to a large extent, since we want to make electric vehicles, to a certain extent, we are inheriting his mantle, so we also have the responsibility to correct his name on a global scale, so that the world knows him better." ”

Elon Musk suddenly became excited, folded his hands, and sighed to Li Mu: "Mr. Li, there is an ancient saying in China that a scholar dies for his confidant, and you are my confidant!"

Li Mu smiled and said, "Since Tesla is your biggest idol, then you must go all out to make Tesla." ”

Elon Musk nodded and asked, "Mr. Li, I will simply leave PayPal." ”

Li Mu said: "Now the point of leaving PayPal is not very large, the core work of Tesla in the early days of creation is research and development, I suggest that you continue to stay at PayPal first, and then find a suitable place in Silicon Valley to place Tesla's R&D team, so that it is close to you." ”

Seeing that Elon Musk was a little confused, Li Mu explained: "Staying at PayPal can help you accumulate more industry resources, after all, PayPal's current development is booming, and more and more entities will deal with PayPal in the future, and you can get additional resources in this position." ”

The recent development of PayPal is indeed very amazing, the main reason is that all the value-added service payments of Makino Technology overseas are basically through PayPal, which has brought huge turnover and profits to PayPal, Li Mu has no payment foundation overseas, plus Makino Technology is already a shareholder of PayPal, so Li Mu is not ready to start another overseas payment channel, so PayPal has eaten huge development dividends from Makino Technology.

In the future, PayPal's status in the Internet industry will become higher and higher, in this case, Elon Musk will also be highly sought after in the industry, and the payment channel has a very big advantage: it is closer to offline than other online products, because it is not the user's computer, but the user's wallet, so that in the future stage of rapid development of e-commerce, the real economy will become more and more dependent on PayPal.

Tesla wants to do is the new energy vehicle manufacturing industry, in the future must deal with many parts suppliers around the world, if Musk still hangs the name of PayPal behind him, in the process of bargaining with these suppliers, he can get greater tilt and concessions, if he resigns now and concentrates on Tesla, on the one hand, he can not help in the pure technology development stage, on the other hand, he has also lost huge resource channels.

Elon Musk understands Li Mu's intentions, although he is full of enthusiasm and hopes to pour into Tesla, but Li Mu does look more pragmatic, Tesla does not need him to be a full-time CEO, at least not for a period of time in the future.

Subsequently, Elon Musk said to Li Mu: "Mr. Li, then I will continue to work at PayPal, and then set up Tesla in Silicon Valley, and quickly start the centralized research and development of Tesla's battery and motor fields." ”

Li Mu nodded and asked him: "The battery and motor are developed by themselves, so where does the platform technology of the car come from?"

Ordinary people say that there are three major parts of the car, which means that the essence of the car is the three directions of power, transmission and chassis, and Tesla can solve the power and transmission by itself, but the chassis technology is not something that can be done by itself.

Moreover, Li Mu feels that the three major pieces are not the most important, the production platform is the most important, and only the enterprise with the strength to build the production platform can be called an automobile manufacturing enterprise in the real sense.

Elon Musk has a different view from Li Mu, he said: "Mr. Li, I don't think there is any need to think about the platform so early, what we really lack now is chassis technology, when the time comes, you can choose a car company, buy their chassis technology, and even directly hand over the chassis to them to OEM, and even hand over the body frame to other companies OEM, so that we only need to build our own assembly line to achieve mass production." ”

Li Mu shook his head when he heard this.

No wonder you Tesla has difficulty delivering all day long, and you will lose huge amounts at every turn.

Elon Musk shook his head and sighed vigorously when he saw Li Mu, and hurriedly asked nervously: "Mr. Li, is there anything wrong with what I said?"

Li Mu sighed again, looked at him, and said with a serious face: "Elon, I believe that Tesla, under your leadership, can design and produce the best new energy vehicles in the world, but ......"

When Li Mu said this, his tone became a lot heavier, paused, and continued: "But! Tesla, under your leadership, will definitely not become the world's most successful new energy vehicle manufacturer, and even I extremely doubt that if you don't change your thinking in time, Tesla will go bankrupt in your hands one day." ”

"Why ......" Elon Musk was extremely puzzled, but what Li Mu said was so serious made his heart extremely flustered.

There are very few people who can make Elon Musk mess up with one sentence, and the young Li Mu may be the only one.

Seeing that Elon Musk was a little flustered, Li Mu explained to him: "Internet thinking is indeed very advanced, and environmental protection thinking is also very advanced, but it does not mean that you will be able to find the right direction if you use these two kinds of thinking to do the real industry." ”

After that, Li Mu picked up a Zippo lighter that he had placed on the coffee table and asked him, "How many kinds of lighters are there in Zippo?"

Elon Musk subconsciously said: "I can't count it, there are too many kinds." ”

Li Mu asked again: "Will Zippo build a production line for every fire machine?"

Elon Musk hurriedly said: "Of course not. ”

Li Mu nodded and said: "Zippo wants to deal with the production of thousands of different styles of products, so its production line must be designed to be highly compatible with itself, and at least 80% of the styles can be produced on the same production line, are you right?"

Elon Musk agreed: "I believe it must be so. ”

Li Mu said: "Then you are not going to build a real automobile production platform, only build an assembly line, are you only going to let Tesla produce one model in the future?"

Elon Musk was particularly embarrassed, he said without confidence: "Mr. Li, to be honest, to a certain extent, I do think so, what I think is that Tesla only launches one classic model at each stage, so we don't need to build a very versatile platform, we only need to build a production line for this model." ”

Li Mu looked at him dumbfounded, and a sentence came out for a while: "You idiot!"