18 years ago, Elon Musk: Tesla was on the brink of collapse, and he was still selling a $109,000 electric car. Musk stood in a Hollywood living room. Tesla was running out of cash and barely holding on, but instead of talking about how dire things were, he spent his time explaining: Why a $109,000 car that looked like a rich person’s toy—the Roadster—was exactly the car Tesla *had* to build first. He kept it simple: new technology is always expensive at first, just like the earliest mobile phones and laptops. Every penny the Roadster made would be reinvested into building the next, more affordable car. No dividends for the company, and he himself took the lowest salary. Start with an expensive, small-batch product to prove the tech and bring costs down, then move into a bigger market. This was, in fact, the core business logic Tesla followed for the next decade. The Roadster wasn’t the end goal—it was more like a fundraising machine: Roadster → the more affordable Model S → the mass-market Model 3. As early as 2006, Tesla’s Master Plan laid out this path very clearly: build a sports car, use the profits to build a cheaper car, then use those profits to build an even cheaper car. What’s worth learning here is that on stage, Musk didn’t mention how close Tesla was to death. He later recalled that in 2008, Tesla’s funding only came through at the very last moment—on Christmas Eve, no less. Tesla almost didn’t make it.