a16z's Connor Love and Erin Price-Wright on what startups should take from SpaceX and Tesla, and when building it all yourself actually makes sense: Connor: "We can look to Elon for a lot of answers here. I mean, it's not a crazy statement to say really the few modern-day companies that have built anything at scale are probably SpaceX and Tesla. And if you look at how Elon and his team have built those businesses, it's been, one, very vertically integrated." "I take the ideology that you shouldn't vertically integrate everything. I mean, again, if you're building a super exquisite system like a missile that is doing something very unique, you kind of have to because you have to control the exquisiteness. You have to control the cost." Erin: "SpaceX and Tesla were doing first of their kind. There didn't exist an industrial base in the US to support them, and so they had to build it themselves. I think where there are high-quality suppliers, you should use suppliers." Connor: "In a lot of ways they had to make those choices because they didn't have any other opportunity. But in the end, it's actually just that mantra of design for manufacturing that now exists within all these systems companies." @ConnorLoveCA @espricewright