Elon Musk said it’s “very, very hard to start a business and have it “succeed” in response to a question at a town hall in Wisconsin on Sunday.
“It is true that most businesses that start do not succeed,” he told an 18-year-old voter asking for his advice to young entrepreneurs.
He said a company’s success, “whether it’s a great restaurant or store or a technology company or whatever the case may be,” came down to how useful consumers find its products or services.
“I have a lot of admiration for anyone who just does an honest day’s work, you know, making products or producing services for their fellow human beings,” Musk said. “But it is hard.”
He pointed to the automotive industry, citing his EV maker Tesla and Ford as the only major US automakers that have not gone bankrupt at some point, and his own SpaceX as one of the few “successful” commercial rocket companies.
“It’s shockingly hard to make the value of the output exceed the cost of the input — that’s really what defines a successful business. And profit is really between the value of the output and the cost of the input.”
The event in Green Bay was part of Musk’s support for a campaign to help conservative judge Brad Schimel get elected to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.
Musk also acknowledged the slump in his net worth, which has been dented by the 30% slide in Tesla’s stock price this year.
He’s still the world’s richest person by far worth $330 billion, but the total has plunged by $102 billion since the start of 2025, Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index shows.
While he is still $116 billion ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Musk said he was aware that his DOGE role was a “very expensive job.”
“In fact, it’s costing me a lot to be in this job,” he said. “You know, my Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla stock went roughly in half.” Musk was referring to the slide in Tesla shares compared with their value late last year.
He made similar statements in a Friday interview on Fox News, saying his companies were “suffering” because of his work in the White House. In another Fox Business interview earlier this month, Musk said he was running his businesses “with great difficulty” amid is DOGE activities.
