On July 22, Bridgewater Fund founder Ray Dalio once advised Elon Musk not to put most of the funds after selling PayPal into Mars exploration, but Musk then responded that “there’s no need to do that.”

Dalio recently recalled on a podcast that he first got to know Musk in 2002, while studying entrepreneurs’ personality types. He believes Musk belongs to the “shaper” type—someone with a grand vision and a passion for turning ideas into reality.

According to Dalio, after Musk sold PayPal, he received about $180 million in funding, and then put most of it into startup ventures, including investing about $100 million in SpaceX, about $70 million in Tesla, and about $10 million in the solar company SolarCity.

Dalio said that at the time he advised Musk to leave part of the cash as a safety cushion: “If things don’t go well, you at least have some money.” But Musk replied: “No, I don’t need to do that.”

Dalio believes that Musk is not driven primarily by building wealth, but instead focuses on achieving long-term goals. One of SpaceX’s current goals is to build a technological system that makes human beings a “multi-planet species.”

After SpaceX completed this summer’s largest IPO in history and listed on Nasdaq, investors were able for the first time to gain a deeper understanding of the company’s strategy. In its prospectus, the company said its mission is “to build the systems and technologies needed to make life multi-planet.”

Dalio also pointed out that a “shaper” like Musk has the traits of, on the one hand, having a sweeping strategic outlook from tens of thousands of meters up in the air, and on the other hand, paying extreme attention to details. He recalled that Musk once showed him details of Tesla vehicles and discussed specific ideas such as sending plant-watering devices to Mars.

At present, Mars exploration remains at the core of SpaceX’s long-term strategy, and Musk continues to bet on areas such as rockets, satellites, and artificial intelligence. #特朗普同意Clarity法案纳入伦理条款