> Elon Musk: "Did you hear the joke about the guy who made a small fortune in the space industry?" Obviously, "He started with a large one," is the punchline. And so I tell people, well, I was trying to figure out the fastest way to turn a large fortune into a small one. And they'd look at me, like, "Is he serious?"
That's presumably a variation on the airline joke of the same form. I've heard it about Richard Branson, but don't know if that is the original source.
The claim is that Richard Branson wa asked how to become a millionaire after he'd start Virgin Atlantic, and answered "you become a billionaire and start an airline".
The way it's put there, it sounds like it had already been around a while. It's possible Branson was the first person to apply it to airlines. I see a lot of people attributing it to Robert Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines, but can't find anything actually quoting him on it. He did say, "A lot of people came into the airline business. Most of them promptly exited, minus their money," which is pretty similar in spirit.
https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_mind_behind_tesla_sp...