Musk posted these exact words on X on 17 November 2022, as the post itself and Quote Investigator ↗ confirm. The joke was not his invention, though. He adapted an old formula that Quote Investigator traces to February 1950, where it was credited to singer Leo Fuld.
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Evoking the world of Elon Musk — Entrepreneur, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. Theme: "How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
The original post
Work
Post on X by @elonmusk
Date
17 November 2022, 8:25 p.m. US Eastern (01:25 UTC on 18 November)
Platform
X (formerly Twitter)
Post ID
1593415171149791232
How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one.
In the original post, the question and the answer sit on separate lines. Quote Investigator finds this “small fortune” versus “large fortune” joke in print from 1950 onward, applied to England, horse racing, Las Vegas, Wall Street, commodities, baseball and wineries.
Quote Investigator ↗ (2023) quotes Musk’s x-twitter message dated November 17, 2022, word for word. It treats the post as one entry in a long family of quips, and tentatively credits singer Leo Fuld with starting the family in February 1950.
Garson O’Toole’s American Dialect Society list post ↗ transcribes the earliest example he found. It ran in Earl Wilson’s column in the Camden Courier-Post on 9 February 1950: Leo Fuld asks, “Know how to go to England on a visit and leave with a small fortune? . . . Go there with a large fortune.”
The post is still on Musk’s X account ↗ under status ID 1593415171149791232, with the same wording and no edits.
Musk had used the formula before. The 17 January 2008 Wayback capture ↗ of Evan Carmichael’s profile page “Lesson #2: Commit To Failing In A New Way” quotes him: “If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one.”
Rolling Stone ↗ (18 November 2022) reported the post at the time: “Shortly after news of the latest departures, Elon Musk tweeted” the line, as hundreds of Twitter employees resigned.
The wording first appeared in Musk’s post on X on 17 November 2022, long after the 1931 cutoff, so we treat it conservatively as in copyright. The joke formula behind it has circulated since at least 1950 and belongs to no one. A one-line quip may get little or no copyright protection in practice.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Musk’s words, an old joke
Musk really did write this line. What gets misattributed is the joke itself: because the post went viral, it is easy to mistake for Musk’s own invention. Quote Investigator shows it is the newest version of a quip that has been adapted to one costly field after another for decades.
✕
The joke formulaElon Musk (as originator) Adapted, not invented
Quote Investigator ↗ lists Musk’s November 2022 post near the end of a chronology that begins in 1950. His contribution was applying the old formula to social media.
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Earliest known versionLeo Fuld Earliest found (1950)
Earl Wilson’s syndicated column of 9 February 1950 credited the Dutch singer with the line “Know how to go to England on a visit and leave with a small fortune? . . . Go there with a large fortune” (ADS-L transcription ↗). Quote Investigator credits Fuld only tentatively.
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Las Vegas versionAlan Young / Phil Silvers
Quote Investigator cites a May 1955 item crediting Alan Young and a March 1957 item crediting Phil Silvers: “it’s easy to make a small fortune in Las Vegas … start with a large one” (QI ↗).
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Commodities versionStanley Kroll
Kroll’s 1974 book The Professional Commodity Trader used “The surest way to make a small fortune in the commodity market is to start with a large one” as an epigraph (QI ↗).
✓Elon Musk wrote and posted this exact line on X on 17 November 2022. It reworks a joke that Quote Investigator ↗ traces to February 1950, where it was credited to singer Leo Fuld.
Context
Why he said it
Musk posted the line on the evening of 17 November 2022, in the weeks after his $44 billion takeover of Twitter. That day, hundreds of employees chose severance over a pledge to work “long hours at high intensity,” and the company closed its office buildings. Rolling Stone ↗ reported that he tweeted the joke “shortly after news of the latest departures.” Read that way, the post pokes fun at the money he was losing on the purchase.
The punchline works because the formula was already familiar. Before Musk, people had applied it to visiting England, betting at Hialeah, Las Vegas, Wall Street, hockey, baseball and the winery business. In January 2024 the New York Times applied it to news publishing, calling it “an old saying about the news business” (QI ↗).
Know how to go to England on a visit and leave with a small fortune? . . . Go there with a large fortune. — Leo Fuld, as quoted by Earl Wilson, 1950
Did Musk use the joke before?
Wikiquote’s Elon Musk page ↗ also lists a rocket-industry variant credited to Musk: “If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one.” Wikiquote sources it to a 2007 Evan Carmichael web profile, and the line is there: the 17 January 2008 archive of its “Lesson #2” page ↗ quotes Musk, “I want to be able to make sure that we have enough capital to survive at least three consecutive failures,” he says. “If you want to make a small fortune in the launch vehicle business, start with a large one.” That is a profile writer quoting him, not Musk’s own publication, but it shows he was using the same formula about rockets nearly 15 years before the X post. (Wikiquote links the profile’s “Lesson #3” page, which does not contain the line.)
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Elon Musk (born 28 June 1971) is a South African-born American entrepreneur who leads SpaceX and Tesla. He bought Twitter in 2022 in a $44 billion deal, and the platform was later renamed X. He posts heavily on X, and the “small fortune in social media” quip came during the turbulent first weeks of his ownership.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Elon Musk (@elonmusk), “How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one.” Post on X (formerly Twitter), November 17, 2022, https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1593415171149791232. For the joke’s history, see Garson O’Toole, “How Do You Make a Small Fortune in a Risky Domain? Start With a Large Fortune,” Quote Investigator, November 19, 2023, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/11/19/small-fortune/.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘How do you make a small fortune in social media? Start out with a large one’?” Last verified 2 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/how-do-you-make-a-small-fortune-in-social-media-start-out/