The new Elon Musk biography by Ashlee Vance will “likely serve as the definitive account” of the most successful entrepreneur in the world, writes Jon Gertner in the New York Times. But it can also be read as a manual of how to succeed in business. Here are six big lessons for entrepreneurs, young and old:
1. Think Big
While Musk was at college, he decided the three things that would have the biggest positive impact on the human race were: sustainable energy, the Internet, and making life multi-planetary.
Here’s how Vance describes Musk’s big thinking:
“What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview. He’s the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted. He’s less a CEO chasing riches than a general marshaling troops to secure victory. Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants to…well…save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation.”
This passage comes early in the book, and feels as though Vance has been drinking Musk’s Kool Aid. By the last page, however, he’s painted a vivid and balanced picture of a driven man, focused intently on changing the world in a big way, no matter the cost to himself or his family (see No.6 below). So, if you want to succeed like Elon Musk, don’t waste time building a widget that’ll be 10% better than the competition:
Think big, really big, and go for it.
2. Learn to be a Better Boss
Elon Musk was ousted as CEO from two early startups Zip2 and X.com (the precursor to PayPal) because he was a bad boss. In his early days, Musk was a controlling, micro-manager whose “one upmanship” tactics were brutal.
Vance writes,
“Musk’s traits as a confrontational know-it-all and his abundant ego created deep, lasting fractures within his companies.”
According to a colleague at Zip2, he’d rip into junior and senior executives alike, especially when employees told him that his demands were impossible.
“You would see people come out of the meetings with this disgusted look on their face…You don’t get to where Elon is now by always being a nice guy, and he was just so driven and sure of himself.”
These days, he’s still very demanding but has got better at being a decent boss at Tesla and SpaceX and his longtime employees are fiercely loyal.
Of course, part of being a good boss is inspiring your team with an awesome mission (see No.1 above) and articulating that clearly. Early employees of SpaceX were told that “the mission would be to emerge as the South-west Airlines* of Space.” More recently of course, the Mars mission dominates the company’s focus. Who wouldn’t be on board with the mind-blowing goal of making humans a multi-planetary species?
So don’t fret if you’re not getting “Boss of the Year” awards in your early days, but learn from your mistakes, and motivate your team with a grand vision.
3. Hire with Care, Fire fast
Musk is renowned for hiring top talent and for several years, he even insisted on personally interviewing employees fairly low on the totem pole. For key technical hires, once he decides he wants someone, he’ll go above and beyond to hire them. He even cold-calls them himself. A SpaceX employee recalls receiving a call from Musk in his college dorm room and thinking it was a prank call.
But on the flip side, if you’re not a fit for the team, then you’ll soon know about it, according to Steve Jurvetson, a Tesla, SpaceX board member and close ally to Musk.
“Like (Steve) Jobs, Elon does not tolerate C or D players. He’s like Jobs in that neither of them suffer fools. But I’d say he’s nicer than Jobs and a bit more refined than Bill Gates.”
The lesson: hire strategically with great care, and if an employee doesn’t fit, don’t wait.
Some of his “bombastic counteroffensives” worked, others were arguably counter productive and alienated potential allies and supporters.
Yet Vance also offers a more sympathetic interpretation of his tirades as “a quest for truth” as opposed to pure vindictiveness. As Vance writes,
“Musk is wired like a scientist and suffers mental anguish at the sight of a factual error. A mistake on a printed page would gnaw at his soul – forever.”
Although taking things personally and seeking war has generally worked for Musk, it’s a highly risky strategy. Setting the record straight is one thing, but how many bridges can you burn? One key consideration is this: going to war demands a lot of time and energy which might be better spent on getting your mission accomplished.
Choose your battles carefully.
5. Have a trusted assistant
Ashley Vance describes Musk’s long-time assistant Mary Beth Brown as:
“A now-legendary character in the lore of both SpaceX and Tesla….establishing a real-life version of the relationship between Iron Man’s Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. If Musk worked a twenty hour day, so too did Mary Beth…She would emerge as the only bridge between Musk and all of his interests and was an invaluable asset to the companies’ employees.”
Sadly for Musk, she’s now moved on, but having worked with her briefly in 2012/13 (to arrange an in-depth interview with Musk), I can attest that she was very charming and an excellent surrogate for Musk. She represented him well in a professional and personal capacity.
Read more about her in the biography and try find someone as loyal, talented and hard-working to be your right-hand man or woman. Good luck!
6. Work hard, very hard
Not only does Musk lead two hard-driving companies (which are 300 miles apart) – SpaceX (L.A.) and Tesla (Silicon Valley) – he’s chairman of SolarCity, and has five boys, two ex-wives and a tight circle of friends, that includes Google’s Larry Page. He claims to sleep an average of six hours a night, but almost every waking hour is devoted to his businesses. His ex-wife Justine Musk, describes his work ethic like this:
“I had friends who complained that their husbands came home at seven or eight. Elon would come home at eleven and work some more. People didn’t always get the sacrifice he made in order to be where he was. He does what he wants, and he is relentless about it. It’s Elon’s world, and the rest of us live in it.”
The only regular downtime he allows is to indulge in long showers, but even then, it’s really work. He says that’s when he has most of his innovative ideas.
So, the lesson for you is the same as that espoused by pioneering giants like Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie: there’s nothing like good old fashioned hard work.
Note: Although Musk comes over as a hard-driving maniac in this biography, he does have a more sensitive side. You can see this for yourself in this candid interview. He comes close to tears several times.
Technology has the potential to bring us a mind-blowing world of innovation, from self-driving cars to re-engineered food, and even colonies on Mars. Elon Musk and Steve Jurvetson are two of tech’s most influential minds. Here’s my BBC World Business Report on their vision of the future. Spoiler alert: It isn’t all good news.
The report aired today (May 6, 2015) on the BBC World Service. Listen to the podcast from 11:00
BBC Presenter, Mike Johnson: Colonies on Mars, self driving electric cars, re-engineered food… How will technology change our lives in the decades ahead? It’s certainly bringing us an extraordinary world of innovation. It’s known in the jargon these days as “future shock.” Many worry about the consequences, especially the toll that increased use of robots will take on jobs. Alison van Diggelen, creator and host of the Fresh Dialogues interview series reports from California
Audio: [Sound of Tesla Factory welding, metal on metal, robot sounds…]
van Diggelen: It was here in Silicon Valley, in 2012, the first Model S rolled off the production line at the Tesla Factory.
Tesla’s Gilbert Passin: See the robot is bringing the flat panel into the press…they are in slow motion …[factory sounds]
van Diggelen: The pioneering carmaker, Tesla Motors, has now produced over 70,000 all-electric cars and is gearing up for the release of the new Model X, a futuristic SUV with falcon wing doors. This summer, it will also start shipping Tesla Energy storage batteries for homes, businesses and utilities. Gilbert Passin leads the Tesla manufacturing team and is proud of the numerous red robots at the factory.
Passin: What we do here is really kick-ass. I mean, look around…. does it look to you like a boring old-fashioned car factory?
van Diggelen: Absolutely not.
Passin: We’re using the latest and greatest and even in some cases innovate in manufacturing techniques.
van Diggelen: The Tesla production team is so fond of its heavy lifting robots, they’re named after action heroes like Wolverine, Vulcan and Colossus.
Venture Capitalist, Steve Jurvetson drives the first Model S to come off Tesla’s production line. He has a reputation for putting his money where his mouth is and backing successful startups like Hotmail, SpaceX, and PlanetLabs. He’s a self-described “raging techno optimist” and has a front row seat on the future of innovation. I asked him what we should expect in the next 50 years…
Steve Jurvetson: (If you look far enough in the future) All vehicles will be electric. We’ll have a Mars colony. We will have to grow more food than since the beginning of agriculture. That will be largely driven by GMOs and a variety of roboticized forms of farming…and moving off meat production in the way we think of it: killing animals. We will “grow” meat in different ways within 50 years and that will have pretty profound effects on Greenhouse Gases to… everything. Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, are changing the world. In that 50 year horizon, the world’s going to look markedly different than today. Future shock is a perpetually occurring phenomenon.
van Diggelen: As well as being CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk leads SpaceX, the aerospace company that recently launched its 6th mission to resupply the International Space Station.
Ambi: [SpaceX rocket countdown and blast off]
Tesla announcer: 5,4,3,2,1…and lift off…the Falcon soars from its perch to the international space station. [Rocket blasting….]
He envisioned a philanthropic mission to Mars to install a greenhouse…and jumpstart the space race. Here’s Musk:
Musk: You’d have this great shot of a little greenhouse with little green plants on a red background. I thought that would get people excited…you have to imagine “the money shot.” So this would be the furthest that life’s ever travelled, the first life on Mars and I thought maybe that would result in a bigger budget for NASA and then we could resume the journey…
van Diggelen: Of course, in order to get to Mars, Musk and his team would have to invent a low cost space rocket. Enter, SpaceX.
Jurvetson: Being a multi planetary species, (having a colony on Mars and probably the moon) is one of those “greatest hits” in human evolution, up there with the opposable thumb…the neuron, multi-cellular beings.
van Diggelen: These grand visions are all very well, but what will life be like here on planet earth in 50 years?
For now, the tech economy is bringing manufacturing back to the US and Europe, but in the long run robots will take our jobs. This has huge implications for the world economy, business and public policy. Jurvetson admits he’s deeply worried about the growing rich-poor divide that tech innovation is exacerbating. He doesn’t pull his punches…
Jurvetson: Imagine the robots of the future… It’s inevitable the jobs will go away…and we need to prepare for that future…talk about it now so that the transition isn’t violent and horrible….40% unemployment, 80% unemployment…we’re gonna get there.
Why are robots getting close and personal? Here’s my BBC World Business Report about The Brave New World of autonomous cars and social robots. It aired on BBC World Service Monday April 13, 2015.
Two pioneers, Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and Cynthia Breazeal of Jibo Robot, explain why autonomous cars and robots are poised to invade your home and (potentially) make your life easier and safer.
Here’s the program. Listen at 12:16 on the podcast.
WBR Host, Susannah Streeter: The era of robots is getting personal. They’re slowly moving into our homes and our garages. What’s the business case for robot cars that can chauffeur you autonomously and desktop robots that can be your personal assistant? Will they be job killers or job creators? Alison van Diggelen reports from Silicon Valley, California where two pioneers recently described a brave new world full of robots.
Jen-Hsun Huang (Nvidia CEO): Ladies and Gentlemen, Please welcome Tesla CEO, cofounder, Elon Musk [applause]
Elon Musk: In the distant future, people may outlaw driving cars. It’s too dangerous. You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine. [laughter]
That’s Elon Musk, the CEO of electric vehicle maker, Tesla Motors speaking at a recent Silicon Valley tech conference. He helped revolutionize the world of electric vehicles by creating a sexy, high performance car that left the “golf cart” era in the dust. Now he’s joined the charge in autonomous driving, led by Google, and claims that taking a self driving car will soon be as everyday as using an elevator. But are you ready to step into a robot car?
Elon Musk: You’ll be able to tell your car: Take me home, go here, go there, anything…in an order of magnitude safer than a person. It’s going to be the default thing and could save a lot of lives.
Although you might grimace at the thought of relinquishing control, for Musk, Google and several major car manufacturers, the business case for autonomous cars is a no brainer – they say it could save $400 Billion a year in accident related expenses. Researchers at Columbia University found that a shared driverless fleet of cars could reduce personal travel costs by 80%.
But will robotic cars and other types of robots kill jobs?
Cynthia Breazeal argues they won’t. She’s a pioneer in social robots – ones that focus on human-robot interactions. She invented Jibo, a singing, dancing tabletop robot that looks like a cross between the Pixar lamp and an iPad.
Jibo Announcer: Introducing Jibo, the world’s first family robot. Say hi Jibo…
Jibo: Hi Jibo! [laughter]
Jibo Announcer: Jibo helps everyone out throughout their day [music]
Jibo is a personal assistant robot that can photograph, video, entertain and educate you and your family. It can remind you to call your mum on her birthday and even read your children bedtime stories.
Jibo: Let me in or else I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!!
Girl: [Giggling]
Jibo announcer: He’s not just a connected device, he’s one of the family.
Girl: Shhhhh. Good night Jibo! [Computer sounds]
.
Although some people might find Jibo a bit creepy, the company’s crowd funding campaign showed its strong consumer appeal. Last year, it raised over $2M from Indiegogo in just 8 weeks. This year, it secured $25M in venture capital. Jibo goes on sale next year.
Breazeal acknowledges that robots were viewed as job killers, historically.
Breazeal: When robotics first came onto the market, it was a lot about replacing human labor. (So that’s been the assumption) Social robotics as a whole research discipline has been about a very different paradigm. So Jibo is not being designed to replace anyone or anything. (Sometimes people talk about, ‘it’s going to replace my dog…’ it’s not about that.) Jibo creates a different kind of relationship…like with your doctor, your dog for example. It’s about supporting the family, those who help care for the family, doctors and nurses…This high touch high tech technology is much better able to address those in need.
Her robot might one day be a job killer for healthcare workers and personal assistants. But for now, Breazeal is on a hiring spree, looking for engineers and she has MILLIONS to spend.
Ultimately, the brave new world of robots envisioned by these pioneers is as inevitable as the relentless advance of tech innovation.
Musk is only half joking when he says this:
Musk: I just hope there’s something left for us humans to do…
***
The report was recorded at the Nvidia Conference, Silicon Valley on March 16, 2015.
LinkedIn Cofounder and tech investor extraordinaire, Reid Hoffman delivered some compelling entrepreneurial insights to an intimate group in Silicon Valley last week. It earned him a few more stars for his “visionary” reputation; however his insights on the drive to get more women in tech fell far short of expectations. See below…
The gathering was an elegant SVForum affair, led by CEO Adiba Barney.
Here’s some of Hoffman’s valuable wisdom for entrepreneurs:
1. Don’t keep your big idea a secret
According to Hoffman, if you don’t share your startup idea with people who can help you, it’s “a massive recipe for failure.”
2. Mine your network
As Hoffman emphasizes in his latest book The Alliance, “An externally networked workforce is critical to an innovative company.” What he means by this is:
a. nurture your wider network (give and take advice) and be active on social media
b. encourage your employees to do likewise
c. seek wisdom from the smartest people you know outside your company
Hoffman underlined that IPOs aren’t the holy grail they once were, thanks to late stage investors with large cash infusions. IPOs must make sense strategically for your startup.
“The key question for any company is how an IPO can help you build your company into something that may be around for decades or hundreds of years and help to transform the industry they are in,” says Hoffman.
This fits with what Elon Musk told me when I asked him about a SpaceX IPO. He pointed out that there are major disadvantages to going public, especially if your business has very long term goals (like going to Mars!)
Since Hoffman prides himself as a public intellectual, I asked him what LinkedIn is doing to increase the number of women in tech; and what the academic case is for doing so. Frankly, I thought he’d cite one of the many studies which show the positive correlation between the number of women executives and company success.
Here’s his response:
“Women on average are much more diligent than men and much more capable of learning a set of different things, so having them deeply engaged in technology, creating the future is important. And then there’s obviously the full ramp of sensibilities for how products should work…how those human ecosystems should work. So I think it behooves…the world is much better off… with having an industry that isn’t – as it’s historically been – very balanced on the male side, but to be trending toward a more evenly balanced industry. There are various initiatives – the Lean In one is just the most recent.” Reid Hoffman
That’s it.
He’s referring to the announcement on February 8th that LeanIn.org, Facebook, LinkedIn and the Anita Borg Institute have created a partnership to expand Lean In Circles on college campuses. Reid Hoffman and the LinkedIn team deserve some praise for their involvement, but that’s it? I didn’t get the feeling that this topic is high on Hoffman’s agenda, or that he cares that much about it.
Here’s my vision: I’d like to see Mr Hoffman use his profound intellect and growing visionary platform to inspire more action and help get more women into the tech field.
This summer, I was invited to share Letters from Silicon Valley with the BBC. This is the first of my letters and aired on BBC Business Daily on Friday September 26th, 2014. It was bookended by an interview with Silicon Valley’s Peter Thiel and the haunting opus, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, read by Dylan Thomas.
The BBC’s Manuela Saragosa hosted the show. Here’s her introduction:
Saragosa: Seeing the world from a Silicon Valley perspective where failing is essential to success…
van Diggelen: You might be thinking that encouraging employees to fail is the nuttiest thing you’ve ever heard. But here’s the thing: if you don’t create a risk taking culture, then how are you going to invent the future?
Saragosa: … that’s Silicon Valley for you. As Peter Thiel says, it’s a counter cultural kind of place and California’s ultra competitive technology industry has its own way of going about things. Take success: to get there, failure is positively encouraged. Journalist, Alison van Diggelen has this report from San Francisco.
van Diggelen: The popular cartoon character, Homer Simpson famously said, “Trying is the first step to failure.”
I imagine Homer wouldn’t survive long in the tech world of Silicon Valley, where trying and failing is vital to the region’s dominance as the global center of innovation.
In Silicon Valley, it’s a badge of honor to fail, as long as you fail fast and learn from the experience. Here in Silicon Valley, mistakes don’t define you. They refine you.
Fear of failure doesn’t hold people back.
That’s why Google is constantly putting out products “in beta.” They try them out, and if they take off, like Gmail, support goes full throttle.
We all know Gmail, but do you remember Google Desktop, Google PowerMeter and Google Health? Probably not. They were launched and then quietly discontinued. Failures, yes, but you can be sure they delivered valuable lessons for Google products. Google Glass may go the same way, but it won’t damn the company as a failure. Not in Silicon Valley, anyway.
You see, failure is viewed differently here. That’s why innovation blooms in SV.
Some of the most innovative leaders in SV have the mantra, “if you’re not failing half the time, you’re not trying hard enough.”
They create a climate of cooperation, allowing teams to make and learn from mistakes, and change “business as usual.”
For skeptics, you might think encouraging employees to fail is the nuttiest thing you’ve ever heard, but here’s the thing: If you don’t create a risk-taking culture that condones, even celebrates failure, then how are you going to invent the future?
Incremental steps just won’t cut it. True innovation needs giant leaps.
If Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had accepted the DOS command-line-interface and didn’t ‘think different,’ we might still be stuck in the dark ages of black computer screens…
But how to overcome your fear of failure?
I recently interviewed Professor John Krumboltz at the Commonwealth Club of California. He’s the author of Fail Fast, Fail Often and is renowned for his fail fast, fail often mantra. He’s spent a lifetime at Silicon Valley’s Stanford University, exploring why successful people spend less time planning and more time acting.
“Making mistakes is important to human development,” he stresses. “Just do it!”
He cites the example of SV’s Pixar Studios, which makes computer-animated films like Wall-e and Finding Nemo. Pixar’s President, Ed Catmull says a few good ideas are often buried amid many “half-baked and outright stinkers.” By giving themselves permission to fail again and again, the team weeds out bad ideas quickly and gets to the place where real work can occur. Catmull describes the process as going from “suck” to “non-suck.”
In the business world, fear of failure can prevent you sticking your neck out, being innovative, trying something new. Perhaps you’re paralyzed by the Homer Simpson’s defeatist: “if I don’t try, then I won’t fail.”
Instead, remember that no one sets out to fail: failure isn’t your friend, but fear of failure is definitely your enemy.
Alison van Diggelen, of Fresh Dialogues, for the BBC World Service in Silicon Valley
Tom Friedman assembled some of his favorite columnists, colleagues and CEOs last Thursday in San Francisco at the New York Times Global Forum to share their wit and wisdom about the brave new world of hyperconnectivity.
Friedman had five pieces of advice. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin…
1. Think Like a New Immigrant
Friedman advises us to “Lean In” to this world of hyperconnectivity. (Yes, he’s also in awe of the multi-talented Sheryl Sandberg.) Specifically, Friedman urges us to be “paranoid optimists,” i.e. pursue opportunities more energetically, persistently and creatively than anybody else; and act with the YOLO attitude of a new immigrant while remembering that anything new can be taken away in a flash.
2. Think Like An Artisan
Friedman was obviously inspired by Steve Jobs biography here. He says: do your work every day with so much pride and extra effort that you want to carve your initials into it.
3. Always Be In Beta
In your mind, always think of yourself as a work in progress: iterate, polish, iterate. Think of FINISHED as a four letter word. Friedman thanks LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, for this Silicon Valley pearl of wisdom.
.
4. It’s A 401K World
It’s a world of free opportunity with defined contributions, but not defined benefits. The divide is no longer just digital; but motivational. Get motivated!
5. Think Like A Waitress
Not just any waitress, specifically the waitress at Perkins Pancake House in Minneapolis (Friedman’s hometown). On a recent visit, the waitress demonstrated her entrepreneurial spirit by bringing Friedman and his colleague extra fruit. As Friedman explains, “She didn’t control much, but she could control the fruit ladle. That was her source of ‘extra'”
Result: She earned a 50% tip. Moral of the story: try to become Friedman’s waitress on his globe trotting travels, and don’t forget those extra ladlefuls.
But seriously since that’s probably not feasible, try to emulate that savvy waitress: Be relentlessly entrepreneurial, change whatever you have control over, and find that new business or opportunity.
Friedman finished his speech with advice for President Obama:
1. In this new world of hyperconnectivity, there will be a growing number of “have-nots,” so safety nets will have to be reinforced and extended.
2. Get yourself a decent narrative to inspire the country, like President Kennedy did in the 60’s with space exploration. e.g. Make America the platform where everyone in the world will come to launch their own moonshot.
Check back soon for an exclusive Fresh Dialogues interview with California’s Leuitenant Governor Gavin Newsom who shares his passion for action on climate change and why he wants to be governor one day.
This event took place at City View, Metreon in San Francisco, June 20, 2013.
Steve Jurvetson: (If you look far enough in the future) All vehicles will be electric. We’ll have a Mars colony. We will have to grow more food than since the beginning of agriculture. That will be largely driven by GMOs and a variety of roboticized forms of farming…and moving off meat production in the way we think of it: killing animals. We will “grow” meat in different ways within 50 years and that will have pretty profound effects on Greenhouse Gases to… everything. Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, are changing the world. In that 50 year horizon, the world’s going to look markedly different than today. Future shock is a perpetually occurring phenomenon.
Elon Musk: In the distant future, people may outlaw driving cars. It’s too dangerous. You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine. [laughter]
2. Mine your network
And now on to the subject of the dismally 
You see, failure is viewed differently here. That’s why innovation blooms in SV.
