What does Elon Musk bring to the party?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t mean this as a discussion of Musk, the man. It is not a debate about his politics, social views, or overall demeanor.

What I am getting at is, what does Musk do that adds value to his ventures? I was watching a YouTube video that describes the development of Starship and its related technologies. Much is made of Musk’s goals with the project (going to the moon, million-person city on Mars, etc.), but not on what he personally does to further those goals. Does Musk bring the insight that makes the rocket engines innovative and affordable? Or, does he have the talent to hire the people who can be innovative with rocket motors?

Does Musk have input into the design and capabilities of Tesla automobiles? It’s one thing to say “I want a self-driving car and I can pay to get one developed” and quite another to actually figure out the technology to make that happen.

So, what does Musk contribute to his companies?

2

You could just as easily ask “What did JFK do to put a man on the moon?”. Vision and leadership aren’t concrete contributions, but they are usually indispensable.

3

He brings his ‘vision’ (for what that is worth) and more importantly the ability to persuade his venture capitalist investor pals to back the companies he invests in/takes over despite a long history of independent aerospace startups and electric vehicle companies failing to get to market. This is not an insignificant quality; most past private rocket development companies have failed not because of technical inadequacy (well, Roton was a pretty dumb concept, but Kistler and many others had good concepts) but because they just ran out of money long before they were even able to demonstrate technical viability, much less get to a point of making a profit or issuing an IPO. So…there’s that.

Stranger

4

He’s an ideas guy, and he has the money and influence to bring smarter people together to make those ideas a reality. Some of those ideas, like reusable first stage rockets, are pretty good. Other ideas, like his one-lane electric car tunnels, are pretty bad. Even more of his ideas, like his Neuralink chip and Telsa Bot, are not only bad, but intensely stupid.

Lots of people idolize him because the Great Man Theory is very seductive, but in all these cases he’s just a facilitator that brought the right people together to actually accomplish the goals he set out. The main thing that differentiates him from his billionaire peers who are also out making new companies is he tweets terrible jokes and memes in a way some folks find relatable and endearing.

5

To be fair to him I watched him do a 2+ hour tour of the SpaceX factory to a YouTuber and he knows his stuff. He REALLY knows his stuff. He seems to be able to run and organise engineering projects very successfully and with innovation. By all accounts he contributes to engineering meetings and has ideas which are actually pretty useful. How true all that is I don’t know, but he seems to impress engineers that encounter him.

I was surprised to hear him appear recently on a Dan Carlin history podcast and he spoke with great expertise and knowledge about aircraft and other engineering challenges in military campaigns. He is very different from someone like Jeff Bezos.

I don’t like some of his opinions at all, but SpaceX especially seems to be the space company that is not just leading the commercialisation of space by a little bit - they are miles ahead of their rivals.

6

This gave me a hearty laugh-out-loud moment. Elon isn’t really much involved in day to day operations at SpaceX despite his nominal title of “Chief Engineer” but the in single ‘engineering meeting’ telecon I was on with him he was incredibly disruptive and it was a palpable relief when he signed off. The responsibility for “run[ming] and organis[ing] engineering projects” is all due to the engineering, logistics, and finance staff who actually run the company under the leadership of SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell. Of his ‘leadership’ at Tesla the less said the better other than it has resulted in a ferris wheel of executives getting on and off, many only lasting for a few months despite having demonstrated competence elsewhere.

Of course, a CEO isn’t supposed to be intimately involved in daily operations of an up-and-running company; they’re supposed to be providing ‘visionary leadership’, attracting investment, and presenting a positive image to investors and the general public. I guess he’s good at the first one as far as many are concerned, he’s objectively highly successful at the second one, and polarizing in the third. What he does not bring to the party is any vast technical expertise in rocket propulsion, battery and electric vehicle technology, manufacturing and automation, cognitive neuroscience, or any of an array of technical fields. Presenting a pre-planned tour to a SpaceX enthusiast YouTuber is not demonstration that he “REALLY knows his stuff”; it just means he can remember and repeat things that other people have said. So, he’s a good publicist for his company which, again, is actually what a CEO should be doing.

Stranger

7

Not crappy store brand chips and soda, that’s for sure!

8

If you’ve had interactions with him then I will bow to your greater knowledge.

9

I can boil his management style down to this: lure engineering talent with a humanity-changing engineering project, don’t pay them too much or provide enough human resources, set insane deadlines to force decisions and remove distractions. Set an example as someone who works 16 hr days when necessary and doesn’t sit in an ivory tower (i.e., keep an extremely flat management structure). Demand the same dedication from your employees.

He winds up with a pretty talented workforce that can do amazing things but if he were in the business of making door knobs I doubt this style would work out for him.

10

But SOAT is factually wrong on that front.

11

He’s also pretty good, on net, at picking winners to back. By “on net”, I don’t mean that all of his ideas have worked out… but the ideas that have worked out have worked out so well that they pay for the ideas that don’t work out.

12

Okay, this is the second thread in as many days where you’ve popped up stopping just this short of calling me a liar. Take it to the Pit or knock it the fuck off.

Stranger

13

This is the only time I will comment on this as it isn’t appropriate for General Questions, but I promise I am not trying to call you a liar. Claims like “Elon isn’t really much involved in day to day operations at SpaceX despite his nominal title of ‘Chief Engineer’” is a statement of fact that you happen to be wrong about, but that does not make you a liar.

14

Oh, for pity’s sake. Obviously the truth of any such statement is very dependent on exactly what is meant by phrases like “really much involved” and “day to day operations”.

If you and Stranger_On_A_Train are using those terms in different senses, then it’s meaningless for you to describe his statement as “wrong”. Get yourselves sorted on exactly what is being claimed before doubling down on accusations of “wrongness”.

15

I don’t know the man and haven’t met anyone who has met him but I have worked at startups and a problem that they often deal with (other than getting enough money) is the chicken and egg aspect of hiring.

If you need to hire someone who is really good at something but you are not good at that thing then how do you evaluate your first applicants to determine that you’ve found someone good? You need good engineers in order to find good engineers. If you hire some crappy dude as your top guy, he’s going to hire a bunch more crappy dudes. Your first hires are very important.

I think it’s reasonable to say that Musk is good at learning enough and researching enough to locate people who are genuinely knowledgeable and also at figuring out which of those are worth giving power over other human beings to.

If nothing else, he’s good at that.

16

The first and obvious thing he’s good at is vision. he didn’t hop aboard a bandwagon already going full tilt down the road (like Tim Cook taking over from Jobs) he actually as far as I can tell provided the direction from the ground up to get the concept off the ground and see it through to functional, profitable venture. Twice. Three times, if you count the high end luxury EV (Model S and X) and separately, the high volume mass-produced car (Model 3 and Y). I suppose we should partly include the whole Paypal scheme that he helped in…

So many ventures fail because the technical idea guy is not a manager. A simple, small, one or 10-man startup where everyone knows each other, does not translate into a 1,000-plus employee company very easily. So many companies fail to make the transition, lose the idea guy and flounder, or he stays on too long ineptly and causes the company to fail to adapt to its larger size.

So as others have been trying to articulate, this is the first thing. He had the resources and know-how to put together the right team, and motivate them properly. Then to transition to a much larger organization.

As demonstrated in the production hell he described in getting the Model 3 production initial ramp, he provided the motivation and direction (if maybe not the technical expertise) to ensure the process eventually fixed itself, and the willingness to change direction quickly when circumstances were needed.

SpaceX has demonstrated another trait - where the Boeing types seem to have sent their engineers off to a nice tidy office to churn out designs until the decide as a committee “this design will work” Elon seems to have adopted the concept “build something, see if it actually works, and whether it does or not, take what you learned.” The multiple Starship tests provide spectacular examples of testing and failing. he failed spectacularly to re-capture a lot of his early commercial rockets, until nowadays it is rare that one gets away. I presume this concept too is Elon’s idea.

But any technology project today - iPhone, Full Self Drive software, microprocessor chips, toy drones, Windows or MS Office, and especially not electric cars or orbital rockets - none of these are simple enough to be done by a technical group of a dozen people sitting in a converted loft with video games and a pinball machine in to corner to let off steam. There is rarely even one person who is essential to the technology 9as opposed to the management drive).

17

Some of these responses remind me of an episode of The Big Bang Theory. A guy who used to bully Leonard in high school calls him up and wants to meet. At the meeting, the guy flatters Leonard with things like “You’re the smartest guy I know.” He then tells Leonard the purpose of the meeting: he’s thought up a great invention and needs Leonard’s help.

Upon hearing the “invention”, Leonard says, “That’s great! How does it work?” The guy responds with, “I don’t know. That’s what you’re here for.”

So, what makes Musk different than Leonard’s high school nemesis? I have a great invention, too. I want a self-cleaning house that works like my self-cleaning oven. I lock the door, push a button, and return after a few hours to a sparkling clean house. How does it work? I haven’t any idea; I’ll hire a bunch of engineers to figure that out.

18

The late Frances Gabe figured out something of the sort.

[/hijack]

19

moved to IMHO, as this isn’t a question with a factual answer.

20

Moderating:

@nate @Stranger_On_A_Train , both of you should be attacking the posts, not the poster. And if that’s hard, it might be wise for both of you to just refrain from replying to each other for a while.