Elon Musk - Walter Isaacson  ## Metadata - Author: **Walter Isaacson** - Full Title: Elon Musk - Category: #books ## Highlights - As a kid growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk knew pain and learned how to survive it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hak8wqmcyc87v6qjpd9tfepm)) - Empathy did not come naturally, and he had neither the desire nor the instinct to be ingratiating ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hak9522bka0r3b7qdf4v8v02)) - If your father is always calling you a moron and idiot, maybe the only response is to turn off anything inside that would’ve opened up an emotional dimension that he didn’t have tools to deal with.” This emotional shutoff valve could make him callous, but it also made him a risk-seeking innovator. “He learned to shut down fear,” she says. “If you turn off fear, then maybe you have to turn off other things, like joy or empathy.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hak9m67t1zcbs5whzp7rvfg4)) - The PTSD from his childhood also instilled in him an aversion to contentment. “I just don’t think he knows how to savor success and smell the flowers,” says Claire Boucher, the artist known as Grimes, who is the mother of three of his other children. “I think he got conditioned in childhood that life is pain.” Musk agrees. “Adversity shaped me,” he says. “My pain threshold became very high ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hak9nhcgt8rq8jd225awz4mt)) - While other entrepreneurs struggled to develop a worldview, he developed a cosmic view. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hak9yrjb13p7r8ct30mx55w6)) - Elon wants risk for its own sake,” says Peter Thiel, who became his partner in the early days of PayPal. “He seems to enjoy it, indeed at times be addicted to it.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hak9zx91kp2588xm7t7s2etg)) - Haldeman imprinted that spirit onto one of his twin girls, Elon’s mother, Maye. “I know that I can take a risk as long as I’m prepared,” she says ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hamc0bgr3x2ksypgetxaqwcj)) - Errol Musk and Maye Haldeman began dating when they were young teenagers. From the start, their relationship was filled with drama. He repeatedly proposed to her, but she didn’t trust him ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hamccafa79c2psh5b4ebtpa7)) - As a child, he says, he heard about a science fiction book by the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun called *Project Mars*, which describes a colony on the planet run by an executive known as “the Elon.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hamchz3mmem16skrs8ht5qdb)) - His parents got called in to see the principal, who told them, “We have reason to believe that Elon is retarded. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hamcpv8ha06z05s3168apyv5)) - He spent most of his time in a trance, not listening, one of his teachers explained. “He looks out of the window all the time, and when I tell him to pay attention he says, ‘The leaves are turning brown now.’ ” Errol replied that Elon was right, the leaves were turning brown ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hamcqm690jpdtaym6yj4138b)) - Ever since I was a kid, if I start to think about something hard, then all of my sensory systems turn off,” he says. “I can’t see or hear or anything. I’m using my brain to compute, not for incoming information ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hamcrqw9tabrfg98xnwjak0q)) - Musk would later talk about—even joke about—having Asperger’s, a common name for a form of autism-spectrum disorder that can affect a person’s social skills, relationships, emotional connectivity, and self-regulation. “He was never actually diagnosed as a kid,” his mother says, “but he says he has Asperger’s, and I’m sure he’s right.” The condition was exacerbated by his childhood traumas ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hant5x2hddyxdmw4q844phwq)) - As a result, he was bad at picking up social cues. “I took people literally when they said something,” he says, “and it was only by reading books that I began to learn that people did not always say what they really meant.” He had a preference for things that were more precise, such as engineering, physics, and coding. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hant6vpk91bwkm54s60pt96g)) - But he didn’t have the emotional receptors that produce everyday kindness and warmth and a desire to be liked. He was not hardwired to have empathy. Or, to put it in less technical terms, he could be an asshole. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hant87cczed64srsjnczcc4p)) - Elon developed a reputation for being the most fearless. When the cousins went to a movie and people were making noise, he would be the one to go over and tell them to be quiet, even if they were much bigger. “It’s a big theme for him to never have his decisions guided by fear,” Peter recalls. “That was definitely present even when he was a child.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har5ezd2h6k3gbc8gttabndc)) - That lesson stuck with Musk. “I took from the book that we need to extend the scope of consciousness so that we are better able to ask the questions about the answer, which is the universe,” he says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har72a9jhnw52s7sr4tay3jj)) - As Douglas Adams writes, “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har745f9njsxhzqn7sfb2kzt)) - “I wasn’t really going to put a lot of effort into things I thought were meaningless,” he says. “I would rather be reading or playing video games.” He got an A in the physics part of his senior certificate exams, but somewhat surprisingly, only a B in the math part. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har5nq3anr1sh9j6xjx9a36x)) - In his spare time, he liked to make small rockets and experiment with different mixtures—such as swimming-pool chlorine and brake fluid—to see what would make the biggest bang. He also learned magic tricks and how to hypnotize people, once convincing Tosca that she was a dog and getting her to eat raw bacon. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har5s1gbacqkgcfghhqygez7)) - Both the religious and the scientific explanations of existence, he says, did not address the really big questions, such as *Where did the universe come from, and why does it exist?* Physics could teach everything about the universe except why. That led to what he calls his adolescent existential crisis. “I began trying to figure out what the meaning of life and the universe was,” he says. “And I got real depressed about it, like maybe life may have no meaning.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har67hh4frd8zsm1rt4ms83z)) - One of his favorites was Robert Heinlein’s *The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress*, a novel about a lunar penal colony ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har6abzgar4p0g0gkef01cy0)) - Asimov expounds the most fundamental of these rules, dubbed the Zeroth Law: “A robot may not harm humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har6dernz3kbn8zbn7mkqh1d)) - The heroes of Asimov’s *Foundation* series of books develop a plan to send settlers to distant regions of the galaxy to preserve human consciousness in the face of an impending dark age. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har6ee3cgdwgqym6bsk2h7sn)) - The difficulty of getting traveler’s checks replaced (it took weeks) was an early taste of how the financial payments system needed disruption. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01har923syjpgyxrdtwyzaw5n2)) - Nicholson, then forty-nine, and Elon had fun together solving math puzzles and weird equations. “I was interested in the philosophical side of physics and how it related to reality,” Nicholson says. “I didn’t have a lot of other people to talk to about these things.” They also discussed what had become Musk’s passion: space travel. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01harbdrjxhves2f5q7pccrjqb)) - Musk also drew another lesson from his time at Scotiabank: he did not like, nor was he good at, working for other people. It was not in his nature to be deferential or to assume that others might know more than he did. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01harbkhjhnt7s4tda38r1sm0r)) - The essence of being an engineer, he felt, was to address any problem by drilling down to the most fundamental tenets of physics ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01harbqjrnjnqqhwbrq5nmb5eq)) - I was concerned that if I didn’t study business, I would be forced to work for someone who did ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01harbr4f6jdp196drnazqqk1t)) - My goal was to engineer products by having a feel for the physics and never have to work for a boss with a business degree ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01harbrzvr728r3hfyk0y1enth)) - Instead, he fit comfortably into a crowd of geeks who liked making clever jokes involving scientific forces, playing *Dungeons & Dragons*, binging on video games, and writing computer code. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01harbx1dxpd3mf64xfs450174)) - Ren recalls that Musk focused on the three areas that would shape his career. Whether he was calibrating the force of gravity or analyzing the properties of materials, he would discuss with Ren how the laws of physics applied to building rockets. “He kept talking about making a rocket that could go to Mars,” Ren recalls. “Of course, I didn’t pay much attention, because I thought he was fantasizing.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01harc0102f0d35f7wt9a2hvtb)) - Ressi later marveled that Musk usually seemed a bit detached. “He enjoyed being around a party but not fully in it. The only thing he binged on was video games.” Despite all of their partying, he understood that Musk was fundamentally alienated and withdrawn, like an observer from a different planet trying to learn the motions of sociability. “I wish Elon knew how to be a little happier,” he says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01harccghhs1zf96dfwgbgpzv2)) - They were impressed and wanted him to work full-time, but he needed to graduate in order to get a U.S. work visa. In addition, he came to a realization: he had a fanatic love of video games and the skills to make money creating them, but that was not the best way to spend his life. “I wanted to have more impact,” he says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01harcmx41qkvax1vxzh4je0ay)) - He had conceived by then a life vision that he would repeat like a mantra. “I thought about the things that will truly affect humanity,” he says. “I came up with three: the internet, sustainable energy, and space travel ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hard5bh40tr71cs7n0hmyeed)) - Every time investors would come in, we showed them the tower,” Kimbal says, “and we would laugh because it made them think we were doing hardcore stuff ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hardy3emqvs9yxtpafpk3pej)) - Rich Sorkin, who had run business development for an audio equipment company, was made the CEO of Zip2. Elon was moved aside to chief technology officer. At first, he thought the change would suit him; he could focus on building the product. But he learned a lesson. “I never wanted to be a CEO,” he says, “but I learned that you could not truly be the chief technology or product officer unless you were the CEO.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hare4er63k7yqwerz6c6ffnc)) - “He’s not a man who takes no for an answer,” she says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw2m7jhxf8bxv0rjamb7ww9)) - She was impressed by his aspirations. “Unlike other ambitious people, he never talked about making money,” she says. “He assumed that he would be either wealthy or broke, but nothing in between. What interested him were the problems he wanted to solve.” His indomitable will—whether for making her date him or for building electric cars—mesmerized her. “Even when it seemed like crazy talk, you would believe him because he believed it.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw2p6s47ep07y52n965e6ny)) - They smiled and kissed. Then, as they danced, he whispered to her a reminder: “I am the alpha in this relationship.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw35jva7x0bcjy1v9qh9jd3)) - When his cousin Peter Rive visited in early 1999, he found Musk poring over books about the banking system. “I’m trying to think about what to start next,” he explained. His experience at Scotiabank had convinced him that the industry was ripe for disruption. So in March 1999, he founded X.com with a friend from the bank, Harris Fricker. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw38nt0hb3v7ds3xepdkz1x)) - At one point Musk responded with a very self-aware email. “I am by nature obsessive-compulsive,” he wrote Fricker. “What matters to me is winning, and not in a small way. God knows why… it’s probably rooted in some very disturbing psychoanalytical black hole or neural short circuit.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw3en9ex7vt51cn48kr8kn5)) - Believing that Musk needed adult supervision, Moritz convinced him to step aside the following month and allow Bill Harris, the former head of Intuit, to become CEO. In a reprise of what had happened at Zip2, Musk remained as chief product officer and board chair, maintaining his frenzied intensity. After one meeting with investors, he went down to the cafeteria, where he had set up some arcade video games. “There were several of us playing *Street Fighter* with Elon,” says Roelof Botha, the chief financial officer. “He was sweating, and you could see that he was a bundle of energy and intensity.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw3metn9cqqp7sdvbs41k8j)) - Musk was drawn to the fight with the intensity of a video-gamer. Thiel, on the contrary, liked to coolly calculate and mitigate risk. It soon became clear to both of them that the network effect—whichever company got bigger first would then grow even faster—meant that only one would survive ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw3sq4rycha2c2xkyc929xg)) - “We would own ninety percent of the merged company and you would own ten percent,” Musk replied. Levchin was not quite sure what to make of Musk. Was he serious? They had roughly equal user bases. “He had an extremely serious I’m-not-joking look on his face, but underneath there seemed to be an ironic streak,” Levchin says. As Musk later conceded, “We were playing a game.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw3vj93rsfqjten1rh59rp4)) - “So, what can this car do?” Thiel asked. “Watch this,” Musk replied, pulling into the fast lane and flooring the accelerator. The rear axle broke and the car spun around, hit an embankment, and flew in the air like a flying saucer. Parts of the body shredded. Thiel, a practicing libertarian, was not wearing a seatbelt, but he emerged unscathed. He was able to hitch a ride up to the Sequoia offices. Musk, also unhurt, stayed behind for a half-hour to have his car towed away, then joined the meeting without telling Harris what had happened. Later, Musk was able to laugh and say, “At least it showed Peter I was unafraid of risks.” Says Thiel, “Yeah, I realized he was a bit crazy.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw3ywsgqjmrnphnqnr8g6hk)) - A break came when Musk had a bonding experience with Thiel and Levchin at another lunch, this one at Il Fornaio, a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant in Palo Alto. They had waited a long time without being served, so Harris barged into the kitchen to see what dishes he could extract. Musk, Thiel, and Levchin looked at each other and exchanged glances. “Here was this extreme extrovert business-development type acting like he had an S on his chest, and the three of us are all very nerdy,” Levchin says. “We bonded over being the type of people who would never do what Bill did.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw45jdc7hmgvksy0nb6naxg)) - They agreed to a merger in which X.com would get 55 percent of the combined company, but Musk almost ruined things soon after by telling Levchin he was getting a steal. Infuriated, Levchin threatened to pull out. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw46shw4w8bm5bybxjq7pdk)) - The terms were revised once again, to basically a 50-50 merger, but with X.com as the surviving corporate entity. In March 2000, the deal was consummated, and Musk, the largest stockholder, became the chairman. A few weeks later, he joined with Levchin to force Harris out and regain the role of CEO as well. Adult supervision was no longer welcome. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw48010pvavbb8m2wdxgann)) - Musk restructured the company so that there was not a separate engineering department. Instead, engineers would team up with product managers. It was a philosophy that he would carry through to Tesla, SpaceX, and then Twitter. Separating the design of a product from its engineering was a recipe for dysfunction. Designers had to feel the immediate pain if something they devised was hard to engineer. He also had a corollary that worked well for rockets but less so for Twitter: engineers rather than the product managers should lead the team. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw4dyhj9w99mfc5pjcjpsm7)) - For the second time in three years, Musk had been pushed out of a company. He was a visionary who didn’t play well with others. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haxjrafd6mx5z2gtbr9jr17g)) - What struck his colleagues at PayPal, in addition to his relentless and rough personal style, was his willingness, even desire, to take risks ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haxjy6xktsv8b5k8mbwgdgf2)) - Entrepreneurs are actually not risk takers,” says Roelof Botha. “They’re risk mitigators. They don’t thrive on risk, they never seek to amplify it, instead they try to figure out the controllable variables and minimize their risk.” But not Musk. “He was into amplifying risk and burning the boats so we could never retreat from it.” To Botha, Musk’s McLaren crash was like a metaphor: floor it and see how fast it goes. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haxjz3kzex95sy8t8b269cbh)) - He’s amazingly successful getting people to march across a desert,” Hoffman says. “He has a level of certainty that causes him to put all of his chips on the table.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haxk0qwj7vxjh9vnz5tshdvx)) - I think a huge part of the way he motivates people are these displays of sharpness, which people just don’t expect from him, because they mistake him for a bullshitter or goofball.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haw4qcw7getedsx51b01fq00)) - Musk had married Justine eight months earlier, but he had not found time to go on a honeymoon. Fatefully, he decided to take one that September, just when his colleagues were plotting against him. He flew to Australia to attend the Olympics, with stops to meet potential investors in London and Singapore. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haxgnj8c0fyz4mxsgqr2p8nb)) - In order to get his pilot’s license, he needed fifty hours of training, which he crammed into two weeks. “I tend to do things very intensely,” he says ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haxkk91s86ctk5778qzrfg70)) - Later Hoffman would realize that Musk didn’t think that way. “What I didn’t appreciate is that Elon starts with a mission and later finds a way to backfill in order to make it work financially,” he says. “That’s what makes him a force of nature.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haxm1btsrj41q1hpnxzezagx)) - Ancient Egyptians learned how to build the pyramids, but then that knowledge was lost. The same happened to Rome, which built aqueducts and other wonders that were lost in the Dark Ages. Was that happening to America? “People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves,” he would say in a TED Talk a few years later. “It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haxm4hk351v7rmqzf6hwrfye)) - Faring to other planets would be, Musk believed, one of the significant advances in the story of humanity. “There are only a handful of really big milestones: single-celled life, multicellular life, differentiation of plants and animals, life extending from the oceans to land, mammals, consciousness,” he says. “On that scale, the next important step is obvious: making life multiplanetary. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haypwz40h3h5aaxz862s3cp6)) - As Max Levchin drily puts it, “One of Elon’s greatest skills is the ability to pass off his vision as a mandate from heaven.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01haypx5mn62x3jqxzec6yy994)) - Musk began gathering rocket engineers for meetings at a hotel near the Los Angeles airport. “My initial thought was not to create a rocket company, but rather to have a philanthropic mission that would inspire the public and lead to more NASA funding.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hazwevr5q6r7jwh3wz4888ph)) - Musk tried to recruit the two engineers who had accompanied him to Moscow. But Mike Griffin did not want to move to Los Angeles. He was working for In-Q-Tel, a CIA-funded venture firm based in the Washington, DC, area, and he was looking at a promising future in science policy ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb029hme1jvvd6n95k3cmyz4)) - SpaceX. Its goal, he said in an early presentation, was to launch its first rocket by September 2003 and to send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2010. Thus continued the tradition he had established at PayPal: setting unrealistic timelines that transformed his wild notions from being completely insane to being merely very late. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb02dzykyck0acyf8fhk744t)) - If you’re unwilling to invest in a company, he felt, you shouldn’t qualify as a founder. “You cannot ask for two years of salary in escrow and consider yourself a cofounder,” he says. “There’s got to be some combination of inspiration, perspiration, and risk to be a cofounder.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb03gh577nf4de57rhaw5k9f)) - As his team grew, Musk infused it with his tolerance for risk and reality-bending willfulness. “If you were negative or thought something couldn’t be done, you were not invited to the next meeting,” Mueller recalls. “He just wanted people who would make things happen.” It was a good way to drive people to do what they thought was impossible. But it was also a good way to become surrounded by people afraid to give you bad news or question a decision. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb03pjwn6bv62n6rt5wzmab4)) -  ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb03rj3n6rgkxbctbcafkpgg)) - At one point SpaceX needed a valve, Mueller recalls, and the supplier said it would cost $250,000. Musk declared that insane and told Mueller they should make it themselves. They were able to do so in months at a fraction of the cost ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb1694kjetsm60zp4n8hhvbx)) - After a few years, SpaceX was making in-house 70 percent of the components of its rockets. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb16gza0cpw6dfc309p1aqh4)) - There is a military specification that says it’s a requirement.’ And he’d reply, ‘Who wrote that? Why does it make sense?’ ” All requirements should be treated as recommendations, he repeatedly instructed. The only immutable ones were those decreed by the laws of physics. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb16pn4ptsefwtva99qe63ve)) - The sense of urgency was good for its own sake. It made his engineers engage in first-principles thinking. But as Mueller points out, it was also corrosive. “If you set an aggressive schedule that people think they might be able to make, they will try to put out extra effort,” he says. “But if you give them a schedule that’s physically impossible, engineers aren’t stupid. You’ve demoralized them. It’s Elon’s biggest weakness.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb16y5bvyckhqyytdgghcwgb)) - Even though we failed to meet most schedules or cost targets that Elon laid out, we still beat all of our peers,” Mueller admits. “We developed the lowest-cost, most awesome rockets in history, and we would end up feeling pretty good about it, even if Dad wasn’t always happy with us.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb170tjvdmd2h3d8ywap3qqw)) - Shotwell has a special insight that helps her when dealing with Musk. Her husband has the autism-spectrum disorder commonly called Asperger’s. “People like Elon with Asperger’s don’t take social cues and don’t naturally think about the impact of what they say on other people,” she says. “Elon understands personalities very well, but as a study, not as an emotion.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb19kx4a37aym11519jvebyv)) - A few months after she joined SpaceX in 2003, Shotwell and Musk traveled to Washington. Their goal was to win a contract from the Defense Department to launch a new breed of small tactical communications satellites, known as TacSat, that would allow commanders of ground forces to get imagery and other data quickly. They went to a Chinese restaurant near the Pentagon, and Musk broke his tooth. Embarrassed, he kept putting his hand over his mouth, until she started laughing at him. “It was the funniest thing, watching him try to hide it.” They were able to find a late-night dentist who made a temporary cap so that Musk would be presentable for their Pentagon meeting the next morning. There they sealed the contract, SpaceX’s first, for $3.5 million ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb19smte0sjds5sf4q4cgneb)) - Under those contracts, the government kept control of a project—such as building a new rocket or engine or satellite—and issued detailed specifications of what it wanted done. It would then award contracts to big companies such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin, which would be paid all of their costs plus a guaranteed profit. This approach became standard during World War II to give the government complete control over the development of weapons and to prevent the perception that contractors were war-profiteering. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb1a4v1c34dnytnksjd0eeh6)) - The problem with a cost-plus system, he argued, was that it stymied innovation. If the project went over budget, the contractor would get paid more. There was little incentive for the cozy club of cost-plus contractors to take risks, be creative, work fast, or cut costs. “Boeing and Lockheed just want their cost-plus gravy trains,” he says. “You just can’t get to Mars with that system. They have an incentive never to finish. If you never finish a cost-plus contract, then you suckle on the tit of the government forever.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb1a7ppft33mmydkxp57g0jm)) - The company risked its own capital, and it would be paid only if and when it delivered on certain milestones. This outcomes-based, fixed-price contracting allowed the private company to control, within broad parameters, how its rockets were designed and built. There was a lot of money to be made if it built a cost-efficient rocket that succeeded, and a lot of money to be lost if it failed. “It rewards results rather than waste,” Musk says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb1a8zxkj3a10e8784khr835)) - In October 2003, Straubel attended a seminar at Stanford where Musk, who had started SpaceX the year before, was a speaker. His talk touted the need for entrepreneurial space activities ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb1akpwfef501h6kbcdq7bk5)) - The way to get a car company started was to build a high-priced car first and later move to a mass-market model ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb1atddzy1kafv41qr287k7y)) - He mentioned that encounter in an email to Musk asking for a meeting. “We would love to talk to you about Tesla Motors, particularly if you might be interested in investing,” he wrote. “I believe that you have driven AC Propulsion’s tzero car. If so, you already know that a high-performance electric car can be made. We would like to convince you that we can do so profitably.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb1b4h0gn5kaa2rnn4kpyf9a)) - One of the most important decisions that Elon Musk made about Tesla—the defining imprint that led to its success and its impact on the auto industry—was that it should make its own key components, rather than piecing together a car with hundreds of components from independent suppliers ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb1yq3g7htec0y046ps5em13)) - When producing their Rocket eBook, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning had outsourced the manufacturing process. Likewise, when it came time to make Tesla’s first car, the Roadster, they decided to cobble it together from components made by outside suppliers ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb1yvmx5mtwt1fjdnvk2tsgr)) - One issue with startups, especially those with multiple founders and funders, is who should be in charge. Sometimes the alpha male wins, as when Steve Jobs marginalized Steve Wozniak and when Bill Gates did the same to Paul Allen. At other times it’s messier, especially when different players feel that they are the founder of a company. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb270pyttp33rynt36tpgd93)) - The problems began when Eberhard had a falling-out with Ian Wright, who had been part of the founding team. Their disagreements became so intense that each tried to convince Musk to fire the other. It was a tacit acknowledgment by Eberhard that Musk had the ultimate say. “Martin and Ian were telling me why the other one is a demon and needs to be thrown out,” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb2g06b61kykxb6ntp72pqyg)) - Almost any new technology initially has high unit cost before it can be optimized, and this is no less true for electric cars ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb2nb6dmqrpg88jt79zdzhqh)) - As it turned out, Hollman was not at fault. When the fuel line was found, part of the B-nut was still attached, but it was corroded and had cracked in half. The sea air of Kwaj was to blame. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb3rkstq0t281szkbnv2eq7p)) - Musk was worried that workers in France were not as dedicated as he was, so he gave them a pep talk. “Please don’t strike or go on vacation right now, or Tesla will die,” he pleaded ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb7y8e0c42gnssecsd46wr77)) - Musk’s fundamental instincts. He aspired to build Gigafactories where raw materials would go in one end and cars would come out the other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb9117njmtg9by77dwvkqa11)) - I’ve come to put him in the same category as Steve Jobs, which is that some people are just assholes, but they accomplish so much that I just have to sit back and say, ‘That seems to be a package.’ ” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb914dz3d5d233nh5b10vrn8)) - He was talking about rockets, and at first I didn’t realize they were his rockets.” At one point he asked, “May I put my hand on your knee?” She was a bit taken aback, but nodded her assent. At the end, he said to her, “I’m very bad at this, but please may I have your phone number because I would like to see you again.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb91wvt9dh5r7aqyxepw2tfc)) - Musk’s friend Bill Lee invested $2 million, Sergey Brin of Google invested $500,000, and even regular Tesla employees wrote checks ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbacdt5gs1nh0pcckbsswt31)) - Musk’s tolerance for stress is high, but 2008 almost pushed him past his limits. “I was working every day, all day and night, in a situation that required me to pull a rabbit out of the hat, now do it again, now do it again,” he says. He gained a lot of weight, and then suddenly lost it all and more. His posture became hunched, and his toes stayed stiff when he walked. But he became energized and hyperfocused. The threat of the hangman’s noose concentrated his mind ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbachta2wpkcewf56h4hv62q)) - The more people pressed him to choose, the more he resisted. “For me emotionally, this was like, you got two kids and you’re running out of food,” he says. “You can give half to each kid, in which case they might both die, or give all the food to one kid and increase the chance that at least one kid survives. I couldn’t bring myself to decide that one was going to die, so I decided I had to give my all to save both.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbacq3dxgqmncshky4k9b4sh)) - For the second flight, SpaceX had not put a real satellite on top of the rocket because it did not want to lose a valuable payload if it crashed. But for this third attempt, Musk was all in, gambling on success. The rocket would carry an expensive 180-pound Air Force satellite, two smaller satellites from NASA, and the cremated remains of James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty on *Star Trek*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hba9d304ds8b0gsv2wbt3axk)) - Carl Hoffman, a *Wired* reporter who had watched the failure of the second launch with Musk, reached him to ask how he maintained his optimism. “Optimism, pessimism, fuck that,” Musk answered. “We’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hba9pnmzwwcew0j9aagb5pwk)) - As a result, Daimler contracted with Tesla for battery packs and powertrains for Smart cars, an idea not so different from the one Salzman had suggested. Musk asked Daimler also to consider investing in the company. In May 2009, even before the Department of Energy loans were approved, Daimler agreed to take a $50 million equity stake in Tesla. “If Daimler had not invested in Tesla at that time we would have died,” Musk says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbbkck8ewyrj7gnnvm7kc1ar)) - was an example of Musk’s policy that the designers sketching the shape of the car should work hand in glove with the engineers who were determining how the car would be built. “At other places I worked,” von Holzhausen says, “there was this throw-it-over-the-fence mentality, where a designer would have an idea and then send it to an engineer, who sat in a different building or in a different country.” Musk put the engineers and designers in the same room. “The vision was that we would create designers who thought like engineers and engineers who thought like designers,” von Holzhausen says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbbn26qdzdt9trkwmkr7k7zg)) - In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer,” Jobs once explained. “Nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbbn47y8e31yee0960c7cywa)) - Musk’s job interviews can be disconcerting. He multitasks, stares blankly, and sometimes pauses silently for a full minute or more. (Applicants are warned in advance to just sit there and not try to fill the silence.) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbd1bcp3h68yqazz8g3gg8p7)) - Obama decided to travel to Cape Canaveral in April 2010 to make the case that relying on private companies such as SpaceX did not mean that the U.S. was abandoning space exploration. “Some have said it is unfeasible or unwise to work with the private sector in this way,” he said in his speech. “I disagree. By buying the services of space transportation—rather than the vehicles themselves—we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met. But we will also accelerate the pace of innovations as companies—from young startups to established leaders—compete to design and build and launch new means of carrying people and materials out of our atmosphere.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbd25sxjrvtcxrx1c4bhmtcp)) - When he’s angry, he’s angry, and when he’s joyful, he’s joyful, and he’s almost childlike in his enthusiasms,” she says. “He can be very cold, but he feels things in a very pure way, with a depth that most people don’t get.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbe64vf303k922g5sqxj2q9b)) - Musk did not have many stable and grounded relationships, nor did he have many stable and grounded periods in his life. No doubt those two things were related. Among his few such relationships was the one he had with Riley, and the years he would spend with her—from their meeting in 2008 to their second divorce in 2016—would end up being the longest stretch of relative stability in his life. If he had liked stability more than storm and drama, she would have been perfect for him ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbe6h6naxa48b9ztrg6q0q2n)) - Tesla’s design-manufacturing feedback loop gave it a competitive advantage, allowing it to innovate on a daily basis. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbe6n2sv5mxm07sr7tjra0qn)) - Oracle founder Larry Ellison joined only two corporate boards, Apple and Tesla, and he became close friends with Jobs and Musk. He said they both had beneficial cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder. “OCD is one of the reasons for their success, because they obsessed on solving a problem until they did,” he says. What set them apart is that Musk, unlike Jobs, applied that obsession not just to the design of a product but also to the underlying science, engineering, and manufacturing. “Steve just had to get the conception and software right, but the manufacturing was outsourced,” Ellison says. “Elon took on the manufacturing, the materials, the huge factories.” Jobs loved to walk through Apple’s design studio on a daily basis, but he never visited his factories in China. Musk, in contrast, spent more time walking assembly lines than he did walking around the design studio ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbe6wg01agxw3efp62yqwhq4)) - Tesla was almost dead at the end of 2008. Now, just eighteen months later, it had become America’s hottest new company ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbe737dczw3d6x1q8bqaxhbh)) - One of Musk’s favorite words—and concepts—was “hardcore.” He used it to describe the workplace culture he wanted when he founded Zip2, and he would use it almost thirty years later when he upended the nurturing culture at Twitter. As the Model S production line ramped up, he spelled out his creed in a quintessential email to employees, titled “Ultra hardcore.” It read, “Please prepare yourself for a level of intensity that is greater than anything most of you have experienced before. Revolutionizing industries is not for the faint of heart.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbe7bpvkg8ch81k1vadb9r9v)) - Elon can be so much hell and brimstone in meetings and just unpredictable as all get out,” he says. “But I’ve also seen him flip a switch and suddenly be this incredibly effective, charismatic, high-emotional-intelligence business person, when he has to do it ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbfem25j3f9r2ppzg5m38bjz)) - Jeff Bezos, the supercharged Amazon billionaire with a boisterous laugh and boyish enthusiasms, pursues his passions with a talent for being, at the same time, both exuberant and methodical. Like Musk, he was a childhood addict of science fiction, racing through the shelves of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein books at his local library. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbfeqqz2b3v3adkx09ck1a1q)) - But Musk missed most of the party and instead spent time in his room on the phone dealing with various issues at Tesla and SpaceX. He liked to focus on work. At times he treated the rest of life as an unpleasant distraction. “The sheer amount of time that I spent at work was so extreme that any relationship was very difficult to maintain,” he admits. “SpaceX and Tesla were difficult individually. Doing them both at the same time was almost impossible. So it was just all work all the time.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbj4w1exsx72410gjcwm3td2)) - Her main job, she told Junod, was keeping Musk from going king-crazy. “You’ve never heard that term?” she asked. “It means that people become king, and then they go crazy.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbj50v6b066avesc5qg4m41p)) - Hassabis added another potential threat to the list: artificial intelligence. Machines could become superintelligent and surpass us mere mortals, perhaps even decide to dispose of us. Musk paused silently for almost a minute as he processed this possibility. During such trancelike periods, he says, he runs visual simulations about the ways that multiple factors may play out over the years. He decided that Hassabis might be right about the danger of AI, and he invested $5 million in DeepMind as a way to monitor what it was doing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbj5c7jmqdgmz162v9rj1fqy)) - Page pushed back. Why would it matter, he asked, if machines someday surpassed humans in intelligence, even consciousness? It would simply be the next stage of evolution. Human consciousness, Musk retorted, was a precious flicker of light in the universe, and we should not let it be extinguished. Page considered that sentimental nonsense. If consciousness could be replicated in a machine, why would that not be just as valuable? Perhaps we might even be able someday to upload our own consciousness into a machine. He accused Musk of being a “specist,” someone who was biased in favor of their own species. “Well, yes, I am pro-human,” Musk responded. “I fucking like humanity, dude.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbj5evsc6z99s33w9cxthb0e)) - Altman had met Musk a few years earlier and spent three hours with him in conversation as they toured the SpaceX factory. “It was funny how some of the engineers would scatter or look away when they saw Elon coming,” Altman says. “They were afraid of him. But I was impressed by how much detail he understood about every little piece of the rocket.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbktca9b0e9fqmtkypt0r2ee)) - Among those at the dinners with Musk and Altman was a research engineer at Google, Ilya Sutskever. They were able to lure him away, with a $1.9 million salary and starting bonus, to be the chief scientist of the new lab ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbktqq5303kg8ye97awwgt8k)) - Page was furious. Not only was his erstwhile friend and houseguest starting a rival lab; he was poaching Google’s top scientists. After the launch of OpenAI at the end of 2015, they barely spoke again. “Larry felt betrayed and was really mad at me for personally recruiting Ilya, and he refused to hang out with me anymore,” Musk says. “And I was like, ‘Larry, if you just hadn’t been so cavalier about AI safety then it wouldn’t really be necessary to have some countervailing force.’ ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbktrvkqfh77ft1j0kcjeemg)) - So Musk decided to forge ahead with building a rival AI team to work on Tesla Autopilot. Even as he was struggling with the production hell surges in Nevada and Fremont, he recruited Andrej Karpathy, a specialist in deep learning and computer vision, away from OpenAI. “We realized that Tesla was going to become an AI company and would be competing for the same talent as OpenAI,” Altman says. “It pissed some of our team off, but I fully understood what was happening.” Altman would turn the tables in 2023 by hiring Karpathy back after he became exhausted working for Musk. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbktx76evk1fzd226e4p1dkf)) - Google’s autopilot program, eventually named Waymo, used a laser-radar device known as LiDAR, an acronym for “light detection and ranging.” Musk resisted the use of LiDAR and other radar-like instruments, insisting that a self-driving system should use only visual data from cameras. It was a case of first principles: humans drove using only visual data; therefore machines should be able to. It was also an issue of cost. As always, Musk focused not just on the design of a product but also on how it would be manufactured in large numbers. “The problem with Google’s approach is that the sensor system is too expensive,” he said in 2013. “It’s better to have an optical system, basically cameras with software that is able to figure out what’s going on just by looking at things.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbm3f29haw0j0wxwmb3m21vq)) - He could not understand why one or two deaths caused by Tesla Autopilot created an outcry when there were more than 1.3 million traffic deaths annually. Nobody was tallying the accidents prevented and lives saved by Autopilot. Nor were they assessing whether driving with Autopilot was safer than driving without it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbm3xb7ggtvga7eyxkqp8p72)) - Ultimately, what it comes down to,” he said, “is that to solve Full Self-Driving, you actually have to solve real-world artificial intelligence.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbmjbw9yk0xebdk051ekfwjy)) - Risk is a type of fuel ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbmjgw7ntec12xwpmcb3w15h)) - He never put much effort into sales and marketing, and instead believed that if you made a great product, the sales would follow. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbmjvd1f8hb19vnfebmv9chp)) - The concept helped Musk avoid the mistake made by many corporate leaders of defining their business too narrowly. “Tesla is not just an automotive company,” he said when the Powerwall was announced in April 2015. “It’s an energy innovation company.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbmjyy42h1t0n76hdp1hgzt6)) - He spent a lot of time giving us lessons about the importance of deleting steps and simplifying ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbmmsqrjf6nh0t79wfxe853w)) - The fact that Elon was attracted to Amber was part of a pattern. “It’s really sad that he falls in love with these people who are really mean to him,” Kimbal says. “They’re beautiful, no question, but they have a very dark side and Elon knows that they’re toxic.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbmpe56tg8f4x1n5k2n4e1ev)) - Musk took charge of the factory floor, playing the role of a feverish field marshal. “It was a frenzy of insanity,” he says. “We were getting four or five hours’ sleep, often on the floor. I remember thinking, ‘I’m like on the ragged edge of sanity.’ ” His colleagues agreed. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbpbgq7wbve6b28mv3ysb7jq)) - The experience became a lesson that would become part of Musk’s production algorithm. Always wait until the end of designing a process—after you have questioned all the requirements and deleted unnecessary parts—before you introduce automation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbq7pp8f4sa4749bey53aes4)) - He believed that short-sellers were not merely skeptics but evil: “They are leeches on the neck of business.” The short-sellers publicly attacked Tesla and Musk personally ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbq8kxhz0ww9e3c5wchb7rgx)) - Musk had come to realize that designing a good factory was like designing a microchip. It was important to create, in each patch, the right density, flow, and processes. So he paid the most attention to a monitor that showed each station on the assembly line with a green or red light indicating whether it was flowing properly ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbq91cdayhax3m8gn73d3khm)) - Musk says in response that people such as Straubel and McNeill were too reluctant to fire people. In that area of the factory, things had not been working well. Parts were piling up by the workstations, and the line wasn’t moving. “By trying to be nice to the people,” Musk says, “you’re actually not being nice to the dozens of other people who are doing their jobs well and will get hurt if I don’t fix the problem spots.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbpq8gab8k8f2h2ys693abaj)) - Factory settings are always idiotic ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbq9xq2y2jfv3tp0d23y9681)) - During his push to ramp up production at the Nevada battery factory, Musk had learned that there are certain tasks, sometimes very simple ones, that humans do better than robots ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqbc9kdt84m6kwm1j9q6zkz)) - Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake,” he tweeted. “To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqbhjs0kam85b1tjpdkw7zf)) - Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqc71692a1fvhayfssq839r)) - Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqc82gf5hk3hf3vy0h0r8va)) - Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqc8m478k0hz3asgtt7jjnx)) - Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqc9zw6pjvyvstmd30jrck5)) - Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqcaqrb5gqcdw7wq5q90g2b)) - All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqcbv6cb6p9w0077kdpjke9)) - Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqccn6h7tscgdqw5hkn2nx3)) - It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqccvpdzy8etnn8kg1eqr6b)) - Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqcd8jn416hpffc4hswp475)) - Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqcdm2zjghf8sp1wrh83dc6)) - When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqcebmmcktnbcmtg3sgqc6a)) - A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqcezv7214p6hakeagv4z01)) - The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqcfen3nkyfmfqgrjh723k6)) - Musk’s friends began referring to his crises as his going “open-loop.” The term is used for an object, such as a bullet as opposed to a guided missile, that has no feedback mechanism to provide it with guidance ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqds8m0jw54c4g8n4mx789t)) - So that night he sent his board of directors a memo: he wanted to take the company private as soon as possible, and he offered to do it at $420 a share. His original calculation set the price at $419, but he liked the number 420 because it was slang for smoking marijuana. “It seemed like better karma at four-twenty than at four-nineteen,” he says. “But I was not on weed, to be clear. Weed is not helpful for productivity. There’s a reason for the word ‘stoned.’ ” He later admitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission that choosing a price as a dope joke was not a wise move. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbqe3bp423v5ggta2cv7fs6y)) - Born in Vancouver, Grimes had produced four albums by the time she started dating Musk. Drawing on science fiction themes and memes, her mesmerizing music combined sonic texture with elements of dream pop and electronica. She had an adventuresome intellectual curiosity that led her to become interested in eclectic ideas, such as a thought experiment known as Roko’s basilisk, which posits that artificial intelligence could get out of control and torture any human who had not helped it gain power ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbxg30bbq0rhtnw14q3m7vct)) - After they met again through the Roko’s basilisk exchange on Twitter, Musk invited her to fly up to Fremont to visit his factory, his idea of a good date ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbxg6psxtj3g1t4sftn7sjrz)) - The only way I could be in a serious relationship is if the person I’m dating can also listen to an hour of, like, war history before bed,” she says. “Elon and I have gone through so many topics, like ancient Greece and Napoleon and the military strategies of World War One.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbyz5w77j6snqcps9rwr40vd)) - One night, when they were at dinner with a group, I watched as the clouds gathered and Musk’s mood shifted. Grimes edged away from him. “When we hang out, I make sure I’m with the right Elon,” she later explained. “There are guys in that head who don’t like me, and I don’t like them.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc02kwpb2f2k3935tscp4b18)) - Demon mode causes a lot of chaos,” she says, “but it also gets shit done.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc02nn287dvbz6jpqkmzr23e)) - When some designers pushed him to at least do some market testing, Musk replied, “I don’t do focus groups.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc40k6gxh4zmyyp1kaae6h4c)) - Every week, amid all the technical meetings on engine and rocket design, he held one very otherworldly meeting called “Mars Colonizer.” There he imagined what a Mars colony would look like and how it should be governed. “We tried to avoid ever skipping Mars Colonizer, because that was the most fun meeting for him and always put him in a good mood,” his former assistant Elissa Butterfield says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc40xgyezhj04hjmxcqh5kkp)) - What about going with stainless steel?” Initially there was resistance, even a bit of incredulity. When he met with his executive team in the conference room at SpaceX a few days later, they argued that a rocket of stainless steel would likely be heavier than one built of carbon fiber or the aluminum-lithium alloy used for the Falcon 9. Musk’s instincts said otherwise. “Run the numbers,” he told the team. “Run the numbers.” When they did so, they determined that steel could, in fact, turn out to be lighter in the conditions that Starship would face. At very cold temperatures, the strength of stainless steel increases by 50 percent, which meant it would be stronger when holding the supercooled liquid oxygen and nitrogen fuel. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc47ffy7hqq6p3tj313yxbdx)) - He needed to come up with a grand idea that would turn the narrative around and convince investors that Tesla would become the world’s most valuable car company. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc58t0er3wsba7s5v344p9t8)) - I will never forget walking the floor that day,” he says. “All the young engineers working their asses off and wearing T-shirts and sporting tattoos and being really badass about getting things done. I thought, ‘These are my people.’ It was nothing like the buttoned-up deadly vibe at Boeing.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc5cgxg6ttawda9xgpx1dthb)) - When hiring or promoting, Musk made a point of prioritizing attitude over résumé skills. And his definition of a good attitude was a desire to work maniacally hard ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc6gtx39w55nq9grawga1vh6)) - You did an awesome job over many years, but eventually everybody’s time comes to retire,” Musk told him in an email. “Yours is now.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc6hxvbc7eez5wapxgdrgmh6)) - I try to criticize the action, not the person. We all make mistakes. What matters is whether a person has a good feedback loop, can seek criticism from others, and can improve. Physics does not care about hurt feelings. It cares about whether you got the rocket right. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc6pek2vqtkt09r77dezv65g)) - Musk says. “His feedback loop was good. I can work with people if they have a good critical feedback loop.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc6pxxsrdawsc3b2jec5bdcw)) - Later, when I asked why he had not opted for the lower altitude, Isaacman said, “If we’re going to go to the moon again, and we’re going to go to Mars, we’ve got to get a little outside our comfort zone.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hc8x6kakdgvvs60tmy1ybtf0)) - As always, Musk focused not only on the product but also on how it would be manufactured and deployed. Robots working at high speeds would cut a small hole in a human skull, insert the chip, and push the threads into the brain. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcbtjrf4gy866w4ks39g55n2)) - He was in the process of deleting connections from SpaceX’s Raptor engines. Each was a possible failure point. “This has to be a single device,” he told the deflated Neuralink engineers. “A single elegant package with no wires, no connections, no router.” There was no law of physics—no basic principle—that prevented all of the functionality from being on one device. When the engineers tried to explain the need for the router, Musk’s face turned stony. “Delete,” he said. “Delete, delete, delete.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcbtq9fcea45wgm4ekcn66vr)) - When they had the new device ready, they implanted it in one of the macaque monkeys, named Pager, housed at the lab. He was taught to play the video game *Pong* by rewarding him with a fruit smoothie when he scored well. The Neuralink device recorded which neurons were firing each time he moved the joystick a certain way. Then the joystick was deactivated, and the signals from the monkey’s brain controlled the game. It was a major step toward Musk’s goal of creating a direct connection between a brain and a machine. Neuralink uploaded a video of it to YouTube, and within a year it was viewed six million times. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcbwhr247cwac3hr1xybn09r)) - Under the extraordinary compensation bet he had made with his Tesla board in February 2018, amid Tesla’s worst production problems, he got no guaranteed salary. Instead, his compensation would depend on hitting very aggressive revenue, profit, and market value targets, which included Tesla’s market valuation increasing ten-fold to $650 billion ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcbx2r4ymaxypkv2wpgk9py5)) - When you are no longer in a survive-or-die mode, it’s not that easy to get motivated every day. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hccysyb4et8fmxbjdq4vhgfg)) - For simplicity’s sake, they mainly just called her Y, or sometimes Why?, with a question mark as part of her name. “Elon always says we need to figure out what the question is before we can know the answers to the universe,” Grimes explains, referring to what he learned from *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy* ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcczny1pmtaj5yfnss6xkpsh)) - Musk did so as well. “I had to take *Polytopia* off my phone because it was taking up too many brain cycles,” he says. “I started dreaming about *Polytopia*.” But the lesson about unplugging was another one that Musk never mastered. After a few months, he put the game back onto his phone and was playing again. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hce7x5dez4dgr2v99ga4t1km)) - Allowing the use of Starlink for the attack, he concluded, could be a disaster for the world. So he secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within a hundred kilometers of the Crimean coast ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hce8nz2h7b68dt0ck80e8afe)) - I don’t have a scheduler,” Musk replied. He had decided to get rid of his personal assistant and scheduler because he wanted complete control of his calendar. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcegyj7393tme3agpyva9168)) - In the rarefied fraternity of people who have held the title of richest person on Earth, Musk and Gates have some similarities. Both have analytic minds, an ability to laser-focus, and an intellectual surety that edges into arrogance. Neither suffers fools. All of these traits made it likely they would eventually clash, which is what happened when Musk began giving Gates a tour of the factory. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hceh1a4kzvfc40emeg8dnhqf)) - • Tesla: $1 trillion • SpaceX: $100 billion • The Boring Company: $5.6 billion • Neuralink: $1 billion ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcgsfk1qhxwmtath1gfwzrm5)) - Shivon Zilis noticed that by early April he had the itchiness of a video-game addict who has triumphed but couldn’t unplug. “You don’t have to be in a state of war at all times,” she told him that month. “Or, is it that you find greater comfort when you’re in periods of war?” “It’s part of my default settings,” he replied. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcgshbnxwc9sgv1x3p6j7hbj)) - During a conversation that month about the milestones his companies had reached, he explained to me why he thought Tesla was on a trajectory to be the most valuable company in the world, one that made $1 trillion in profits every year. Yet there were no notes of celebration or even satisfaction in his voice. “I guess I’ve always wanted to push my chips back on the table or play the next level of the game,” he said. “I’m not good at sitting back.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcgsp36f50p3nd24tymqvgjw)) - For a brief couple of days, it looked as if there would be peace in the valley. Musk liked the fact that Agrawal was an engineer, not a typical CEO. “I interface way better with engineers who are able to do hardcore programming than with program manager/MBA types of people,” he texted. “I love our conversations!” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hch1xkp89xp8yy1ftn9b3z59)) - Musk had founded SpaceX, he liked to say, to increase the chances for the survival of human consciousness by making us a multiplanetary species. The grand rationale for Tesla and SolarCity was to lead the way to a sustainable energy future. Optimus and Neuralink were launched to create human-machine interfaces that would protect us from evil artificial intelligence. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hckj4f4zvjjn2nzbjsvpqgcn)) - As a kid, he was beaten and bullied on the playground, never having been endowed with the emotional dexterity needed to thrive on that rugged terrain. It instilled a deep pain and sometimes caused him to react to slights far too emotionally, but it also is what girded him to be able to face the world and fight every battle fiercely. When he felt dinged up, cornered, bullied, either online or in person, it took him back to a place that was super painful, where he was dissed by his father and bullied by his classmates. But now he could own the playground. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hckjd2xb4njwsz1pq2a3ce59)) - Twitter spent $1 billion a year on servers. What are the functions taking up most of that computing time and storage, and how were they ranked? He found it hard to get straight answers. At Tesla, he fired people for not knowing such details ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hckkc52ssh2pp9594xn2pf17)) - though he was afflicted by preferring extreme heat and cold rather than warmth in relationships ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hckmxq9jxxckjgaanmbsb7dt)) - It’s true that if they see the general out on the battlefield, the troops are going to be motivated. Wherever Napoleon was, that’s where his armies would do best ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hckpj4b8rvr1re9n9enh6e5x)) - Musk gave one directive: it was to be a *humanoid* robot. In other words, it was supposed to look like a person rather than a mechanical contraption with wheels or four legs like Boston Dynamics and others were making. Most workspaces and tools are designed to accommodate the way humans do things, so Musk believed that a robot should approximate human forms in order to operate naturally. “We want to make it as human as possible,” von Holzhausen told the ten engineers and designers seated around his conference table. “But we can also add improvements to what humans can do.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hckpr7qh91g4xnnke2zq9ya9)) - He had a core belief that you could not separate engineering from product design. In fact, product design should be driven by engineers. The company, like Tesla and SpaceX, should be engineering-led at all levels. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hckrk121gz6hp5qwwgb6kgqk)) - I was burned out. But after nine months, I was bored, so I called my boss and begged him to let me come back. I decided I’d rather be burned out than bored ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcks87eex91pm3dpatrtxg1j)) - Elon can inspire people to do things bigger than themselves ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcpbfg6129937dk8cgwedf5s)) - Musk let loose a bitter laugh when he heard the phrase “psychological safety.” It made him recoil. He considered it to be the enemy of urgency, progress, orbital velocity. His preferred buzzword was “hardcore.” Discomfort, he believed, was a good thing. It was a weapon against the scourge of complacency. Vacations, flower-smelling, work-life balance, and days of “mental rest” were not his thing. Let that sink in. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcpbvznnagh0g98hbz8gja7j)) - Musk made it a rule to be wary of anyone whose confidence was greater than their competence ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcrv648j3nhqr717ej2z15kj)) - Product managers who don’t know anything about coding keep ordering up features they don’t know how to create,” James said. “Like cavalry generals who don’t know how to ride a horse.” It was a line Musk himself often used. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hct01efk2b4c1hzq4y0sz33d)) - Kanye’s belief in himself and his incredible tenacity got him to where he is today,” Musk said in *Time* in 2015. “He fought for his place in the cultural pantheon with a purpose. He’s not afraid of being judged or ridiculed in the process.” Musk could have been describing himself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hct0bbz2x6x1c00q9zyx4spe)) - He’s a bit of an idealist, right? He has a set of grand visions, whether it’s multiplanetary humanity or renewable energy and even free speech. And he has constructed for himself a moral and ethical universe that is focused on the delivery of those big goals. I think that makes it hard to villainize him.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hctchbmdk7j788t42a4yp14e)) - The moderator asked what advice he would give to someone who wanted to be the next Elon Musk. “I’d be careful what you wish for,” he replied. “I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. The amount that I torture myself is next level, frankly.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hctcq8p6x0b52zmr00axwdm0)) - I’m a big believer that a small number of exceptional people who are highly motivated can do better than a large number of people who are pretty good and moderately motivated ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hctcscx5baq2r9g5qrrsyc9a)) - It was not always a pretty sight. Musk’s method, as it had been since the Falcon 1 rocket, was to iterate fast, take risks, be brutal, accept some flameouts, then try again. “We were changing the engines while the plane was spiraling out of control,” he says of Twitter. “It’s a miracle we survived.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hctfc1jygmxfp7swma72y2v8)) - In some ways, Musk was like Steve Jobs, a brilliant but abrasive taskmaster with a reality-distortion field who could drive his employees crazy but also drive them to do things they thought were impossible. He could be confrontational, with both colleagues and competitors. Tim Cook, who took over Apple in 2011, was different. He was calm, coolly disciplined, and disarmingly polite. Although he could be steely when warranted, he avoided unnecessary confrontations. Whereas Jobs and Musk seemed drawn to drama, Cook had an instinct for defusing it. He had a steady moral compass. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hctff3nmf3vrfpjv4wttz8ck)) - This year it was “What regrets do you have?” “My main regret,” Elon answered, “is how often I stab myself in the thigh with a fork, how often I shoot my own feet and stab myself in the eye.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcvzns5q3wtfxev9bzccn6r6)) - By early 2023, the neural network planner project had analyzed 10 million frames of video collected from the cars of Tesla customers. Does that mean it would merely be as good as the average of human drivers? “No, because we only use data from humans when they handled a situation well,” Shroff explains. Human labelers, many of them based in Buffalo, New York, assessed the videos and gave them grades. Musk told them to look for things “a five-star Uber driver would do,” and those were the videos used to train the computer. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hcxx1aabthx41wm7zvtcyh50)) - Musk, who liked to manage by decreeing what metrics should be paramount, gave them their lodestar: the number of miles that cars with Tesla Full Self-Driving were able to travel without a human intervening ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hd0e8jf0savjsa2gqdvp0174)) - The amount of human intelligence, he noted, was leveling off, because people were not having enough children. Meanwhile, the amount of computer intelligence was going up exponentially, like Moore’s Law on steroids. At some point, biological brainpower would be dwarfed by digital brainpower. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hd0fg6vm6cbvts5mxrrdqjxs)) - With AI coming, I’m sort of wondering whether it’s worth spending that much time thinking about Twitter. Sure, I could probably make it the biggest financial institution in the world. But I have only so many brain cycles and hours in the day. I mean, it’s not like I need to be richer or something ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hd0fky9gkerd4zh2sbdqz6pq)) - When you’ve had success for too long, you lose the desire to take risks ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hd0g5jcwhpjjv1ctkkfe0q37)) - Like the decision to forgo slosh baffles on the early version of the Falcon 1, taking these risks turned out to be a mistake. It’s unlikely that NASA or Boeing, with their stay-safe approach, would have made those decisions. But Musk believed in a fail-fast approach to building rockets. Take risks. Learn by blowing things up. Revise. Repeat. “We don’t want to design to eliminate every risk,” he said. “Otherwise, we will never get anywhere.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hd0gh2szdgn6ggxpctyqv4nn)) - I’ve shot myself in the foot so often I ought to buy some Kevlar boots ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hd0yxnmdvy8g0geywy2k7zst))