Book Review: Elon Musk

In this post I’ll review Elon Musk by Isaacson. It has around ~681 pages and around 95 chapters.

C1-C8 – early life.

C9-C13 Paypal.

C14-C19 SpaceX.

C20-C73 Tesla.

C73-C95 Twitter/X.

  • zip2
  • paypal
  • mandate from heaven 💭
  • spacex
    • first-principles thinking
    • idiot index – how much more costly a finished product was than the cost of its basic materials
    • making parts in-house
  • have a maniacal sense of urgency1 – Jobs reality-distortion field
  • tesla
    • roadster pushback eberhard (dashboard, door handles, carbon body)
  • fremont
    • Larry Ellison – OCD (Musk | Jobs)
    • ‘hardcore’ 🔥
  • deleting rocket parts – lighter weight
  • SolarCity ☀️
    • risk is a type of fuel 🚀
    • don’t put effort into sales and marketing, if you have a great product those follow
  • Tesla fiberglass strips
    • question requirements, if dumb then delete
  • automation vs human
  • the algorithm
    1. question every requirement (make them less dumb)2
    2. delete any part | process
    3. simplify + optimize
    4. accelerate cycle time (only after steps 1-3)
    5. automate
  • all technical managers must have hands-on experience 👏
  • Comradery is dangerous
  • it’s ok to be wrong
  • when hiring look for people with the right attitude (skills can be taught)
  • maniacal sense of urgency 🚄
  • the only rules are the laws of physics; everything else is a recommendation

C47

C49 Grimes
demon mode 😈 causes chaos but GSD

C52 Starlink
Mark Juncosa

C57 SpaceX, CC

  • Kiko Dontchev

C65

  • Shivon Zilis
  • Delete, delete, delete

C67

  • siege mentality = energized ⚡️

C69

  • Polytopia
  • Double down

C73

  • Twitter / WeChat

C81

Conclusion

This book was pretty good as you can see BTS of EM’s life. He has a strong sense of urgency coupled with intelligence. I learned that you can get things done quickly.

He also thrives under eu-stress e.g. Siege mode, Demon mode 😈, and also pattern interrupts with e.g. techniques like Surging3

  1. MSU – maniacal sense of urgency ↩︎
  2. https://www.summa.tube/?v=tRsxLLghL1k ↩︎
  3. https://www.summa.tube/?v=IQBA4aytp_U ↩︎

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *