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
- risk is a type of fuel
- Tesla fiberglass strips
- question requirements, if dumb then delete
- automation vs human
- the algorithm
- question every requirement (make them less dumb)2
- delete any part | process
- simplify + optimize
- accelerate cycle time (only after steps 1-3)
- 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
- MSU – maniacal sense of urgency ↩︎
- https://www.summa.tube/?v=tRsxLLghL1k ↩︎
- https://www.summa.tube/?v=IQBA4aytp_U ↩︎
Leave a Reply