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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.

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