Elon Musk isn’t one to sit down on his laurels. The billionaire Tesla CEO and world’s richest individual might have retired way back, however as a substitute he’s main six firms and shaking up industries alongside the way in which. So what drives him?
“He’s a drama addict. He doesn’t prefer to coast,” mentioned Walter Isaacson, who’s written a brand new biography of the mercurial entrepreneur and spent two years shadowing him.
Talking on the newest episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast, Isaacson famous that initially of final 12 months, Musk “was using excessive,” with gross sales roaring at Tesla and missions succeeding routinely at his SpaceX, one of many world’s most precious personal firms.
“And but he’d mentioned, ‘You already know, I nonetheless wish to put all my chips again on the desk. I wish to maintain taking dangers. I don’t wish to savor issues,’” Isaacson recalled.
That angle helps clarify why Musk began secretly shopping for shares of Twitter early final 12 months and—after a months-long authorized drama—absolutely acquired the corporate in October. Within the months that adopted, Musk utterly revamped Twitter, firing most of its workers and insisting those that stay decide to a hardcore work tradition. He renamed the corporate X, a transfer many noticed as reckless model destruction contemplating “tweet” had grow to be a typical verb.
Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist,” additionally alienated many advertisers, who had been leery over reported spikes in hate speech on the platform. Earlier this month, he threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, claiming the Jewish-led civil rights group was “attempting to kill this platform by falsely accusing it and me of being anti-Semitic.” On the similar time, he appeared to recommend the corporate had misplaced 90% of its worth since his $44 billion takeover.
However why trouble taking up Twitter in any respect—and danger getting mired in controversy—when issues had been going so nicely at Tesla and SpaceX?
“Elon Musk is lower to be an government in a extremely intense state of affairs, a lot in order that when issues get much less intense—once they truly are making sufficient automobiles and rockets are going up and touchdown—he thinks of one thing else so he can surge and have extra depth. He’s hooked on depth,” mentioned Isaacson.
Marc Andreessen, a normal accomplice at enterprise capital agency Andreessen Horowitz, mentioned one thing related this month whereas talking on the Huberman Lab podcast. Discussing the persona traits of disruptive entrepreneurs, he mentioned, “There’s this determination that folks need to make, which is, ‘Okay, if I’ve the latent functionality to do that, is that this truly what I wish to spend my life doing? And do I wish to undergo the stress and the ache and the trauma and the anxiousness and the danger of failure?’”
Musk, he mentioned, is a uncommon particular person “who simply can’t do it another approach…That’s why he’s operating 5 firms on the similar time and dealing on a sixth.”
For the brand new biography, entrepreneur and enterprise capitalist Peter Thiel advised Isaacson that Musk was hooked on the fun of danger. Talking of Tesla and SpaceX, he mentioned, “Silicon Valley knowledge could be that these had been each extremely loopy bets. But when two loopy firms work that everybody thought couldn’t presumably work, then you definitely say to your self, ‘I feel Elon understands one thing about danger that everyone else doesn’t.’”
Isaacson described Musk’s dependancy to depth a “tremendous energy,” including: “There’s all the time an enormous mission above it. So I’d say it’s an empathy in direction of folks within the huge image. It’s an empathy in direction of humanity greater than the empathy in direction of the three or 4 people who is perhaps sitting within the convention room with you.”
He mentioned in that regard Musk has traits much like different disruptive entrepreneurs, similar to Microsoft founder Invoice Gates: “They all the time have empathy for these nice objectives of humanity, and at occasions they are often clueless in regards to the feelings of the folks in entrance of them, or callous generally.”
Gates, it’s price noting, additionally spoke to Isaacson for the biography, saying that Musk grew to become “tremendous imply to me” after studying he had shorted Tesla’s inventory, or guess that it might decline in worth. “However he’s tremendous imply to so many individuals,” he added, “so you possibly can’t take it too personally.”