While I have no opinion on Elon one way or the other, you have to admit the guy knows how to make money. He was co-creator of PayPal and is CEO of more companies than most people will ever work for. The second he goes public with SpaceX and Neuralink, he could very well be the world's first trillionaire. He's owned Twitter for a grand total of two weeks. Give it time, especially with so many people trying to sabotage him. I don't doubt his ability to make the company profitable in the long run.
I would have thought the Elizabeth Holmes case would have put and end to this kind of narrative. I would say she's a good comparison to Musk, really, because both of them thrive(d) in industries pushing technology to its limits. That is, new boundaries that are unprecedented and therefore difficult to prove a success or a failure.
Musk leverages image to appear more intelligent and capable than he actually is. He cultivates the image of an eccentric billionaire genius who will change the world, but his track record shows that this is not true.
With Neuralink, he wants us to believe that he's creating a brain-machine interface that anyone can get and we all think it sounds like an episode of Black Mirror, wow, Elon must be so smart if he's working on creating something like that.
In reality, he isn't "creating" anything, he's bouncing off the back of 50 years of research in this area, and he's failing. Actual scientists have built prosthetic limbs that can move in response to brain signals, literal life changing technology. Neuralink, meanwhile, doesn't seem to have successfully tested their tech on a living creature, because they keep causing infections with their surgical methods.
They're supposed to be the cutting edge of science, but can't even get surgical hygiene right, a hurdle the scientific community leapt over in *checks notes* the 1840s.
With SpaceX, he wants us to believe he's going to mars. But what has he actually accomplished? He's launched rockets, he's launched satellites, he's entered orbit, he's delivered to the ISS. All amazing accomplishments, don't get me wrong. But certainly in the same vein as what NASA and other agencies have been doing for the past five decades.
They've also created some new take-off and landing techniques. I'm certainly not claiming that they're not doing great work. But they are not leaps and bounds ahead of their competition and they are no closer to the goal of mars than anyone else is.
Tesla is probably his most notable success, but it largely came from first mover advantage. Now every other car manufacturer has poured money into EV tech and they've caught up or surpassed Tesla. And while Tesla continues to promise self driving, while failing to actual demonstrate they're even close to making it happen, other companies are showing amazing results.
All of Elon Musk's companies are on-par with their competition at best, and falling behind at worst. But by pushing a particular image, Musk is able to mask that and deflect criticism. He develops underwhelming tech that doesn't surpass what his competitors can do, but he sells it as just one stepping-stone to something greater.
But now, with Twitter, Musk is for the first time running a company that isn't doing anything new. It doesn't have some big lofty goal. It's a clear business with clear KPIs and for the first time in his life, Musk has to demonstrate actual progress. He can't bluff, can't tell people his "digital town square" is a long-term project that no one's ever done before, that we should trust the process, that company will go on to great success and break new ground.
He inherited a lot of money, then he got lucky with timing during the dot com boom, and for the past twenty years he's been treading water, bringing in investment on promises of greatness and barely delivering bare minimum.
And that won't be enough anymore. He needs results, and he needs them fast. And it couldn't be clearer that he has absolutely no idea how to do that now that luck, timing, and eccentric charm are no longer working.
The Elon Musk Philosophy: Be average, but promise everyone you'll be exceptional in 10-20 years.
