ELON MUSKPretoria, born 1971

Slept on the floor at Zip2, on the roof at the Nevada battery factory, under his desk at Fremont. Then at Twitter.

This is one entry from Robo’s Notes, open to read. Not a summary, not an article. The file exactly as he keeps it: what formed him, who was in the room, what he did before anybody was watching.

“When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant.”

Elon Musk

FORMATION NOTES

  1. Mindset

    1. Grinds

      1. His grind: he slept on the floor of his first office at zip two and 95. He slept on the roof at Tesla’s Nevada battery factory in 17. He slept out of his desk at the Fremont assembly playing in 2018. And now it was time for him to sleep at Twitter headquarters.

    2. Battle Ready

      1. I was born for a storm, and a calm does not suit me, Andrew Jackson once said It’s a big theme for him to never have decisions guided by fear , his friend Peter recalls. That definitely was present even when he was a child.

    3. He felt that bankers and lawyers did not contribute much to society. He even received some internship offers from Wall Street, all lucrative, but finance did not interest him.

    4. Risk

      1. His and his team‘s ability to risk is a major part of what made space x , and they were losing thousands as they were starting.

      2. A wired reporter who had watched the failure of the second launch with musk, reached him to ask how he maintained his optimism. “Optimism, pessimism, fuck that. we’re gonna make it happen. As God has my bloody witness, I’m hell bent on making it work. “By the way, this was after the third crash.

    5. The impossible

      1. This is my quote. His ability to set it in in insane deadline then do anything to reach it, is what sent him apart.

    6. Thinking

      1. “If conventional thinking makes your mission impossible musk said, then unconventional thinking is necessary” - Elon

    7. Humility

      1. Isaacson records that he has a lesser known trait: he could change his mind

  2. Reading

    1. He spoke about a book or he read as a child and he said about this book “that book is what first made me think about going to other planets“. To which I recorded ideas are just waiting. It will be birthed as you read.

    2. There’s a moment in the book where Jeff Bezos is brought up and it says “like musk, he was a childhood addict of science fiction, racing through the shelves at his local library” (fiction helps you think in ponder and predict)

  3. Belief/Imagine Possibilities

    1. Back in 93 he was talking about making a rocket that could go to Mars. This has been on his mind for a very long time.

    2. When musk lost SpaceX back in 2002 he conceived it as an endeavor to get humans to Mars and every week I made all the technical meetings on engine rocket design. He held one very otherworldly meeting called “Marsh colonizer“ there he imagine what a Morris colony would look like and how it should be governed.

  4. Rise

    1. This is in 1999 “just three years ago. I was showering at the Y and sleeping on the office floor, annow I’ve got $1 million car.

  5. Business Principles

    1. No Negativity

      1. “If you were negative or thought something couldn’t be done, you were not invited to the next meeting he just wanted people who could make things happen “ mueller

      2. At Twitter, he wanted a hard-core, fanatic work culture. To do this, he sent out an email that gave every employee an opt in button. Or an opt out button with severance for three months. He let people choose if they wanted to be hard-core or not. “ I’m a big believer that a small number of exceptional people who are highly motivated can do better than a large number of people who are pretty good in moderately motivated.”

    2. Make great products

      1. Musk never put much effort into sales and marketing and instead believe that if you made a great product, Sales would follow. I made a note and I said I thought this forever if you Haile Mark a bad product and you get everyone to try “it” one time even if you had a great product then you will get repeat customers and if your product is trash, you’ve lost thousands.

    3. His algorithm:

      1. number one:question every requirement why? They were made by fallible people.

      2. Number two: Delete any part of the process you can.

    4. Attitude

      1. “When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes, require a brain transplant.”

    5. SPEED

      1. It was better to try and fail rather than to analyze the issue for months. “If you make things fast, you can find out fast. And then you can fix it fast

      2. “Pretend we are a startup about to run out of money”, he said that one of the sessions. “Faster faster, please mark anytime a date has slipped. All bad news should be given loudly and often.

      3. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle (add another part of the book is recorded “but musk, as always, feared complacency. Unless he maintained a man maniacal sense of urgency, he worried SpaceX would end up flappy and slow like Boeing)

      4. He wanted to work with something on the Twitter explore page, and the man in charge of it happened to be flying back from a family visit to India. He sent the headquarters back a message saying he would fix it when he got to the office on Monday. But musk said that he must do it right now. So using Wi-Fi on the United flight, he got the change made that night. His principle again is speed, now, no more waiting. (musk‘s method: as it had been since falcon one rocket, it was to iterate fast, take risk, be brutal, except some flame outs, and then try again.)

  6. Analogous thinking: Musk

    1. Musk had appreciation for the toy industry. “They have to produce things very quickly and cheaply without flaws, and manufacture them all by Christmas, or there will be sad faces.“ He repeatedly pushed his teams to get ideas from toys, such as robots and Legos. As he walked the floor of the factory, he spoke to a group of machinist about the high precision molding of Lego pieces. They are accurate and identical to within 10 µm which means any part can easily be replaced by another car components need to be that way.

THE REST OF THE SHELF

Robo keeps every life he takes apart in one place, filed A to Z, and it grows every time he learns something worth keeping. The rest of it is for members.

See Robo’s Notes