How Elon Musk Is Applying First Principles Thinking To All The Different Processes In His Company
Learning from the successes and failures of Elon Musk.
“You shouldn’t do things differently because they are different. They need to be…better.” — Elon Musk
Tesla Motors has been making splashes lately. Thanks to its 700 billion US dollar market valuation, Elon Musk has officially become the world’s richest man. Yet, it could have been different.
“I really didn’t want to be CEO of Tesla,” stated Musk during a recent interview. He had already taken up Space-X, and his sights were set on Mars. However, the former founder of Paypal also liked solving problems on Earth.
Investing into an electric car startup, his initial approach was to be hands off. There was a problem though. The visionary wasn’t satisfied with the way things were going. The costs were skyrocketing, and the prototype was heavier than the competition.
Musk wasn’t happy:
“The car ending up weighing like 60% more than an Elise. We went through a lot of trouble trying to shoehorn everything in there. The costs ended up being crazy.”
