My extremely naive interpretation: he’s at a sweet spot crossroads of a few favourable features:

- he’s technical enough so that he actually understands what he’s doing (unlike a “non-technical cofounder”)

- working on actually inspiring projects (unlike “let’s sell ads” Google, “let’s make rich people richer” finance, “no innovation” Boeing or “Instagram for dogs” bullshit startups)

- he’s rich enough to be able to start his own company with extremely capable people, with less need to please the investors (at least in the short term)

- he’s actually driven, not just money/power-hungry like 99% of billionaires who use their wealth to buy goodwill/influence/art.

an ex gf of mine says Musk is an alien and needs humans to help him develop tech to get back home.

Elon Musk did not start SpaceX, Tesla or any of the other companies.

He did start SpaceX, not Tesla.

> Also Tesla seems to be extremely focused on r&d.

How so? Tesla spends a tiny bit of revenue on R&D and a solid chunk of that is on "research" grants that get converted to manufacturing grants (e.g. the NY plant).

See: https://ir.tesla.com/static-files/bbc6e137-897a-4543-857a-59...

Don't get me wrong, I guess there could be research spending elsewhere since Tesla is notoriously bad at financial reporting (e.g. the only company in history to double its factory count without increasing OpEx, or the only company in history to build a factory with zero CapEx spending), but I'm curious what the "extremely focused" claim is backed by.

You only do new things if you believe you will fail if you don't.

Established companies have an expectation of success if they just keep doing what they are doing, so anything new is an unacceptable risk.

At the same time "startups" are also not able to reach any of the tangible results musk is producing.

He seems to be able to benefit from the resources of a big company, while at the same time keep the fresh mindset of a relatively small company.

He has a goal he wants to accomplish with this company, and unlike almost anyone else, his goal isn't to enrich himself and spend it on luxuries. He really wants people to colonize space.

An actual non-monetary goal is what's missing, IMO, for most companies.

It's about having any specific goal, really.

Money is more of a general goal, like happiness. Hard to stay focused.

I think of it like this. It requires massive amounts of money to do the types of things we are talking about, but when the other big players have gotten so used to suckling at the teet of the military industrial complex and it's wars, and comfortable in that utterly corrupt cycle, Musk was a man with a narrow focus to "get shit done" much more than "line the C's and boards pockets" .