Re:Jim Keller Resigns from Intel, Effective Immediately
by alexpotato on Friday June 12, 2020 @11:53AM
(#23500455)
After reading a biography on Musk I basically came to the conclusion that his life has been a series of 1 in 1000 bets that have paid off:
- Paypal
- Tesla
- SpaceX
etc
Multiple times in the book it describes how he gambled it all on whatever project he was working on and it paid off for him. He is clearly brilliant and exceptional at hiring great people work for him. I think it's also important to realize that survivor bias is also at play here.
Re:Jim Keller Resigns from Intel, Effective Immediately
by stephencanon on Friday June 12, 2020 @01:18PM
(#23501439)
> I think it's also important to realize that survivor bias is also at play here.
Yup. The odds of winning three 1-in-1000 bets is 1:1e9, so we should expect to have a couple Elon Musks in the world out of dumb luck. =)
Re:Jim Keller Resigns from Intel, Effective Immediately
by liamcardenas on Friday June 12, 2020 @02:21PM
(#23502101)
Assuming everyone took the bets
Paypal sold for 1.5B [1], and Musk just got 165 million.
That's not a lot of money for building a space company, especially while buying into and growing Tesla at the same time.
Musk risked and almost lost everything, with both SpaceX and Tesla coming close to bankruptcy at the same time.
The SpaceX approach of ignoring conventions, building components in house on the cheap, plus Musks drive/vision and capability to attract young and motivated (relatively cheap) employees probably made the difference there. As well as ultimately attracting Nasa funding to develop a commercially viable rocket.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#History