Elon Musk

That prospect, like all hellish dramas, seemed to fill him with dark energy. “I look forward to working alongside you journeying through hell,” he told his startled audience. “As the saying goes, if you’re going through hell, just keep going.” He was. And he did.

It was a testament to the value of serendipity—and of showing up in person.

Page pushed back. Why would it matter, he asked, if machines someday surpassed humans in intelligence, even consciousness? It would simply be the next stage of evolution. Human consciousness, Musk retorted, was a precious flicker of light in the universe, and we should not let it be extinguished. Page considered that sentimental nonsense. If consci

Life cannot be merely about solving problems, he felt. It also had to be about pursuing great dreams.

Gates, who has a team of schedulers and assistants, said he would have his office call Musk’s scheduler. “I don’t have a scheduler,” Musk replied. He had decided to get rid of his personal assistant and scheduler because he wanted complete control of his calendar. “Just have your secretary call me directly.”

Throughout the spring and early summer of 2018, he prowled the factory floor, like he had in Nevada, making decisions on the fly. “Elon was going completely apeshit, marching from station to station,” says Juncosa. Musk calculated that on a good day he made a hundred command decisions as he walked the floor. “At least twenty percent are going to be

Eberhard finally got pushed to despair when, near the end of the design process, Musk decided that the dashboard was ugly. “This is a major issue and I’m deeply concerned that you do not recognize it as such,” Musk wrote. Eberhard tried to put him off, begging that they deal with the issue later. “I just don’t see a path—any path at all—to fixing i

“One of Elon’s greatest skills is the ability to pass off his vision as a mandate from heaven.”

True product people have a compulsion to sell directly to consumers, without middlemen muddying things up. Musk was that way.

“Great things will never happen with VCs or professional managers,” Musk told Inc. Magazine. “They don’t have the creativity or the insight.” One of the Mohr Davidow partners, Derek Proudian, was installed as interim CEO and tasked with selling the company. “This is your first company,” he told Musk. “Let’s find an acquirer and make some money, so