Elon Musk, the man who makes decisions faster than his shadow
When Twitter had to negotiate a takeover by Elon Musk last month, the social network pulled an arsenal straight from the perfect small business acquisition playbook.
This is exactly the opposite of what Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is doing.
According to a close aide, Elon Musk did not know how to finance or manage Twitter. To complete this $44 billion transaction [41,2 milliards d’euros], he turned to a small inner circle, including private investment office director Jared Birchall and his lawyer, Alex Spiro. And when Twitter resisted his advances, Elon Musk applied the pressure through a series of tweets that were sometimes mischievous, sometimes aggressive, but always impulsive.
Tech billionaires like Bill Gates [Microsoft]Jeff Bezos [Amazon] and Larry Page [Google] they are more used to making long-term plans and surrounding themselves with an army of lawyers, communications people and all kinds of advisers. Elon Musk, 50, does nothing like them.
Headshots and improvisation
No business tycoon had ever done it before: capricious, capricious and 100% sure that he was right – this is the portrait that emerged from interviews with more than thirty employees, investors and employees of yesterday and today. Everyone agrees that this man, who successfully bet on electric cars, space flight and artificial intelligence, often improvises, especially at critical moments, defies the expectations of experts, and trusts no one but himself.
In order to operate in this way, Elon Musk has built a very closed network of about ten people who mostly approve his decisions and carry out his orders. Among them are his younger brother Kimbal Musk, Jared Birchall and Alex Spiro, among others chiefs of staff [l’appellation, inspirée du chef d’état-major dans l’armée et du directeur de cabinet en politique, qui fait florès dans le milieu des start-up, désigne un bras droit]. Elon Musk is constantly creating new companies to accompany his ideas. And in this great empire of many different companies, he placed his trusted lieutenants everywhere.
Once he has determined what he calls himself “critical path” Oversees the realization of each company’s vision, overseeing the smallest details of its flagship project, from design to technology implementation. This brilliant mind gave birth to the most valuable car manufacturer on the stock market and an ultra-innovative space company, and won the respect of his engineers – who also feared him.
With the support of this small team and based only on his own ideas, Elon Musk is able to make decisions and act as he wants on his own and becomes a kind of Howard Hughes. [aviateur, producteur et réalisateur de cinéma, et homme d’affaires richissime, célèbre pour son excentricité] modern times – and if his capricious ways are causing harm, too bad.
He works like a billionaire “Only the strongest leaders know how to do this” said Tim Draper, a venture capitalist who has backed Musk’s two flagships, Tesla and SpaceX. “You think of JFK, George Washington and Ronald Reagan.”
During a conference in 2018, Elon Musk explained that he acted impulsively. A lesson learned more than twenty-five years ago, after founding his first startup, Zip2. “I don’t really have a business plan, he said. I had Zip2 back in the day, but this stuff is still wrong. After that, I didn’t worry anymore.”
This method may influence what he does with Twitter. The San Francisco company expected to be owned by the billionaire within 6 months was turned upside down after the takeover was announced.
“We don’t know what direction the company will take” Elon Musk once said behind the wheel [fin avril] Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to over 7,000 employees. The social network did not want to answer our questions.
He is well aware of the chaos created by Elon Musk, who does not respond to our requests. In 2018, he called himself an idiot — in more flowery language — in emails suing him for defamation over one of his tweets.
Maintaining control
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Elon Musk became interested in computers
