> The Musk story is about 70% right-place-right-time, 25% great salesmanship and 5% actual engineering genius
It's just so hard for me to believe this when he's had 3 successful companies. At that point he's making his own luck. I'd put the numbers at 20% luck for being able to attend expensive schools, 65% salesmanship for getting people into EVs and rockets and being a huge persona on twitter, and 15% being good at listening to the engineers he hires and getting the most out of them.
If a billion people put all their money on a single number on roulette five times in a row, we wouldn't call the three that won geniuses as a result.
Meritocracy is a myth. billionaires are no better at the awful game of trying to exploit others than the millions of others with privilege, intelligence, drive, and the willingness to do anything to anyone no matter how awful to make line go up. They're just the ones that won.
You don't have to make your own luck when you're a billionaire - everyone else will make it for you. Anything Elon musk touches is instant investor catnip and he has a cult of true believers that chase any trend he offhandedly mentions. Evidence: look what happens to any shitcoin he tweets about.
It's just so hard for me to believe this when he's had 3 successful companies. At that point he's making his own luck. I'd put the numbers at 20% luck for being able to attend expensive schools, 65% salesmanship for getting people into EVs and rockets and being a huge persona on twitter, and 15% being good at listening to the engineers he hires and getting the most out of them.