The thing Elon does well I feel, is he takes real experts with know-how and talent, and puts them on the cool project they want to work on and just lets them cook.
It sounds like a no-brainer management strategy, but it's surprisingly rare in practice. People will lend on random teams and projects, projects won't try to push any envelope but just be the next thing marketing or product came up with to boost some metrics or acquire some new customer, etc.
Now I might be entirely wrong as I never worked at one of his companies, but it's the impression I get and most of his success, Tesla and SpaceX, I think he really managed to snatch the experts away from where they worked because of that.
At least I think this holds for bootstrapping. And then that top talent left, and now since the major innovations have already landed, probably you can just churn out grunt out-of-schoolers to iterate and keep the lights on.
This isn't really the case. For Falcon 1 he hired a bunch experts but a pretty small handful. Then he hired a lot of really young hungry engineers.
And its also hard to say that 'top talent left'. Because arguable some of the achievements after some of those people left is bigger then before. Tom Mueller for example build the Merlin engine, but claims to be more proud of the team he build that then went on to build Raptor. So clearly even while some talented people left, many others joined.
SpaceX is not 'iterating and keeping the lights on' they are always going for something harder in the next iteration.
Well, I don't mean it's not talented people that join, I'd assume it's all top grade students. But the initial best-in-class experts in the field I mean.
I agree with a small handful, I think that's also necessary. A select few best in class experts is ideal, because too many and they don't have room to lead and start stepping on each other and entering debates and so on.
You take best in class experts in the field, give them a team of top tier workers under them that can follow and deliver. In turn they learn from the best.
I think for Starship and Starlink he followed the same playbook though. He brought in best in class specialists to bootstrap them.
That and the other thing I think he does that's just as important is go get things unstuck. When there is bureaucracy and managers getting in the way he gets it through. Very under appreciated IMO.
What I think he does well, perhaps his true genius—-is that he is willing to put the capital into transformative ideas that have an exceptionally long payback and has the patience to wait for those returns.
It sounds like a no-brainer management strategy, but it's surprisingly rare in practice. People will lend on random teams and projects, projects won't try to push any envelope but just be the next thing marketing or product came up with to boost some metrics or acquire some new customer, etc.
Now I might be entirely wrong as I never worked at one of his companies, but it's the impression I get and most of his success, Tesla and SpaceX, I think he really managed to snatch the experts away from where they worked because of that.
At least I think this holds for bootstrapping. And then that top talent left, and now since the major innovations have already landed, probably you can just churn out grunt out-of-schoolers to iterate and keep the lights on.