The maddening genius of Elon Musk

His politics aside, this week’s success with the ‘incredibly difficult’ Starship launch-pad operation is another testament to the true brilliance of the tech entrepreneur, writes Vrye Weekblad’s Willem Kempen.
5 mins read

As investments in new ventures go, it’s hard to imagine Elon Musk being interested in developing a golf course or building a hotel, which is about as entrepreneurially adventurous as his most recent best friend Donald Trump is ever likely to be.  

But if the two of them were ever to dramatically part ways – which is quite conceivable, given how different they are – it might well be only a matter of days before Musk comes up with an idea like making Augusta gravity-free or suggesting the hotels of the future will be floating buildings that can autonomously move to wherever they’re needed most. And even if Musk tells us that fulfilling those dreams might take five or 10 or 15 years, many people will start counting the months. Not only will they believe him that it can be done, but they’ll also be ready to start investing in the plan alongside him. 

If you ask enough people, you will hear both that Elon Musk is an extraordinary engineer, or only slightly above average. You will hear that he is a visionary leader who gets involved in the very nuts and bolts of whatever he does, and that he is a horrible boss who sets impossible deadlines and demands extreme dedication from his employees. You will hear of the turbulent workplace culture in many of his businesses, but you will also hear of the loyalty he inspires by his willingness to take on personal risk and work alongside his teams when the going gets rough. 

Elon Musk. Image supplied.

He can be as technologically innovative as managerially backward. He could be the geeky nerd in a T-shirt who smokes weed in Joe Rogan’s studio one day and meets Cyril Ramaphosa in a slightly ill-fitting suit and tie the next. He runs or is involved with multiple and diverse businesses at the same time, yet always seems to know exactly what’s going on at any one of them – from Tesla and SpaceX to Neuralink to xAI to Starlink and X and The Boring Company

If that weren’t enough, we might hear one day that he spent the previous night binge-playing some video game, or that he slept on a factory floor at Tesla after working until the early hours. He might quote from The Iliad or Lord of the Rings on X, only to follow it hours later with some mindless echo of Trump’s latest anti-immigrant drivel. 

It is this fusion of brilliance and nonsense that makes Musk such a hard-to-grasp commodity.  

And if Musk should lead the government efficiency commission that Trump envisions if he wins the US election in November, there is no suggestion that he would give up any of the private sector projects he spends his time on. In fact, part of Musk’s motivation for considering the job is so that regulatory efforts can be made to match the speed of private innovation. 

SpaceX Starship’s first-stage booster. Image supplied.

Shooting for the stars 

Even by Elon Musk’s standards, the past two weeks have been extraordinary. On Sunday, SpaceX astounded the world by successfully launching the 122m-tall Starship for the fifth time; the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. The crowd-pleasing highlight was when SpaceX returned Starship’s huge first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, directly to its launch mount, catching it with the “chopstick” arms of the launch tower in an unprecedented manoeuvre that must rank as a milestone in engineering achievement. 

It was also a bureaucratic achievement, which again hints at why Musk would want to lead a government agency. As SpaceX noted in a press release: “We find ourselves delayed for unreasonable and exasperating reasons. Unfortunately, we continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware. This should never happen and directly threatens America’s position as the leader in space.” 

Only three days before that, Tesla unveiled its vision for a “robotaxi” or “cybercab” which aspires to usher in the next era of autonomous vehicles. It has no steering wheel and will be able to drive itself without any human supervision. Musk says it will cost less than $30,000 and will be available before 2027. But as he acknowledged: “I tend to be a little optimistic.” 

Tesla Cybercab concept art. Image supplied.

That’s probably an understatement. Tesla’s current autonomous driving technology is far from perfected and still requires frequent human intervention to avoid accidents or traffic incidents. In Musk’s world, it’s almost as important to promise first as it is to deliver first, but producing such vehicles at a commercially viable cost is another matter entirely. 

On the same day as the cybertaxi announcement, Tesla also showed the latest version of its so-called “humanoid” robot, Optimus. A film clip showed it performing tasks such as mixing and serving drinks, playing board games with children, and unloading groceries from a car. Musk, seldom guilty of false humility, proclaimed: “This will be the biggest product ever of any kind.” 

Optimus Tesla Bot. Image supplied.

It doesn’t end there. Tesla then unveiled its vision for a “robovan” at the same event at the Warner Bros studios in Hollywood, California. The robovan can carry up to 20 people – basically Tesla’s version of a driverless, fully autonomous Hi-Ace of the future. Again, Musk was unashamedly bold: “We’re going to build this.” 

Tesla Robovan concept art. Image supplied.

That might be so, but when and at what cost, and is the technology going to be safe and reliable enough? Other companies are also in the race to offer a viable self-driving taxi. These include China’s Baidu; Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet; Cruise, a division of General Motors; and Zoox, which is owned by Amazon. 

The Boring Company. Image supplied.

Risky business 

What does set Musk apart from these rivals is how much decision-making is centred in him as the CEO, not to mention his unwavering appetite for risk, and his commitment to re-invest the proceeds of a successful venture in the next project. Even fellow billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, whose politics runs counter to Musk’s, admires this: “Put aside his genius in coming up and running these companies, the one thing I respect the most about Elon Musk – and he does more than anybody I’ve ever seen – and that is he goes all-in,” Cuban said on “The All-In Podcast” last week. “He takes every cent he has, and he believes in it, and he goes all motherfucking in. He never hedges his bets, at all.” 

Repeatedly, those bets have come close to blowing up. SpaceX’s first three rocket launches failed and nearly caused it to go bankrupt. Tesla’s initial production problems with its Model 3 were similarly hairy. Likewise, Neuralink’s research and work could easily lead to a future medical or ethical disaster, but it could also cure blindness or enable the paralysed to walk again. 

It means that any or all of these outcomes would be perfectly in line with the Elon Musk the word has come to know: forever walking the line between humiliating failure and miraculous triumph. 

Top image: Elon star writing. Collage by Currency.

Willem Kempen

Willem Kempen is editor of the daily edition of Vrye Weekblad . He is also a former editor of Finweek.

Latest from Investing & Finance

AI boom, equity bust ahead?

When an innovation wave hits, investors assume today’s leaders will reap the rewards indefinitely. DeepSeek shows that’s not necessarily true…

Don't Miss