Marc Andreessen on what makes Elon Musk special June 22, 2023 Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen breaks down the rare combination he sees in Elon Musk — engineer, designer and risk-taker in one person — and why it lets him run several hard companies at once.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen breaks down the rare combination he sees in Elon Musk — engineer, designer and risk-taker in one person — and why it lets him run several hard companies at once.
Transcript I mean, look, I think Elon is, I don't think I'm even a great example, but I think Elon would be the great example of this, which is like, you know, look, he's the guy who, from every, every day of his life, from the day he started making money at all, he just plows it into the, into the next thing. And so I think money is definitely an enabler for satisfaction. Let's say money applied to happiness leads people down very dark paths, very destructive avenues. Money applied to satisfaction I think could be, is a real tool. I always like, by the way, I was like, Elon is the case study for behavior. But the other thing that really made me think is Larry Page was asked one time what his approach to philanthropy was and he said, oh, my philanthropic plan is just give all the money to Elon. Right.
Well, let me actually ask you about Elon. You've interacted with quite a lot of successful engineers and business people. What do you think is special about Elon? We talked about Steve Jobs. What do you think is special about him as a leader, as an innovator?
Yeah. So the core of it is he's back to the future. So he is doing the most leading edge things in the world, but with a really deeply old school approach. And so to find comparisons to Elon, you need to go to Henry Ford and Thomas Watson and Howard Hughes and Andrew Carnegie, Leland Stanford, John D. Rockefeller. Right. You need to go to what were called the bourgeois capitalists, like the hardcore business owner operators who basically built, you know, basically built industrialized society. Vanderbilt and it's a level of hands on commitment and depth in the business coupled with an absolute priority towards truth and towards how to put science and technology down to first principles that is just like. Absolutely. Just like unbelievably. Absolutely. He really is ideal that he's only ever talking to engineers. He does not tolerate bullshit talents than anybody I've ever met. He wants ground truth on every single topic. And he runs his businesses directly, day to day, devoted to getting to ground truth in every single topic.
So you think it was a good decision for him to buy Twitter?
I have developed a view in life to not second guess Elon Musk. I know this is going to sound crazy and unfounded, but, well, I mean
he's a quite a track record.
I mean, look, the car was a crazy. I mean the car was. I mean look, he's done a lot
of things that seem crazy.
Starting a new car company in the United States of America. The last time somebody really tried to do that was the 1950s, and it was called Tucker Automotive. And it was such a disaster. They made a movie about what a disaster it was, and then rockets. Like, who does that? Like, that's. There's obviously no way to start a new rocket company. Like, those days are over. And then to do those at the same time. So after he pulled those two off, like, okay, fine. Like. Like, this is one of my areas of, like, whatever opinions I had about that, it's just like, okay, clearly are not relevant. Like, this is you just. You. At some point, you just, like, bet on the person.
And in general, I wish more people would lean on celebrating and supporting versus deriding and destroying.
Oh, yeah. I mean, look, he drives resentment like, it's resentment. Like, he is a magnet for resentment. Like, his critics are the most miserable, resentful people in the world. Like, it's almost a perfect match of, like, the most idealized, you know, technolog, you know, of the century, coupled with, like, just. His critics are just bitter as can be. It's. I mean, it's sort of very darkly comic to watch.
Well, he. He fuels the fire of that by being an asshole on Twitter at times, and. Which is fascinating to watch the drama of human civilization, given our cult roots, just fully on fire.
He's running a cult. You could say that very successfully, Sam.