Entrepreneur Book Club discussion

Post your thoughts on the book as you read, or once finished. What you learned, what you'll take from this book, anything that inspired you or intrigued you.

Hey, I'm currently reading this book for my bachelor-thesis. While reading I really get the feeling Musk has a bigger ego then I first anticipated. How he is portrayed by the media is like a whole different person to me. In contradiction to this I now also got more respect towards him in the way of why he does what he does. It looks like he's really not in in for the money, the way he invested a large portion of it in almost impossible businesses, I truly believe he wants to make the world a better place and humanity an interplanetary race. Here's to hoping he can do it!

I agree completely - and honestly, if ego is what's driving him to make the world better, I'm okay with that, too. I feel the same way about electric cars. If it takes a beautiful Tesla that can go zero to 60 in 3 seconds to get people to go green, I'm okay with that.

I actually believe the Hyperloop & SpaceX are his better companies; Hyperloop being my favorite because it will revolutionize transportation (safety, speed, green). But there is talk about mining asteroids from minerals (https://www.planetaryresources.com/), which SpaceX could benefit from.

Concerning Tesla: He has already succeeded in creating awareness and acceptance of EV's. However I do not believe Tesla will ever scale; in fact the probability Tesla goes bankrupt is very high in my opinion. Other car companies have a much better chance (and more appropriately leveraged with substantially better cash flow) to create better EV's (https://seekingalpha.com/article/4141...).

If you want to follow the Tesla story more with the warning perspective, I would suggest following @CGrantWSJ, @ttmygh, & @markbspiegel on twitter.

I'm sure he's going to be a very debatable character. It is interesting that he is going for the moonshots (metaphorically speaking, sorry for obvious inference) and I'm sure even if they fail he'll still capture value somewhere.

I agree with Gerben that he has been able to link a world-saving mission to his entrepreneurial career.

Did anyone see that over the weekend Charlie Munger, answering a question about moats at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting, joked that Elon Musk wouldn't compete with them in the candy business? Not surprisingly, Elon tweeted later that he is "going to start a candy company and it is going to be amazing." He and Buffett/Munger trolling each other is hilarious, but don't think he won't start a candy company and take them on. He launched a car into outer space because he can. He'll take on their candy moat because he can. Elon is definitely a high ego guy. For most people that is a fault that holds them back, but he somehow uses it to get more done. The book shows this really well.

I need to read that book. I have it on my bookshelf it's just getting time to read it.

Sounds like a red flag to a bull but then again it could be a way of distracting Elon?

Douglass wrote: "Did anyone see that over the weekend Charlie Munger, answering a question about moats at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting, joked that Elon Musk wouldn't compete with them in the candy bu..."

His free cash flow will be anything except sweet.

If Elon were here, he would ask that we refrain from discussing "boring" topics like cash flow. :-P