elonology.com

Tag: Great Companies

  • Elon’s Why: Saving the World

    “The heroes of the books I read, The Lord of the Rings and the Foundation series, always felt a duty to save the world.“

    ~Elon Musk

    Elon’s businesses are seen through the lens of saving the world.

    They are distilled as Mission Statements and Master Plans.

    With SpaceX the overarching goal is to make human life multi-planetary with a city on Mars.

    Tesla has four master plans, in fact.

    Two have already been completed in full.

    On Tesla’s website there are links to the other four Master plans:

    The first plan summarizes them as:

    1. Build sports car
    2. Use that money to build an affordable car
    3. Use that money to build an even more affordable car
    4. While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options

    Plan deux is:

    1. Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage
    2. Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments
    3. Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning
    4. Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it

    Master Plan Part 3 the mission is:

    A roadmap for achieving a fully sustainable global energy economy by shifting all energy use—transport, heating, industry—to renewable sources.

    This is explained .PDF to outline a proposed path to reach a sustainable global energy economy through end-use electrification and sustainable electricity generation and storage.

    With Plan 4the mission is :

    We’re accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable abundance.

    It is posted on X and Elon calls it Master Plan Part IV.

    The new Tesla Model S Plaid is the fastest production car in the world and the first production car ever to go 0-60 MPH in under 2.0 seconds. It also goes 0-100 km/h in 2.1 seconds.  This is called the “Tesla effect” and Tesla has affected the entire market to shift towards Electricity by 2035…

    Tesla Model S

    In Tesla’s X post Tesla claims Since Tesla’s founding, each iteration of our master plan has focused on our north star: to deliver unconstrained sustainability without compromise.

    The PDF about this topic and landing page prior explain Growth is infinite and in videos such as the Nov 2025 video with Joe Rogan Elon explain this will likely mean unlimited goods and services for everyone.  Eventually.

    Elon has completed parts one and two and has made amazing strides forward with plans 3 and 4.

    Tesla’s Optimus Robots Elon claims will become a bigger business than the cars by affecting the labor force and helping create sustainable abundance at scale.

    xAi and Grok (ai) are two (somewhat) new ventures which playing more of a and a term Elon has been using more and more is Convergence to describe the crossover between his companies.

    What makes this most impressive is how he has done so while building a rocket company which sends more payload to orbit than all other companies and countries combined, and the only rockets which relaunch.

    SpaceX has hustled its way into the #1 spot in the world of rockets with an awesome mission as well. The Mission of SpaceX is found at SpaceX.com/mission where it says: 

    “You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great – and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.” -Elon Musk

    Revolutionizing the Automotive and Aerospace Companies

    Elon’s brilliant mind, epic work ethic and the awesome teams he has assembled have produced the most valuable car company in the world: Tesla.

    Simultaneously Elon and his teams have built the most successful rocket company in the world: SpaceX.

    And when the epic SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket first lifted off it became the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.

    The new Starship rocket exceeds even Falcon Heavy with the Super Heavy booster boasting 33 Raptor engines in the first stage booster, and six Raptor engines in the upper stage.

    SpaceX has effectively revolutionized the rocket industry with their ability to rapidly launch, refurbish, and re-use rockets.

    The Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost.

    As of the time of writing (December 2025) SpaceX has launched 591 completed missions.

    And even though Elon has sent his original Tesla Roadster into orbit around Mars and the sun, Elon is down to Earth…for now.

    And the best part is with SpaceX the mission of making life multiplanetary is well on its way to becoming a reality.  There is a mission coming when Mars is closest to Earth.

    The rocket will have the name Heart of Gold.  Inspired by the book Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

    However with strong growth so far of his core companies in 2023 so Elon looks in strong shape to regain the title and is well positioned for even greater financial growth in the future…

    Elon enjoyed a number of achievements in recent years, specifically with rolling out the Starlink high speed internet system and his massive move to buy the social network Twitter for $44 billion.

    As of mid-December 2025, Starlink has over 10,000 satellites launched, with around 9,000+ actively operational and providing internet service.

    Interestingly DOGE spelled backwards is E God…and Elon calls himself the Dogefather.  DOGE in the US government context means Department of Government Efficiency.

    DOGE is also a crypto currency with the symbol $DOGE.  He has said “Don’t bet the farm on DOGE” in the past so be careful with your investments.  DOGE has supply added to the market daily so be careful when investing as it is not anti-inflationary in design like Bitcoin.
    Elon’s massive wealth is a great indication of the value he has added to the market.

    His humanity saving missions are his why.

  • The Internet is a Great Place to Start

    The Internet is a Great Place to Start

    Elon used to sleep on the floor.

    When Elon started out as an Entrepreneur in Silicon Valley with his brother Kimbal they were so hard up for cash they rented a small office. They slept on the couch, and a beanbag on the floor.

    When you’re just starting out the odds are you don’t have a ton of capital to work with.  This is why Elon recommends starting out online:

    “I think for somebody who’s just starting out as an Entrepreneur,I think the Internet is a great place to start because if you’re just starting out, unless you’ve got a ton of capital that somebody gave you or you inherited or something you have to start a company that requires a small amount of capital…

    Where it’s heavily weighted toward the intellectual capital in your head…so I think anything to do with software and with the Internet is a really good starting point.”

    When Zip2 was acquired by Compaq Elon got $20,000,000 out of the deal.

    It would have been impossible for Elon to have done electric cars or rockets right out of the gate because it requires plenty of capital to enter those industries.  

    In fact even with the over $100 million Elon earned from being the largest shareholder of PayPal when they were acquired by Ebay he went all in with SpaceX and Tesla to the point where he invested every single dollar and had to borrow money to pay his bills.

    Elon’s heroic investments of capital, blood, sweat and tears are a big part of the reason why SpaceX and Tesla have been able to survive, thrive and dominate.

    The Paradigm Shifting Power of The Internet

    When Elon describes the birth of the Internet he often exclaims the invention of the Internet is like humanity acquiring a nervous system.

    In his 2020 AxelSpringer Award Talk Elon said of the Internet:

    “The Internet…Really the Internet is like a nervous system for humanity.

    Whereas previously communication was more like osmosis.  For information to travel someone would have to call someone over the phone.  Or write them a letter.  And then that letter would be carried by a series of people to the destination.

    Now communication can happen instantly from any place in the world to anyone and does not need a human to carry it.

    This is sort of like at a cellular level you see say a primitive small multicellular creature will communicate via osmosis from one cell to the next or diffusion essentially.

    But once you have a more sophisticated organism you have a nervous system.  The speed at which information can travel is much faster.  And the accessibility of information is fundamentally different.

    If you want in the middle of the amazon jungle with a satellite connection and you have access to all the world’s information…

    Whereas previously even if you live in the library of congress in the US where all the books are, you still would only have access to a fraction of the world’s information.

    This is basically humanity becoming a super organism.  To the degree that’s not possible unless you have essentially instant live speed communication from anywhere to anywhere, as opposed to osmosis.  Diffusion.”

    The above statement from Elon puts into powerful perspective the power and importance of the Internet.

    And Elon lived near the heart of Silicon Valley for decades.  Only recently did Elon move to Texas, where SpaceX now launches rockets from Boca Chica (AKA Starbase).

  • Reinvest In Your Own Success

    Self-Funded Ambition: Elon Musk’s Path of Personal Reinvestment.

    “I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.“ ~Elon Musk

    When Elon started Zip2 with his younger brother Kimbal he was so hard up for money they worked and slept in the office, because it was cheaper than an apartment, and they could not afford both.

    Elon and Kimbal only had one computer so during the day it was used as a server for Zip2, and Elon would code during the night, every night.

    Elon is one year older than Kimbal and “Team Musk” proved to be an awesome duo.

    Zip2 was acquired by Compaq for $307,000,000.  Elon received $22 million and Kimbal received $15 million for their shares of the company when Elon was 27 years-old and Kimbal was 26.


    After becoming a multi-millionaire Elon could have easily retired and lived the rest of his life relaxing on a beach…but laziness has never been Elon’s style.

    Elon took half of his money and put it into an online financial services company he launched, called X.com.

    This is why Elon became the largest shareholder when X.com merged with PayPal.  Elon brought the most to the table.

    In large part because of the $12,000,000 Elon reinvested into his success with PayPal they were able to offer $20 for each new user and this turbo-boosted new user growth and helped PayPal achieve 100,000 users within their first active month.

    After the new user bonus was removed people continued to join PayPal for many reasons because it was – and still is – a very robust online payment and financial solution.

    At first Elon and the PayPal team built out a large suite of solutions to solve all financial services desired by customers.  It turned out email payments intrigued investors the most so they focused on that innovation and the business grew at an amazing pace, often many thousands of new users per day.

    In October 2002 when eBay acquired PayPal the acquisition was for $1.5 Billion dollars and of this amount Elon received $180 Million.

    In 2020 PayPal Elon bought back his x.com domain, which was part of the acquisition deal with eBay.

    Of the $180,000,000 Elon had after selling PayPal he ended up investing all of that money into SpaceX, Tesla, and Solar City.

    “My proceeds from PayPal were $180m. I put $100m in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.”

    And though it certainly seemed very risky at the time reinvesting everything in his success the effort has definitely paid off.  If Elon had chosen to quit rather than risk it all he would certainly not be one of the wealthiest humans alive today and the world would not be as awesome of a place.

    SpaceX has revolutionized the rocket industry by making rockets reusable.  They first achieved a successful landing and recovery of a first stage rocket booster in December 2015.

    In November 2016 Tesla acquired Solar City, which was then the largest provider of solar rooftop panels.

    Tesla has been revolutionizing the auto industry and energy market since Elon Musk became involved with the new company in 2004.

    Since then Tesla has won the highest safety honor from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.  

    With ceaseless innovation they have successfully shifted the entire car market towards electrification and emerged as the market leader.  In 2020 Tesla became the most valuable car company in the world.

    And on January 7th, 2021 Elon Musk surpassed Jeff Bezos and officially became the wealthiest man alive.

  • Striving to Be The Best is a Strong Strategy

    Striving to Be The Best is a Strong Strategy

    The 10x Rule: Why Your Product Must Be Significantly Better to Win

    The great news about precedents and superlatives is you don’t need millions of dollars to realize their power for your business or brand.

    One way you can realize the marketing power of precedents is by setting a precedent for the most powerful piece of content for a high volume keyword phrase in your niche.

    Google’s mission is to “Organize the world’s information.” So give Google and people what they want – the best organized and most compelling piece of content that sets a precedent for quality or clarity.

    When you start with the best quality and most in depth content on a topic your chances for getting strong ranking and marketing results with Google search increases.

    List posts do particularly well in Google.

    If the top post for the keyword phrase you are targeting is a top 10 tips post, a strong strategy is to create a list post with 50+ tips.

    Strive to be significantly better than the post that is currently ranking number one for the keyword phrase you are targeting.

    Then if you can take that precedent setting content and serve it up in a variety of media types it will further enhance your chances of a strong ranking.

    Some ways you can raise the bar for your excellent content include:

    • Video Content
    • Audio Content
    • .PDF’s
    • Slide Share Presentation
    • Free Downloads
    • And more!

    You can even use some of the above bonus content examples as lead magnets and offer them as incentives for people to join your email list.

    Only by striving for world class quality can you achieve world class results.

    Don’t settle for mediocrity, strive to be the best you can be with what you do!

    The precedent of falcon wing doors on the Tesla Model X is a great example of setting a new precedent of better doors than gullwing, as they still go up but due to the double hinge can park beside another vehicle and still have the doors go up.

    By setting a precedent for a new level of quality you will get people talking and sharing your business naturally and you will tap into the power of word of mouth marketing when people discuss the awesome work you do.

  • Have Fun With Your Business

    Have Fun With Your Business

    The “Joy” Engine: Powering Your Startup with Play

    Flame throwers, Teslaquila, Short shorts.

    These are three of the many fun products Elon and his companies have created.

    Elon is not afraid to have fun with the products he sells, and how he promotes them.

    Elon often has fun with his Twitter bio, for example.  His Twitter bio has said “Meme necromancer” and “Former CEO of Dogecoin” before.

    He’s also co-hosted a Meme review show on YouTube and often posts savage memes on Twitter.

    One video of Elon has him standing on top of a giant SpaceX ball of liquid oxygen saying: “Here we are on top of a giant ball of liquid oxygen.  They say SpaceX has big balls and it’s true.”

    Elon has a great sense of humor and is great at integrating fun into the products his companies sell.

    With Tesla a couple examples include the customizable horn, which can choose between a standard horn sound, or you can choose: Farts, goat, snake, applause, and more.  The more option enables you to upload whatever sound you want to use for the horn.

    Other fun Tesla options include: Romance Mode, which will display a video of wood logs on a fire and plays romantic music.

    Build fun into your products and you can’t go wrong.

    Party/Camper mode is also coming soon.

    Elon said in a tweet: “We’re adding a “party & camper mode” soon to S/3/X, so your car can maintain air flow, temp, selective lights, music & power devices for 48 hours or more while parked. Big batteries rock…”

    Wikipedia: An Easter egg is a term used to describe a message, image, or feature hidden in a video game, film, or other, usually in electronics, medium.

    Tesla has a number of fun Easter eggs integrated into their products.

    To be specific Wikipedia currently has a page dedicated to them and lists 17 unique and fun easter eggs.

    Some of these Easter eggs get the car to play music and do a light show, featuring the Falcon wing doors on the Model X.

    Others take inspiration from Back to The Future, Rick and Morty, Mario Kart, James Bond, or Monty Python.

    One of the latest features enables Tesla owners to choose from a variety of horn sounds, and includes the ability to add a custom horn sound if you wish.

    All of these features have one awesome thing in common: Fun.

    Make your business fun and more people will talk about it.

    There are many ways to make your business more fun so feel free to be creative with what you do.

    My Dad, Peter, built a Plinko style game his HVAC business uses at trade shows to give prizes to customers.  This works well as an ice breaker and helps the sales team to generate new leads.

    At the xAi Christmas party in 2025 they had robots in a cage match boxing each other.

    Having fun and being part of a fun promotion is a great way to get people interested in your company and promoting it with word of mouth marketing for free.

    Fun and Tesla Games

    Tesla vehicles come with a number of games built into their infotainment system.

    With full self-driving autonomy on the verge of widespread adoption Elon says entertainment will become increasingly important once more cars become fully self-driving.

    This will keep passengers entertained during long trips when the mental task of driving the vehicle is no longer required.

    Elon has described a Tesla as “A computer with wheels” and as time goes on they are looking more and more like a gaming computer on wheels, which is good news for all of the gamers out there.

    • The Mobile Arcade: Tesla’s infotainment system is already a gamer’s paradise, but this is just the beginning.
    • The FSD Shift: As autonomy frees us from the steering wheel, Elon predicts entertainment will become the primary cabin experience.
    • Engineering Joy: From custom horn sounds to hidden Easter eggs, Teslas are designed to prioritize “Fun” as a core metric.
    • The Bottom Line: Expect the future of Tesla to look less like a vehicle and more like a rolling entertainment suite.

    Elon even joked about being “The king of car farts” since the horn on a Tesla can be customized for any sound you want, like a whoopie cushion.

    Tesla’s are engineered to be super fun machines so in the future expect many fun Tesla innovations to come.

  • Build a Fantastic Future

    Build a Fantastic Future

    The New Frontier: Why We Must Dream Big to Save Humanity

    If you look at each of Elon’s businesses they solve huge problems in emerging markets where there is little competition.

    When Elon helped build PayPal they were the only email money transferring solution in the world.

    SpaceX is the first private company to send a spacecraft (Dragon) to the ISS, and the first company to create reusable rockets.

    Tesla is the world’s leading and first highly successful electric car company.  And as of 2020 Tesla is the most valuable car company in the world.

    In his USC commencement speech Elon recommends “Don’t just follow the trend” and his actions have certainly followed this advice.

    To reap the greatest rewards, focus on innovation.  Be fuelled by competition but focus on innovation.

    Strive to innovate to such a degree that there are no competitors.  

    Elon’s Billionaire business associate Peter Thiel writes on this topic in his book Zero to One.

    If you want to create and capture lasting value, seek to innovate and create a monopoly.

    Monopolies by definition transcend competition and are how the greatest business profits can be achieved.

  • Create The Most Compelling Product or Service Possible

    Create The Most Compelling Product or Service Possible

    Build It Like Elon: The Secret to Creating Products That Sell Themselves

    Creating an amazing product is one of the strongest types of marketing there is.

    Word of mouth marketing is a remarkable form of influencer marketing and it remains powerful to this day.

    Influencers, the media, and everyone in between are all human beings.  And the best way to get them to spread the word about your company for free is to develop an incredible product or service that amazes and delights.

    Apple is an example of this.  Although Apple certainly does not shy away from advertising their marketing would fall flat if their products and design were not high quality.

    Elon explains how for him it is not about the companies, it is about creating compelling products and services, and companies are the means to this end.

    In an interview with the Babylon Bee Elon elaborates:

    “It’s not like I care about starting companies.  Like is there is a very compelling product or service that’s the thing that is important, not the company.  A company is just an assemblage of people to create a compelling product or service.  And if a company does not provide great products or services it should not exist.”

    So relentlessly strive to improve the product or service you have to offer.

    When media outlets start talking about how your product is the best you’ll know you are on the right track.

  • Create Win/Win Situations

    Create Win/Win Situations

    Collaborative Advantage: How to Build Partnerships Where Everyone Wins.

    Tesla and SpaceX are winning because they are creating the most innovative products with the most value built in.

    Because SpaceX developed reusable rockets they are able to achieve a cost advantage and offer their customers a better price for getting to orbit.

    With Tesla because the cars are electric they enable their customers to charge their vehicles “free” when they also invest in a solar or other renewable energy capture system.

    Again this offers customers cost savings and enables more room to capture profit and share savings.

    Elon explains his powerful business philosophy around this at “The House Always Wins” talk:

    “We believe in doing deals where both parties benefit, and, when there is an asymmetry or underperformance on our part…

    Our goal in doing so is to build long-term trust. 

    If people know that we will not take advantage of them and aspire to fairness, even at our expense, they are much more likely to want to work with us in the future.“

    Buying a car or solar system are two of the biggest purchases a person can make so trust is totally a factor at the individual consumer level.

    Long term success is more powerful than trying to make a short term quick buck:  Striving and succeeding in becoming the trusted brand in your industry will enable more sales to flow your way as more people trust you and your company.

    Long term trust is essential for repeated purchases over time and creating customers for life.

  • Elon’s Edge: The Power of Radical Obsession

    Elon’s Edge: The Power of Radical Obsession

    The Musk Mindset: Why Average Is Not an Option

    Elon has been known to spend so much time working he will actually sleep in the Tesla and SpaceX factories.

    And it’s not as if he has a plush bedroom in a factory loft or something.  In one Interview Elon showed the plain couch in a Tesla conference room he slept on, and said it was so uncomfortable he ended up sleeping on the floor.

    Sleeping in his factories and at his business locations is something Elon does to this day, even as one of the richest humans alive.

    In a recent interview (Dec 2020) when Elon was accepting the Axel Springer award in Germany the interviewer asked Elon where he was spending the night.

    Elon replied: In the German Tesla factory.  The interviewer asked where in the factory?  Elon replied in the conference room.

    That’s right, the world’s second wealthiest man chooses to spend the night in the conference room of a factory rather than a fancy hotel.

    When asked about this on a Clubhouse audio chat he admitted that not only has he slept in the conference room, he has also slept outside of it, in a sleeping bag on the concrete factory floor.

    That’s the level of obsession that is required for Elon’s kind of success.

  • Create a Viral Growth Engine

    Create a Viral Growth Engine

    The Lean Startup’s Secret Weapon: The Viral Engine of Growth

    Both at PayPal and at Tesla Elon has leveraged referrals and bonuses to create viral growth.

    PayPal was able to achieve 100,000 users in their first month through the success of their referral program.  They offered $20 credit to both referring parties.  

    Elon: Well, we started off first by offering people $20 if they opened an account. And $20 if they referred anyone. And then we dropped it to $10. And we dropped it to $5. As the network got bigger and bigger, the value of the network itself exceeded any sort of carrot that we could offer.

    At the TESLIVE 2013 Tesla Motors Club event Elon discussed PayPal’s referral program at greater length.

    Elon: From my PayPal days we spent a lot of time thinking about how to create a viral growth engine. The keys to that are of course reducing the friction of buying and reducing the friction of referral – so making it really easy to buy and refer – and then creating an incentive both for the person doing the referral as well as the buyer.  And that way if by referring someone both parties actually benefit then it works well.

    Referrals have also been a great source of growth for Tesla.

    In 2015 they launched a $2,000 referral program for the Model S lineup of cars and it was a success.  Both parties would benefit from this.  The referring agent would get a prize and the buyer would get a discount.

    Additionally there was a contest for referrals where free cars could be won and in 2016 YouTuber Bjorn Nyland actually won two Teslas during this time.

    In 2017 the first person to refer 20 Tesla’s per region would get a free P100D Model S or Model X once their 20 friends have taken delivery of their car.

    In July of 2017 the next gen Roadster was announced as part of the referral program secret level.  How it works is after five referrals you entered the program and each Model S or X referral thereafter gave you 2% off the price of a founders series roadster.  So people who achieved 55 referrals will be getting the $250,000 roadster free.

    YouTuber Ben Sullins crunched the numbers on this in a video where he determined the ROI for Tesla on their referral program was 550X, assuming a 20% profit margin on the car.

    That is compared with a 45X ROI that GM earns from their 3.24 Billion dollar ad spend during the same year.

    Despite the awesome success of Tesla’s referral program in 2017, Elon and Tesla decided to scale it back, likely due to the fact that their demand is significantly outpacing their supply.

    The reason Elon explained on Twitter is because it was adding too much to the cost of the cars.

    At the time of writing the referral program has been brought back, but not to the generous extent of 2017 when free new roadsters were possible.

    There are the details of the new program in 2021:

    You and anyone using your referral link can each earn 1,500 kilometers of free Supercharging with the purchase of a new Tesla car — designed to be some of the safest cars on the road. Each car referral also gives you a chance to win a Model Y monthly or Roadster supercar quarterly. Owners who already have free Supercharging get two chances to win.

    So clearly this is quite scaled back from before but nonetheless it is very cool that Tesla still has a referral program and does give away some free cars.

    In the past few years Tesla has used creative referral rewards as well such as: 

    Launching your photo into deep space orbit, Tesla unveiling invitations, and amazing adventures.

    The amazing adventures they offered included: 

    • Drive an Electric Boring Machine
    • Watch a SpaceX Rocket Launch
    • Race the Tesla Semi Truck around the test track

    Clearly referrals done right can work wonders for your business, and they don’t have to cost an arm and a leg.  

    Take Elon’s advice and make it as easy and frictionless as possible for people to sign up as an affiliate and promote.

    For best results offer referral rewards for your most profitable products and services.