Translated from French
Yesterday, I was on a podcast and someone said something that really struck me: basically, people don't understand Elon Musk. Neither him, nor his project.
In this post, I'm going to try to explain it.
First off, why I'm so interested in him. As an entrepreneur, I think you have to draw inspiration from the best. And today, the best entrepreneur in the world is Elon Musk. So I consume every bit of content I can find on him: interviews, podcasts, conferences, biographies. And I learn infinitely more than by listening to a business school prof who's never started a company in their life.
First piece of advice, then: if you want to get good at entrepreneurship, listen to Elon Musk and try to understand how he operates.
And to understand how he operates, you have to grasp his psychology. Because the guy's got a depth that few people suspect.
It all stems from an existential crisis he went through as a teen. He wonders what the meaning of life is. He devours every philosophy he can, especially the German philosophers, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer. He says it himself with a laugh: don't read German philosophers when you're a teen, it won't make you any happier.
What pulls him out of it is Douglas Adams' *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*. The idea that often, the hardest part isn't finding the answer, but knowing what question to ask. And he draws a conclusion from it that will guide his entire life: the only project that truly makes sense is to expand consciousness. To grow, explore, understand. For himself and for all of humanity.
Everything else flows from that.
On one side, there's Earth. Solving concrete problems, here and now. That's Tesla, batteries, solar energy, autonomous driving. And that's where he had an intuition that many still haven't grasped: the real ecological transition can't rely on resentment, guilt, and degrowth. People want to keep living better, consuming, progressing. We won't stop progress. So instead of asking people to give things up, he builds better products that make the sustainable option more desirable than the old one. It's ecology through abundance, not deprivation.
On the other side, there's the cosmos. That's SpaceX. Making humanity a multiplanetary species. Not just as a life insurance policy for civilization, but as a driver. Opening up space could potentially multiply the economy by 10 in the next 10 to 15 years. And above all, it's about giving humanity a purpose again. A frontier. A collective adventure: to discover and understand the universe.
These two projects are deeply humanistic. Pro-human. They start from the premise that humanity isn't a problem to manage, but an adventure to pursue.
And I think that's what's missing most in our era. A horizon. Something that lets us raise our kids with a shared purpose: to understand the universe, build, explore, live incredible experiences. And have fun doing it.
When you look at Elon from this angle, everything falls into place. He's not a billionaire collecting companies. He's a guy who found his answer to the existential crisis of his teenage years, and decided to dedicate his life to it.
And that's maybe the greatest entrepreneurship lesson there is: find a project big enough to give meaning to your life. The rest follows.
https://x.com/brivael/status/2106335011712442811?s=20
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