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Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and Napoleon:
“Elon has demonstrated that if you have a small, incredibly cracked, highly technical team, that’s very flat, you can accomplish a lot very quickly.”
“Mark has internalized that failure doesn’t matter. It just matters when you win, how big you win.”
“That concept enables Mark to operate without fear because he’s just very comfortable taking lots of risk.”
“Mark has this great quote that says: The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”
“In the book The Mind of Napoleon, Napoleon repeats that hesitation is fatal. Napoleon says before you engage in a course of action you should deliberate thoroughly. He’d study from every angle to make sure he’s making the right decision. But once he’s sure he’s on the right path, he goes all in. I feel there’s an echo with the way Mark operates. Once Mark knows what he wants to do, he empties the clip.”
Transcript
I think Elon is, like, has has demonstrated this in in various times in his career, where you just have, like, a small, incredibly cracked, highly technical team that's, like, very flat. And, like, if you do that, you can accomplish a lot very, very quickly. That ended up becoming one of the tent poles of our overall strategies, like, small, very flat, highly technical team, very high talent density. How quickly can you move if you have those ingredients? From an outside perspective, it seems like Mark, like, empties the clip is the way I think about this. Right? Where, have you better read this book called The Mind and Napoleon? No. Okay. So Mind and Napoleon published in 1957. I found it because I saw this interview. I think Tyler Cowen interviewed Sam Altman, and, I think this is tier, and he asked him, like, what's the most important book that he read this year? And he said, The Mind of Napoleon. So it's very hard to find. I buy the book. It's 300 pages of just Napoleon's own words organized by topic. And in that, he talks about tier and over again that hesitation is fatal. But he says, before you engage in a course of action, there's a lot of deliberation. He'll, like, study from every angle, make sure he's making the right decision. I feel there's, like, a echo with the way Mark, Mark operates. Does a lot of deliberation, tier sure he's on the right path. But once he makes that decision, he just goes all in. He won't... Like, he just empties the clip. And that's the way I felt about, like, what it was... Was occurring right at this point where he comes rank gets you, and then you guys start rebuilding this entire organization. I think he really has internalized that failure doesn't matter. It matters, like, when you win, how big you win. And I think this overall concept, I think, enables him to operate, I think, truly without fear in a lot of circumstances because I think he is just very comfortable taking lots of rank. He's got that great line where it's like, in a world that's changing all the time, the biggest risk is not taking any. Yeah. Exactly. I think he's internalized this quite deeply. Like, there's certainly, like, versions of the world where better looks a lot more like Google in some sense, like it's best, like, you know, more slow moving and more bureaucratic and just, like, looks very different as a company. But I think he, because he's internalized some of these lessons so deeply, keeps the thing dynamic and moving and live.
