How much physics helped Elon Musk in creating his companies?

[Grands]

How much physics helped Musk in creating his companies ?

 

[mfb]

Engineering doesn't work without physics (SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity).
Neither do computers (Zip2, PayPal).

But with the same argument, everything today relies on physics. Some things just do so more directly than others.

 

[Posy McPostface]

As far as I'm aware, he has a degree in economics from Wharton School of Business, and a Ph.D. in applied physics and material physics from Stanford. Wiki says this about his Ph.D. attempt at Stanford:

"[...]but left the program after two days to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations in the areas of the Internet, renewable energy and outer space."

 

[Choppy]

It's important to remember that people like Elon Musk are outliers in terms of what a typical person, even a brilliant one, can expect to accomplish. Sure, Musk has a background in physics and there's no doubt that that background helped him. But I think it's a little misguided to start thinking along the lines of 'If I pursue a PhD in physics I'll end up accomplishing just as much as he has.'

 

[rootone]

Somebody said to me that his heart is in right place,
It is better than holy water.

 

[Grands]

He studied physics at University of Pennsylvania.
After that he get an offer to do a PhD in physics at Stanford University, but che quit after 2 days to start his companies.

Which person is so confident about himself to quit a PhD at a such a great university to start a company that might won't work, in my honest opinione it's unbelievable.
Although he studied physics he create software program and web software like zip2 and paypal, that only a persone that studied how to code in deep can do.
My idea is that he was surrounded by the right people that helped him to create his ideas, in fact he didn't make this projects by themself.
I think he didn't have the skills to do that alone.

I suppose that Paypal is the company that made him to earn most of the money, even thought he sold it.

Even Tesla wasn't his personal idea, he get the company from a computer and electrical engineer and he start to run it, and I don't think he had the skills to create the motors of a fully electric car, he was good at picking engineers and make them to create it.

My question is, is he good at creating new technology or he is good just at manage companies ?
This is why I think physics doesn't helped him so much.

 

[ISamson]

I think no physics helped Elon Musk in creating his companies, because he only reflected on problems that face society today and had the money to start companies that address them.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Obligatory first read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

 

[ISamson]

In 1995, at age 24, Musk moved to California to begin a PhD in applied physics and materials science at Stanford University, but left the program after two days to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations in the areas of the Internet, renewable energy and outer space.

Wikipedia.
Interesting...

 

[Grands]

I read his wiki page and his biography but I still can't find the answer to my question.

 

[NTL2009]

I read his wiki page and his biography but I still can't find the answer to my question.

What sort of answer are you looking for? I don't know how to quantify this. Like on a scale from 1-10?

He has a BS degree in physics and economics, and was accepted at Stanford for a PhD in applied physics and materials science, so clearly must be very well versed in those areas. Those seem important to a tech business builder, but maybe not as important as the degree in economics? I suspect the combination is what helped him. Sort of like many people see Apple as Jobs as the business side and Woz as the tech side - Musk is sort of the two rolled into one?

 

[Grands]

The question is: he uses his skills in physics to run his business?
My impression is not, because a physics degree, generally doesn't give any technical skills that can be necessary for his companies, especially the bachelor's degree.

 

[NTL2009]

The question is: he uses his skills in physics to run his business?
My impression is not, because a physics degree, generally doesn't give any technical skills that can be necessary for his companies, especially the bachelor's degree.

Have you listened to some interviews with him? He seems to be very well versed in physics and electronics. Perhaps not at the "get down and design a motor control from the ground up" level, but enough to have intelligent and challenging discussions with his engineering teams.

Seems like a BS degree is enough to understand the principles and debate strategies and pros/cons of various tech decisions with your staff. Especially if you were good enough to be accepted onto a PhD program at Stanford? And that can be very important to running a tech business. I'm not sure what else can be said about it?

Heck, I've known engineers with nothing more than an Associates degree, or tech certificate that did a lot of self-study, and they understood and applied the concepts better than some MSEE's I worked with.

 

[jackwhirl]

The question is: he uses his skills in physics to run his business?

I am certain that he does use his knowledge of physics for order of magnitude estimations of the possible.
I am also quite certain that most of the knowledge that he uses on a day-to-day basis was not learned at university.
I get the impression he approaches things more like an engineer than a physicist, though this may be my own bias.

 

[StoneTemplePython]

There's a lot of misinformation in this thread.

After that he get an offer to do a PhD in physics at Stanford University, but che quit after 2 days to start his companies.

Which person is so confident about himself to quit a PhD at a such a great university to start a company that might won't work, in my honest opinione it's unbelievable.

This is in fact wrong and part of the founding myth of Musk. Per office of registrar at Stanford, via correspondence with Musk, they acknowledge to him that (i.e. they address him as 'you')

applied and were admitted to the graduate program in Material Science Engineering in 1995. Since you did not enroll..."

This was in the School of Engineering. It wasn't in the physics department and he did not drop out in 2 days. He never enrolled.

Wikipedia is generally a decent source, but it is simply wrong here.
- - - -
source: Appendix 1 of Ashlee Vance's biography on Musk.

If people on this thread are interested in Musk, this book is definitely worth reading.

I read his wiki page and his biography but I still can't find the answer to my question.

I don't know which biography you read. If it was Vance's, you may need to re-read it. If it wasn't Vance's, you should consider reading it.

 

[russ_watters]

The question is: he uses his skills in physics to run his business?
My impression is not, because a physics degree, generally doesn't give any technical skills that can be necessary for his companies, especially the bachelor's degree.

Generally or specifically? He almost certainly never used a specific technical skill he learned in college to solve an engineering problem at one of his companies - he's too high up for that. But it is also almost certainly true that he used his general understating of technical issues to understand how technical issues relate to his strategic decisions.

I'm not sure, but your line of questioning reads a bit like the "am I ever going to use use [X,Y,Z, etc.] in the real world?" question high school students ask their teachers when they don't want to learn something (as if that would matter).

The "specific" formulation of the question misses the main point of what school is. Up to the highest levels, the point of the vast majority of schooling is either learning building-blocks or learning how to think, not learning specific usable tools. So I suspect this was very helpful for Elon, even if he has never done a battery drain calculation or engine burn calculation himself.

X=long division
Y=The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus
Z=A memorized Robert Frost poem

 

[russ_watters]

Which person is so confident about himself to quit a PhD at a such a great university to start a company that might not work, in my honest opinion it's unbelievable.
Although he studied physics he create software program and web software like zip2 and paypal, that only a persone that studied how to code in deep can do.
My idea is that he was surrounded by the right people that helped him to create his ideas, in fact he didn't make this projects by themself.
I think he didn't have the skills to do that alone...

Even Tesla wasn't his personal idea, he get the company from a computer and electrical engineer and he start to run it, and I don't think he had the skills to create the motors of a fully electric car, he was good at picking engineers and make them to create it.

My question is, is he good at creating new technology or he is good just at manage companies ?
This is why I think physics doesn't helped him so much.

I think you answered your own question and I think if you look around at examples from the tech industry and industry beyond, you will find that most of what what makes a startup work is generally a combination of (roughly in order):

1. Killer idea
2. Strategic vision
3. Risk taking (with money)
4. Money

And you can pretty much combine those into two things. One thing that isn't on the list because it isn't very important to have, as a founder of such a company, is technical skill. That's something you can rent anywhere for not much money, so it isn't as critical as people tend to [want to] believe.

There are, of course, exceptions (Zuckerberg and from an artistic sense, Jobs), but I think it is usually the case.

 

[russ_watters]

This is in fact wrong and part of the founding myth of Musk. Per office of registrar at Stanford, via correspondence with Musk, they acknowledge to him that (i.e. they address him as 'you')

This was in the School of Engineering. It wasn't in the physics department and he did not drop out in 2 days. He never enrolled.

I realize people get hung up on this as part of the mythology of such people, but I think that what is key to breaking the myth isn't correcting the wrong fact, but rather realizing just how irrelevant it is. It doesn't matter if it was two days before enrolling, two days after or just before graduation; school was just something going on in the background while such people and their visions germinated.

 

[NTL2009]

... it isn't very important to have, as a founder of such a company, is technical skill. That's something you can rent anywhere for not much money, so it isn't as critical as people tend to [want to] believe. ...

I agree that the founder (or higher level executive) isn't going to directly use their technical skills, but I think it may be pretty common (and helpful) to have some technical background.

In my case, I had a single FORTRAN class in school. A few years later, some simple programming became part of my job (instrumentation control, then automation). This grew to be more and more of the job, but I never considered myself a "real" programmer.

Then later, the job expanded so that I also managed some "real programmers". I could not do their job, they were far beyond my technical skill set. But I had enough background to understand the concepts, and have some productive technical discussions and back-and-forth on decisions and direction and priorities. And I might write some example "pseudo code" to better communicate a point (but I couldn't turn that into actual code to run on those systems).

I imagine Musk and others are in a similar situation. They may not have current technical skills or detail knowledge, but they know enough to communicate with their staff, and challenge them, and maybe even provide a little "out of the box" thinking, because they are just a little removed (can't see the forest for the trees issues). And know if they are being fed a line of crock.

I've also worked for some managers that didn't have much in the way of the technical skills we used, but were still very good managers. They seemed to have a knack for sorting through issues, logical troubleshooting thought processes, and learned who they could rely on for good info. But I think having the basic technical knowledge makes that easier and probably better.

 

[StoneTemplePython]

I realize people get hung up on this as part of the mythology of such people, but I think that what is key to breaking the myth isn't correcting the wrong fact, but rather realizing just how irrelevant it is. It doesn't matter if it was two days before enrolling, two days after or just before graduation; school was just something going on in the background while such people and their visions germinated.

This thread must have really gotten your interest -- 3 rapid replies. To be honest I thought you would have jumped on the fact that Musk made a point of telling people it was in the physics school, not the engineering school.

I think there is a logical hierarchy here, though. After getting the facts right, what follows is interpretation and judgment which is much more subtle and less objective. I like to start simple and build, so I start with cold, accurate facts and go from there.

I think you answered your own question and I think if you look around at examples from the tech industry and industry beyond, you will find that most of what what makes a startup work is generally a combination of (roughly in order):

1. Killer idea
2. Strategic vision
3. Risk taking (with money)
4. Money

And you can pretty much combine those into two things. One thing that isn't on the list because it isn't very important to have, as a founder of such a company, is technical skill. That's something you can rent anywhere for not much money, so it isn't as critical as people tend to [want to] believe.

There are, of course, exceptions (Zuckerberg and from an artistic sense, Jobs), but I think it is usually the case.

Now for my interpretation part. I think there are a couple of things that need to be added.

First, with respect to points 3 and 4: unfortunately the VC community in the Bay Area does tend to fixate on things like origin stories and pedigree. (VC's sometimes act a lot like bankers.)

The view from the book is that before Musk was a well known entity, he made up / embellished this origin story to help get funding among other things. Now it lingers as an odd relic.

Second, there are varying levels of technical knowledge. In my view, having a map, so you know when people (vendors, rivals, employees) are telling you nonsense, is quite important. It's also useful to know what tasks and risks are part of a well trodden territory and what parts are unchartered territories. It's not that someone needs super granular technical knowledge, but they do need a framework appropriate to the product or service they are launching. (This probably is about in line with what you said.)

Also, it does help considerably for motivation and morale in a small team environment when employees see the CEO / founder working through the same grunt work on the ground with them. (Incidentally Musk did this, to mixed effect, at his tech companies -- by overwriting employees modern code with technically accurate but unmaintanable and inflexible hairballs of code. For SpaceX and Tesla his modern 'on the ground' leadership involves dominating in first person shooters that he plays with large numbers of employees most nights-- a different kind of technical skill I suppose.)

A final point: having some connection to Stanford does seem to help a lot. I would have to double check with a friend, but I think if you drop out after even one full semester in grad school you get invited to all the alumni events in the future. Barring formal ties, people like to talk about Stanford, etc. and tend to like others who are 'similar' to themselves.

 

[mfb]

Musk is often involved in the engineering details - more than a typical CEO would be. Various interviews with SpaceX employees highlight that, and mention his detailed knowledge about the rockets they build.

It's important to remember that people like Elon Musk are outliers in terms of what a typical person, even a brilliant one, can expect to accomplish. Sure, Musk has a background in physics and there's no doubt that that background helped him. But I think it's a little misguided to start thinking along the lines of 'If I pursue a PhD in physics I'll end up accomplishing just as much as he has.'

Certainly. For everyone who succeeds there are thousands to millions who do not (at least not at this level), and there is a lot of luck involved. There were multiple points where Musk's companies could have gone bankrupt - and we would never have heard of him. Like we never heard of all the other people who got to such a point and then had bad luck.

 

[Grands]

In the US is possible to study for two different degree in the same time or to combine them?

Anyway, It seems that Musk uses more his skills from the Bachelor's degree in Economics, but in a interview he said that he wouldn't do again this choose of studying economics, " I'm not sure I would study business again if I could replay things." http://www.iop.org/careers/working-life/profiles/page_57723.html

The crazy thing is that he build an empire like Tesla o SpaceX with no technical skills.
The main issue is that the final products of this companies is a technological one, the core business require great technical skills, and also new one.
He didn't just create a new car, but the first fully electrical car with no skills, that very strange and unbelievable, in my opinion is quite impossible to run a business that is about something new for a person.
It' like asking a biologist to know how to build a type of skyscraper from 0 and to open a company that do that.
He neither has a " friend" that might helped him with the technical parts, it seems he did on his own.

I'm not impressed so much about Paypal or zip2 because in that cause it's all about coding, and is something that someone can learn on his own, but I think this is not applicable in building a new type of car or creating a rocket that can be used more then one time.
Plus I never heard about the name of an engineer that helped him in doing his business.

At the same time in this video he said he spend his time on design and engineering

So, because of this, I can't understand which is his merit regarding what he did which is the contribution that he had on his companies.
It's also difficult to understand how did he get so much money from investors and how this last ones believed in his idea.

And I still didn't understand how SpaceX makes money.

 

[BillTre]

A confident and competent business person might claim they could do similar things while not understanding the details of the technological issues as well as Musk. The typical business approach would be to hire a bunch of experts, layout the goals of the enterprise and proceed.

This can work for some people in some cases (many people make new successful companies in fields new to them). However, these people would lack the vision someone like Musk has (or could relatively easily acquire) for defining goals that are beyond what is currently being done, but not unrealistically ahead of what might be currently possible.

Musk also has the money (and investors?), self-confidence, and access to technical experts to turn his "far out" tech based visions into reality.

 

[mfb]

The crazy thing is that he build an empire like Tesla o SpaceX with no technical skills.

He hired experts. As an example, Tom Mueller, one of the leading rocket propulsion experts, is one of the founding employees of the company.

He didn't just create a new car, but the first fully electrical car with no skills

There were several fully electric cars around before Tesla, and he had a bunch of experts in his company. It has been the first successful car startup in the US for a very long time, however.

It's also difficult to understand how did he get so much money from investors and how this last ones believed in his idea.

Having a track record of successful companies and investing a lot of personal money helps I guess.

 

[Grands]

If he hired experts to create his companies from 0, and those ones work in creating his projects and ideas, why is he the most important person in that company?
I mean, he looks like a genius, like a superhero.
If he didn't use any technical skill, which is his contribution to the company, he said many times he work a lots of hours a week.

Check this videos to believe.

 

[mfb]

If he hired experts to create his companies from 0, and those ones work in creating his projects and ideas, why is he the most important person in that company?

He is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, he has the majority of voting shares of SpaceX and a significant fraction of shares of Tesla.

Why: Because he founded SpaceX and co-founded Tesla, both partially with his own money.
Why are these companies still around: Because the employees make nice products, because Musk managed several successful funding rounds, and because they had a lot of luck.

 

[Grands]

Because he founded SpaceX and co-founded Tesla, both partially with his own money.

What did he to to become so rich ?
I thought he made most of the money with Tesla and SpaceX.

 

[mfb]

He made most of his current money with these two companies, but he was a millionaire before already - from Zip2 ($22 million) and PayPal ($165 million).
Out of this, he invested $100 million into SpaceX. With a bit of external capital that was sufficient to develop Falcon 1 and launch it four times. The fourth flight was a success, and that gave the company more investor money.
All of this is easy to look up.

 

[Grands]

He made most of his current money with these two companies, but he was a millionaire before already - from Zip2 ($22 million) and PayPal ($165 million).
Out of this, he invested $100 million into SpaceX. With a bit of external capital that was sufficient to develop Falcon 1 and launch it four times. The fourth flight was a success, and that gave the company more investor money.
All of this is easy to look up.

But he have about 15 billions, how does he made them?

 

[russ_watters]

But he have about 15 billions, how does he made them?

I'm really not sure why this is so hard to understand: he created those companies basically from nothing. That's why he's the most important person in them and that's why he's made so much money. On a nuts and bolts level, the money comes from being the largest shareholder: the other investors gave the company money, which is to say, they paid him.

 

[Grands]

I'm really not sure why this is so hard to understand: he created those companies basically from nothing. That's why he's the most important person in them and that's why he's made so much money. On a nuts and bolts level, the money comes from being the largest shareholder: the other investors gave the company money, which is to say, they paid him.

I understand that he made lots of money with Paypal, but I don't think that he earned the 15 billions he have today.
In this link you can see that in the Paypal team there were lots of people. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=e...g#imgdii=QdJRphTMlYiQMM:&imgrc=Njx4JM7C_w5-1M:
This mean that the total earned money was divided in more parts.

 

[mfb]

I understand that he made lots of money with Paypal, but I don't think that he earned the 15 billions he have today.

I quoted the amount he made with PayPal in an earlier post already.

This mean that the total earned money was divided in more parts.

That‘s not how companies work.

Consider SpaceX, where we know the numbers. Musk founded it with $100 millions of his own money and convinced some others to contribute money as well. As largest investor and CEO he owned a big majority of the company, the rest belongs to other investors. The company hired engineers and paid them salary. They don’t own any part of the company, they just get paid for their work. They developed a rocket and tested it until it worked - luckily before the company ran out of money. After the first successful launch Musk asked more people if they want to invest in SpaceX to get some share of the company - and found them. The company also got a big NASA contract - a lot of money for SpaceX. With that money they developed Falcon 9 and used it for NASA and also for commercial satellite launches. A few more rounds of investments later (again to get more money to expand) and the company has now the largest market share worldwide. Musk still owns about half of it - but the company that initially had a value of about $100 millions is now worth $20 billions. Everyone who invested early had a high risk, but made a lot of money now. This only applies to investors, not to employees - although it is typical to give them (tiny) shares in the company as part of their salary.

 

[Grands]

Ok, so when google says that musk has 19.3 billions, that means that this money are just part of the company and not cash money?

 

[russ_watters]

Ok, so when google says that musk has 19.3 billions, that means that this money are just part of the company and not cash money?

Right: almost all is in stocks.

 

[Grands]

So if tomorrow SpaceX or Tesla fails, he can lose about 10 billions in a single day?