Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Barry Ritholtz here, I just finished recording an
Speaker 1: episode of Bloomberg's new podcast, Elon Inc. It's a weekly
Speaker 1: show all about Elon Musk. It was a great conversation
Speaker 1: with David Papadopolis, Dana Hull, and Max Chafkin, all about
Speaker 1: SpaceX Tesla, what does the future look like for new
Speaker 1: cars coming out of Tesla, and whether or not Elon
Speaker 1: Musk can continue running three companies at this high level.
Speaker 1: I want to play a little excerpt for you here.
Speaker 1: Head over to the Elon Inc. Feed to listen to
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and if you like it, please subscribe.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you this though, back on Elon the
Speaker 2: entrepreneur and the salesman, perhaps as good as a technologist
Speaker 2: and an engineering mind as he is. What are the
Speaker 2: great salespeople of our time? Right? Maybe?
Speaker 1: No doubt Steve Jobs the second, Like everybody, how often
Speaker 1: you hit people described as the next Steve Jobs And
Speaker 1: it's always a pale imitation.
Speaker 3: My theory in that is Steve Jobs died in what
Speaker 3: two thousand and eleven? That was when Tesla was ramping
Speaker 3: up the models, and so I think the media had
Speaker 3: quite a lot of a role the tech press in
Speaker 3: particular had quite a lot of a big role to
Speaker 3: play in this because Steve Jobs died and everyone was like,
Speaker 3: who's the new Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: But that ability to create that reality distortion field where
Speaker 1: people suspend disbelief and get pulled into a universe that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. And it's a to be fair to Elon,
Speaker 1: it's a hopeful vision of the future where pollution is
Speaker 1: a thing of the past, and climate change has been
Speaker 1: managed and even if we have overpopulation, well, everybody just
Speaker 1: head over to my country home on Mars and there's
Speaker 1: plenty of room for all. I mean, he has created
Speaker 1: a narrative that is hopeful, and that's not the worst.
Speaker 4: Thing the Steve Jobs thing. I think that was something
Speaker 4: that eld himself. I mean he has that he has
Speaker 4: explicitly modeled himself on Steve Jobs. Like he I mean
Speaker 4: you look look at look at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Like the way he presents himself as a CEO, the
Speaker 4: way he conceptualizes the role of a manager, the way
Speaker 4: he goes.
Speaker 1: The way he tweets, the rollout of the new vehicles
Speaker 1: he does.
Speaker 4: The choice of Walter Isa. Look at the covers of
Speaker 4: those books, right, I mean it's like he dial he
Speaker 4: ordered up his own you know, Isaacson treatment, and I
Speaker 4: think that has been an effective approach. People were entranced
Speaker 4: by Steve Jobs, and to some extent, Tesla has managed
Speaker 4: to create an Apple like following and has been able to,
Speaker 4: you know, convince investors that the economics for cars are
Speaker 4: the same as the economics for smartphones.
Speaker 1: So who's the Tim Cook in the Elon Musk story.
Speaker 1: We know Gwen is the Tim Cook of SpaceX. Who
Speaker 1: is the Tim Cook of Tesla?
Speaker 2: Does said person exist?
Speaker 3: So that's always been the interesting dynamic at Tesla. Whenever
Speaker 3: anyone has kind of risen up to be the sort
Speaker 3: of de facto number two, they've always been axed or
Speaker 3: they've disappeared suddenly. We saw that most recently with Zach Kerkorn,
Speaker 3: the very highly regarded CFO. He left in August. No
Speaker 3: one exactly knows why.
Speaker 1: So that reminds me a little bit of Jack Welsh,
Speaker 1: who was running General Electric for twenty years, and there
Speaker 1: was a series of CEOs coming up under him, or
Speaker 1: potential CEOs, and they knew Jack had a death grip
Speaker 1: on ge and all these guys, the S and P
Speaker 1: five hundred is littered with CEOs who were potential Jack
Speaker 1: Welsh replacements. There's a whole longer story about what a
Speaker 1: terrible job Welch did, but there are some parallels there
Speaker 1: in that it becomes hard to retain talent at the
Speaker 1: highest level if they don't see a path to work
Speaker 1: their way up ladder, if not succeed the CEO. You know,
Speaker 1: we saw that a little bit with Jamie Diamond at
Speaker 1: JP Morgan Chase, and we definitely saw it with Jack
Speaker 1: Welsh at GE. The question is, at a certain point
Speaker 1: Elon is going to have to focus on whatever the
Speaker 1: next thing is, and he needs someone to run Tesla
Speaker 1: when he's too busy. I have no idea who that
Speaker 1: person might be.
Speaker 3: Well, and it's really hard for someone from the outside
Speaker 3: to succeed at Tesla because the culture is so unique
Speaker 3: that the various people that they've hired from other industries
Speaker 3: or from other companies have never lasted long. I mean,
Speaker 3: the top the four named executives now at the top
Speaker 3: of the roster, there are all longtime Tesla executives who've
Speaker 3: been there forever.
Speaker 4: No one else can be as hardcore as I musk,
Speaker 4: and that that's true.
Speaker 2: I mean this is this is definitely true. So Barry,
Speaker 2: last question for you, your final thought on Elon and the
Speaker 2: difference between physics and humans.
Speaker 1: Sure, so, his greatest success have come, I don't want
Speaker 1: to say, conquering the rules of physics, but working within
Speaker 1: the laws of physics to bend our expectations as to
Speaker 1: what's possible very quick, long range software driven cars, the
Speaker 1: ability to launch cheap, renewable, reusable rockets into space and
Speaker 1: land them where he's kind of you know, seems to
Speaker 1: have lost the thread. No pun intended was at Twitter.
Speaker 1: By the way, we don't know the impact on Tesla
Speaker 1: sales from him being such a kind of wackado on
Speaker 1: Twitter because we don't have the control group. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't run an experiment. But I know personally and
Speaker 1: all right, I live in the New York area, which
Speaker 1: tends to vote Democratic, but that tends to be his
Speaker 1: Tesla potential base. You have California, you have Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: You have you know, the liberal the big city.
Speaker 2: You have the cash to.
Speaker 1: Write, they have the income, they they're concerned about the environment,
Speaker 1: and they're willing to put up with some of the
Speaker 1: inconveniences of an electric car. If they think they're they're
Speaker 1: doing good for the world. Look I'm that is eventually
Speaker 1: a series of Harvard Business School case studies how to
Speaker 1: alienate your core customer and how long can you get
Speaker 1: away with that? My last thought is he needs a
Speaker 1: couple of no men. He needs some people around him
Speaker 1: to say, Elon, that's a really dumb idea. Elon forty
Speaker 1: four billion dollars, that doesn't make any sense. Elon, focus
Speaker 1: on rockets and cars. Leave this social media crap to
Speaker 1: other people. And he doesn't have anybody, not only does
Speaker 1: any of people willing to stand up to him and
Speaker 1: tell him that's a terrible idea. That inner circle really
Speaker 1: seems to be a bunch of cheerleaders urging him on.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, a frat house,
Speaker 1: every worst instinct he has, and they're encouraging and chugging.
Speaker 4: Does