Joe Scanlin

Hardware is hard. That’s why Elon is by far the greatest founder of all time. Remember — countless startups die just while trying to put stationary beige boxes on desktops. Very smart people get crushed by supply chain disruptions, or China tariffs, or lockdowns, or shipping interruptions, or regulatory delays. Not Elon. He didn’t just survive financial crisis and coronavirus. He managed to build physical things in America while fighting the state and the laws of nature at the same time. Somehow he managed to simultaneously build not just a car company but a rocket company. Those don’t just have “moving parts”, they are a moving whole. The difficulty level here is insane. Hardware is completely different from software. One recall, just one serious bug, can destroy your company. If you are charging $50 for something that costs $40, and you need to recall and replace a million units, you’re usually dead. So just one of these companies — just Tesla, or just SpaceX — would be an incredible accomplishment for anyone. Even a very intelligent and hardworking person would have to live an incredibly boring, disciplined, focused life to possibly maintain the extremely low error rate needed to profitably ship such complex products. Not Elon. He did SpaceX and Tesla while having N children by K women. While also cofounding OpenAI and Neuralink and Boring Company. While fighting and defeating countless journalists, politicians, haters, and short sellers. And of course while buying Twitter, posting all the time, and building a following larger than almost any politician. The better you are, the better you understand how much better Elon is. If you’re good at math you appreciate Ramanujan’s greatness. If you’re good at basketball you respect how amazing Michael Jordan was. Elon is like that, for tech. Everyone in tech understands the sport we’re playing, and he really is the greatest of all time.