Elon's Strategic Silence
What is Elon Musk’s biggest accomplishment? How useful is silence? How many Yorkey shares for a Yorkie Bar? Inspiration, super, and 63.
Hate him or love him, you have to admit that Elon Musk has created significant value for others. His first startup was Zip2 (1995), where the company digitally mapped cities (novel at the time). His most recent ventures in Tesla and SpaceX have pushed the boundaries on electric cars and space exploration.
He has been involved in informational services, digital financial services, and space exploration. But which of these will be the most impactful? As I mentioned in a past post, $10,000,000,000 Yorkie Bars, it may be SpaceX. If humans are able to become multi-explanatory, then SpaceX will be Elon Musks’ largest contribution to humanity.
But what if we don’t become multi-planetary? What if Blue Origin is able to get us to Mars or some other planet first? What will have been Elon Musks’ largest value-creator?
In my mind, it will be getting millions of people inspired to dream bigger with science.
Since the 1990s, there has been a renaissance in computer engineering. However, what was the last moonshot in other areas of engineering- such as mechanical, design, or other? Musk has been directly involved in two breakthroughs (making electric cars cool and space travel) that could be considered moonshots (changing the carbon intensity of transportation and changing space travel).
Even if SpaceX does get us to Mars, Elon Musk inspiring millions may cascade into others becoming bigger and better than Musk. Imagine if in a generation or two, somebody who Musk directly inspired is able to create something as out of reach today as Mars was 100 years ago? Say- instantaneous teleportation? Even some of that could be credited to Musk if he was a direct inspiration. But that discussion is for another day.
There are plenty of things I do not like about Elon Musk- mainly his fraudulent activities. But, I cannot deny what may be his greatest contribution- encouraging humanity to dream bigger and better.
§The Power of Silence
Have you ever asked a question, received 20+ seconds of silence, and been completely OK with it? Well, in a recent interview with Elon Musk, there were two instances (27:42 and 1:00:38) where Lex Friedmen would ask Elon a question and would be met with a silent response, where Elon was thinking.
During these pauses, Lex did did not interrupt, seem upset, or even awkward. Later, Lex explained:
Silence is one of the most intimate things that two people can share with each other, because it’s having a trust that you’re on the same page
When was the last time one of us even took 20 seconds of silence to think about something for ourselves? What about in a conversation? When I ask a question- I almost always expect an instant answer - no matter how complex I expect the answer to be. The same can be seen when I am asked a question- I just answer without taking the requisite time to think in uninterrupted silence. This is a conversational norm that should change!
Yorkey Update
With the updated buyout price,
In the $10,000,000,000 Yorkie Bars post, I write about Yorkie Optical International (HK: 2788), saying that they were mispriced at $0.85/share, due to their pending buyout and underbooked real estate assets.
The independent valuation report came out on December 15th, pegging the net asset value to be $0.94/share- a price I vehemently disagree with. However, the acquisition price was marched up to $0.999/share- a price I still think is low.
However, it is unlikely the price will be increased again. As I write this, shares are traking at $0.97/share. Although I don’t consider this a massive success- it could have been much worse for shareholders!
Now it only takes 63 Yorkey shares to buy a Yorkie Bar!!