Love him or hate him, he always provokes a reaction

I don’t know what it is about Elon, but people either love him or hate him. There doesn’t appear to be any middle ground. Many would say that he’s the greatest entrepreneur the world has ever seen. What do you think?

I will put forward the case for Elon. You, the jury, can vote.

To vote, simply leave the word TRUE or FALSE in the comment section.

Exhibit 1 — Net Worth

According to Forbes, Elon is the richest man on the planet with a net worth of $219 billion. Money isn’t everything but it is a way of keeping score. If Elon has amassed this much money, he must be providing value.

Money flows to those that provide the most value.

We all get to choose where to spend our money. We choose what we consider to have the most value. Our money is flowing to Elon.

If there was a greater entrepreneur, wouldn’t the money be flowing to them instead?

Many would consider Jeff Bezos to be the obvious competitor to the title based on net worth.

Exhibit 2 — PayPal

In 1999 Musk co-founded X.com, a financial services company. X.com merged with Confinity and was renamed PayPal. PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

Exhibit 3 — Tesla

Musk was not a founder of Tesla but was an initial investor. He later became CEO and is the driving (pun intended) force behind the company. Most people would agree that Tesla would likely have failed without Musk at the wheel.

Tesla was listed on Nasdaq in 2008 at $17 per share. The current price of Tesla shares is $1,005. That’s a 59X increase. The market cap is over $1 trillion.

An interesting point to note is that Tesla doesn’t pay anything for marketing. When other EV cars showed ads during this year’s Super Bowl final, sales of Tesla cars also increased. Think about that for a moment. Rival companies advertise, but Tesla still gets the sales.

Exhibit 4 — SpaceX

Think of space travel and most people will likely mention SpaceX. Jeff Bezos has Blue Origin and Richard Branson has Virgin Galactic. But it’s Elon’s company that gets most of the publicity.

SpaceX was recently valued at $100 billion and became the second-most valuable private company.

Musk wants to use SpaceX to send people to Mars.

It’s amazing that private companies can run space missions. That Musk can do this as well as run his other companies is mind-blowing.

Exhibit 5 — The Boring Company

The Boring Company (TBC) is anything but boring. It was founded by Musk in 2017. TBC aims to build tunnels under cities to increase traffic flow.

It recently announced that it raised $675 million, valuing the company at over $5.6 billion.

Exhibit 6 — Even more companies

I could go on and on with listing Elon’s companies. I’ll mention just a few more here — Neuralink, Solar City, and DeepMind Technologies.

Exhibit 7 — Twitter

This might be a genius move. Elon’s wants to buy Twitter in order to preserve free speech. His offer has been accepted by the board. I won’t comment here on whether one person should be allowed to buy a social media company in this way, but it looks like it’s happening anyway.

There’s no guarantee of success. But would you bet against Elon?

I think Elon will take Twitter to new highs. It’s not going to turn into a cesspit like some people are saying. Elon’s not that stupid. Not everyone will like what he does, but that’s the case with everything.

Who else could be the greatest?

Investopedia lists the top 10 entrepreneurs of all time as:

  • John D. Rockefeller
  • Andrew Carnegie
  • Thomas Edison
  • Henry Ford
  • Charles Merrill
  • Sam Walton
  • Charles Schwab
  • Walt Disney
  • Bill Gates
  • Steve Jobs

Elon Musk doesn’t make their top 10. I find that odd. All the above are mostly known for one company. Surely, to be the greatest entrepreneur you need to have proved yourself in several different fields, which Musk has done.

Elon Musk vs. Warren Buffet

Warren Buffet isn’t an entrepreneur, but there’s a reason I mention him here. It’s said that Warren accumulated 99% of his wealth after the age of 50.

Elon Musk is only 50 years old. Maybe he’s just getting started. If he’s not already the world’s greatest entrepreneur, he’s certainly heading towards it.

Time to vote

It’s up to you guys. Just write TRUE or FALSE in the comments. Let’s see which gets the most votes.