Originally published on EVANNEX.
When the chips are down, Elon Musk knows how to turn things around. Both Tesla and SpaceX have been through near-death experiences. Yet, somehow, Musk pulled both companies out of dire straits. Musk’s friend, Venture Capitalist Jason Calacanis, explains that entrepreneurs need, “one central thing that is critical, and that’s resiliency.”
 Two tech titans disagree on a lot of things but share one key trait. Image: screenshot of Tesla video, modified by CleanTechnica |
Calacanis points to Musk and another Silicon Valley billionaire who’s a shining example of resiliency — Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Ironically, Musk and Zuckerberg have a contentious, ongoing feud that ranges from disagreements on artificial intelligence to condescending comments about one another. Nevertheless, there’s common ground when it comes to resiliency.
With Zuckerberg, Calacanis says, “he’s hated by half of America and people around the world for his lax approach to privacy… and that’s after all this incredible success. The reward for Mark Zuckerberg is that hundreds of millions of people hate him.”
 Even Elon Musk deleted the Tesla and SpaceX Facebook pages after Facebook’s data breach by Cambridge Analytica. Image: screenshot of Tesla video, modified by CleanTechnica |
Calacanis continues, “And the reward for Elon Musk for making 300 mile range, $50,000 cars, $35,000 cars that change the world and save us from extinction from global warming, is the press and the haters are throwing rocks at him while he’s sleeping three hours a night trying to get from 3,000 to 5,000 cars a week.”
So what’s the recipe for resiliency? Calacanis notes, “The ability to not give up and the ability to come to work every day when it’s hard, and just grind it out and fight through… There is a perception that things get easier. Things do not get easier.”
Above: Musk and Zuckerberg both display great resiliency in their respective businesses (YouTube: CNBC Make It.)
Instead, “They get more complex and [they get] harder. This idea that you’re going to start a company, and then you’re going to raise a ton of money, you’re going to have millions of fans or hundreds of millions of fans and tens of millions of customers, and suddenly it’s going to get easy, is false.”
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Former Tesla Battery Expert Leading Lyten Into New Lithium-Sulfur Battery Era — Podcast:
I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ...
