Top Highlights

• The first Falcon 1 launch attempt came a mere three years and ten months after Musk started SpaceX. The company reached “space” in four years and ten months. It made orbit in six years and four months.
• This decisive style carried over into meetings back at the office in El Segundo. Musk would convene his different teams in a small conference room, be it his engineers working on propulsion, or structures, or avionics, and run down the major issues. If an engineer faced an intractable problem, Musk wanted a chance to solve it. He would suggest idea...
• But most of all, he channeled a preternatural force to move things forward. Elon Musk just wants to get shit done.
• Musk made hiring a priority. He personally met with every single person the company hired through the first three thousand employees. It required late nights and weekends, but he felt it important to get the right people for his company.
• Musk differed from his competitors in another, important way—failure was an option. At most other aerospace companies, no employee wanted to make a mistake, lest it reflect badly on an annual performance review. Musk, by contrast, urged his team to move fast, build things, and break things. At some government labs and large aerospace firms, an engi...