Tech Titans

Comparing the Genius of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk

One of my favorite books of all time is the “Steve Jobs” biography by Walter Isaacson. As the name suggests, it tells the story of Steve Jobs and his founding of Apple. I found the book highly inspirational, and I think Isaacson did a great job describing Jobs’s brilliance without over idealizing him. 

Elon Musk is another figure that is highly inspiring to me. Elon, who founded and manages some of the world's most innovative companies, has already left his mark on several of the world's frontier technological industries. 

In this post, I compare the two tech business giants and expand on their similarities and differences. 

The Genius Behind Innovation

A core trait that sets apart good from great company founders is the ability to think in first principles, which means breaking down a problem to its most basic elements. Most people approach problems within conventional boundaries. Only a few special individuals are visionary enough to go against popular belief and approach problems from a completely different angle. A famous example of this mindset is Henry Ford's saying, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

An example of Elon’s ability to think in first principles is after selling PayPal and making a small fortune, he wanted to raise awareness about space flight by buying an old Russian rocket and launching it to Mars. The Russians quoted him an expensive price, and on the flight back from the meeting in Russia, he calculated the cost of materials and realized how inefficient the existing rockets were. That moment of insight led him to create SpaceX, which succeeded in reducing the cost of space flight by 96%.

Steve Jobs applied first principle thinking with similar genius when he invented the iPhone. During its unveiling, in his typical charismatic way, he demonstrated how he combined different functions into a single device. The iPhone was not a marginal improvement on existing phones but a completely different product. Today's Apple, while it continues to improve existing products, lacks Jobs’ product genius that was a result of first principle thinking.

Achieve the Impossible

Both Steve and Elon are both charismatic figures that are able to both inspire and intimidate their workers to achieve amazing goals. In his book Walter Isaacson describes Steve's “reality distortion field”, the ability to convince himself and those around him to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma and hyperbole. 

One of the best examples of the reality distortion field in practice is during development of the Macintosh computer in 1984, Jobs asked Larry Kenyon, an engineer, to reduce the Mac boot time by 10 seconds. When Kenyon replied that it was not possible to reduce the time, Jobs asked him, "If it would save a person's life, could you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot time?" Kenyon said that he could. Jobs went to a white board and pointed out that if 5 million people wasted an additional 10 seconds booting the computer, the sum time of all users would be equivalent to 100 human lifetimes every year. A few weeks later Kenyon returned with rewritten code that booted 28 seconds faster than before.

Elon has the same ability to inspire and achieve the seemingly impossible. While also charismatic he tends to inspire by leading by example, working shoulder to shoulder with his teams. During a particularly intense period of ramping production of the model 3 in 2018 nicknamed “Production Hell”, he slept on a couch at the factory for a few months to be close to the production line and address any issues immediately. 

This intenstess has its downsides,  mainly manifesting as anger and rage. Elon has anger fits nicknamed “demon mode” where he can be harsh to his workers. Jobs was also known for his sharp and cutting remarks. He could be brutally honest and often didn’t mince words, which sometimes left employees feeling demoralized or humiliated. It’s important to realize that their personalities are often double-edged swords, with their strengths also being sources of weakness.

Form Over Function

Steve was deeply inspired by Zen Buddhism, which emphasizes simplicity and the elimination of the non-essential. These ideas are ingrained into Apple's culture, known for their aesthetic and clean looking devices. For Jobs, minimalism and aesthetics weren’t just means to an end but goals in and of themselves.

Elon’s goal is different, he aims at improving entire industries. His ambitions are much larger, like making humans multi planetary and improving sustainability with EVs and solar energy. Product design is just a means to an end. In Elons view, the design should be optimized for ease of production and reliability. Elon has a saying, "The best part is no part. The best process is no process. It weighs nothing, costs nothing, can't go wrong." He often emphasizes how underrated the difficulty of production is, and removing parts makes things much easier. Streamlining production reduces cost by a few orders of magnitude, making technology that was once prohibitively expensive widely accessible.

Surprisingly, even though their motives for product minimalism are different, the end result is quite similar.  A look at Tesla cars’ interiors shows how Elon also embraces minimalism. Both Tesla and Apple are famous for their controversial actions, like removing the headphone jack and eliminating physical buttons in cars. Initially criticized, these changes often become industry standards.

Conclusion

While both Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are arguably among world’s greatest product geniuses, they fundamentally exhibit different types of genius. Jobs aspired for product perfection and elegance, whereas Elon’s goal is to advance an industry, with the perfect product being a means to an end. This difference in focus underscores their unique contributions to the tech world, solidifying their legacies as transformative figures in their respective fields.