What Advice Does Elon Musk Have For Entrepreneurs?
#1 Building Something That Has Value For Someone Else
‘’Focus on something that has high value to someone else, be really rigorous in making that assessment, because natural human tendency is wishful thinking, so the challenge to entrepreneurs is telling what’s the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking to them as opposed to pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn’t actually have merit.’’
#2 Work Like Hell
‘’Be very rigorous in your self-analysis, certainly be extremely tenacious, and just work like hell. Put in 80-100 hours every week. All these things improves the odds of success.’’
#3 Ask For Feedback
‘’I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.’’
#4 Try
‘’Frankly, though, I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.’’
#5 Keep The Bigger Picture In Mind
‘’One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree – make sure you understand the fundamental principles like the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.’’
#6 Think About Yourself Critically
“Accurate self analysis. It’s difficult to do so, since you’re too close to yourself by definition. People do not think critically enough. People assume too many things to be true without sufficient basis in that belief, so it’s very important that people closely analyze what is supposed to be true, and build it up, analyze things by the first principles, not by analogy or convention, which is actually what most people do, that makes it difficult to gain insight as to how things can be bettered. In any argument or train of thinking, you want to make sure that the underlying premises are valid and applicable, and how the conclusion reached is necessarily driven by the underlying premises and the interconnection between those premises. It’s the foundation of rational thought. “
#7 Don’t Fear Taking Risks
‘’People tend to over-weigh risks on a personal level. It’s one thing if you’ve got a mortgage to pay and kids to support, so that if you were to deviate from your job, well, how are you going to feed your family and pay the rent? That’s understandable, but let’s say you’re young and you’re just coming out of college, what are your risks? You’re not going to starve, certainly not in any kind of modern economy. It’s so easy to earn enough money just to live somewhere and eat food. Very easy to do. So I don’t know what they’re afraid of. Mostly afraid of failure, I think, but people should be less risk averse, when there’s not much at risk.’’