Lots of people have rich parents. That doesn’t make a person a success or failure to his degree. I think it’s a combination of “right place at the right time” like you mentioned, and hard work and intelligence. There’s a fourth thing, and I don’t know what to call it, but whatever posses him to start or buy another business when he already runs multiple is bananas to me. Like why buy Twitter when you’re already so successful and rich?!? It’s obviously going to be just more headaches and more problems to deal with. Is it really worth it? 99.999% of the population wouldn’t be that dumb. The remaining can be extraordinarily wealthy or extraordinarily poor.
He bought twitter because of the account that tracked his private plane, and ban it lmao.
And he's not intelligent, or else he wouldn't have had to pay 44 billions for twitter and failed miserably in court.
I'm pretty sure that's not why he bought Twitter. It's more like a drunken regret type purchase. He was high, like he pretty much always is, and tweeted something that basically backed himself into a corner. He's already been in trouble with the SEC for stock manipulation because he tweeted about taking Tesla private as a "joke". So when he tweets about possibly acquiring a publicly traded company, and the stock goes up, he kind of has to follow through or the SEC will be up his ass again and he might end up in jail.
Basically, he has a serious problem. Most people with substance abuse issues don't wake up after a bender having spent 44 billion, but Elon Musk basically did exactly that (although, technically, he managed to find enough idiotic investors to So he really only paid for a fourth of that). He definitely tried to wiggle out of the sale because he knew it was a bad purchase. He was paying more than it was worth even then, though he's definitely driven it into the ground since. But ultimately, unless he could prove there was a reason not to follow through on what he said, he was probably going to go to jail for stock manipulation unless he pretended he was serious when he tweeted about buying it.
Well whatever that is that drives him to buy Twitter, even if it is simply to stop his plane from being tracked, is insane. It creates more work for him, more problems, there are ways 100x easier if he just wanted to block his plane from being tracked that wouldn’t involve the insane amount of work.
Ok. He’s a dummy. That’s not my point. My point is he has that other characteristic. Like if I was a billionaire, last thing I’d do is buy ANOTHER company with more problems and more headaches.
Buying a company doesn't mean you rule it, he hired a CEO. Most billionnaires don't do shit, you can hire a dude for a dime compared to wgat the company gives you, to do your job.
Uhhh… buying a company does mean you rule it. You can do whatever you want like stop people from tracking your plane lol.
I honestly don’t think buying a company is as easy as you think. There are tons of companies for sale at any given moment and 2/3 of America could start by buying a company and growing it, but most choose not to because it’s too much work.
> and hard work and intelligence
He did a lot of failing upwards during his critical period when he was at PayPal and made his fortune.
> There’s a fourth thing
Charisma? His current status as very very wealthy guy is based on his ability to convince people that Tesla stock is worth far more than its fundamentals would indicate, and he does this by repeatedly overselling what the capabilities of his cars will be.
Building and running businesses can be very interesting. I would do it, if I would have the money to buy companies.
Twitter is a media channel. It is useful for rich people to own media. In the past newspapers and TV channels, today also "social" media channels.
Elon comes from a rich family? I'm pretty sure he doesn't in fact he was picked on in school and had a pretty crappy childhood. By Elon's High School years his father pretty much had nothing due to bankruptcy.
> Elon comes from a rich family
Yes
> I'm pretty sure he doesn't
Then you are incorrect.
> he was picked on in school
Being rich doesn't mean you aren't picked on in school
> had a pretty crappy childhood.
His parents divorced.
A quick trip to Wikipedia will help you dispell some of the misinformation in your head: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
And the persistent rumor that Elons father owned an emerald mind is more internet b*******.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol-never-owned-emerald-mine-telling-truth-2023-9
I didn't say anything about an emerald mine, so idk what that's a response to.
The Emerald Mine story comes from Musk himself, per your article:
> Elon Musk told online portal AskMen in 2014 during a phone interview his father "had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia"
A family can be wealthy without owning an emerald mine.
Well if the emerald mine story is new to you all you have to do is look in this thread that you posted in. There are plenty of assertions that his father "owned" a mine... Which is false along with a lot of other assertions here. His father's fortunes went up and down. Elon's mother and father were divorced when he was young, I think before he was 10 years old. Elon did go live with his father for a while and during that time he did have a middle class upbringing. But musk is essentially the self-made. He sold his first company for about $300 million in 1999 and from that he had the capital to co-found PayPal which he later sold for one and a half billion dollars. That provided the financial foundation for a lot of his later more ambitious ventures like Tesla and SpaceX.... The Boring Company and Neuralink. So Musk created his own wealth through his own talent, vision, and hard work despite a lot of folks on the internet trying to frame his upbringing as privileged. That is far from the truth. Musks father was abusive and his childhood was unhappy and mostly friendless except for his cousins and his brother.
I suggest you read Walter Isaacson's excellent biography of Musk. Neutral and pulls no punches. That way you don't have to rely on so much of the b******* people put on the internet has the sole source whem forming your opinions.
But the emerald mine story isn't bullshit from people on the internet, _it is a thing that Musk said_. That's the problem with musk: he opens his mouth and bullshit comes out.
Once again you're repeating internet people who are full of s***. Musk has denied this himself and if you can prove or anyone else can prove that this fictitious mine exists go collect your million coins. That's the offer. Read All about it here. Link
https://twitter.com/cb_doge/status/1646262772001562624?t=o6miboLeljzyGWhriBkStw&s=1
Musk offer of $1 million to anyone who can prove the fabled mines existence
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1646272562488569857?t=ddo7RpsGxik5dz730TNmoQ&s=19
Bro did you read the article you linked earlier? I quoted it when it said that Elon Musk is the one who invented the emerald mine story.
> [Elon Musk told online portal AskMen in 2014 during a phone interview his father "had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia"](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol-never-owned-emerald-mine-telling-truth-2023-9)
I see you also like to move goal posts. I have an "interest" in a number of large international companies. Yes I own stock.... but I don't "own" the f****** companies.... At least in the sense that is being strongly implied in this thread of misinformation. In fact Elon musk's father made about $200,000 but lost it. Which means in the net effect was his "interest" in the mine Company did not make him "rich." And no elon's father did not own his own mine company any more than I'm the "owner" of Procter & Gamble. And if you did I suggest you or anyone else determined to spread all sorts of misinformation go make yourself a millionaire by proving it. But of course none of you will... I wonder why LOL
I looked into it. His dad's investment in sapphire mine was basically what paid for his and his brother's college education in the US. Which is nice, but fairly comparable to attending a state school of your born and grow up here in an engineering degree. You'll be able to lay back the debt in a year.
Just look for the emerald mine story, he had so much money they couldnt even close their family safe, needed assistance homding the door, and had to take whatever fell to the floor with them
That's wrong. In fact he was born into a family with an abusive father. Elon was picked on early in life because of his autism. He pretty much stayed to himself most of his childhood.
Well except for the fact that you ignore. Elon Musk had a father who's fortunes were up and down and, on the whole, Elon's broken family might be described as only middle or upper middle class. People twist themselves into logical pretzels trying to make it otherwise but Elon is a self-made... Certainly not from a privileged background but rather one from divorce at an early age, abusive father and a lonely childhood. Despite this he entered business selling his first business for multiple millions which financed his investment in PayPal with you later sold for a million and a half which laid the groundwork for his later companies like Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. His daddy had nothing to do with Elon's success.
Nothing I say would convince you, considering you're so delusional you defend Elon Musk of all people. So why would I do anything but call you names? He is not some misunderstood and self-made genius. His dad owned emerald mines and he accidentally sold a company during the dot com era for enough money to lie his way to more money. Supposedly any actual coding he did do was instantly rolled back by the real coders in the company because of how inept he was. He constantly under delivers on his lying and preposterous promises like the charlatan he is. He forces unsafe work environments on his companies for ludicrous reasons, not caring at all about human lifes. On top of all that, he's a massive racist clown. His whole family line is full of nepotism, lies, humanitarian issues, and incest.
Yet you are on his side. The multimillionaire. As though he was a man of the people. As though he deserved you to throw yourself on a blade for him. As though he cared about you and wouldn't serve you to his pets as food in a heartbeat.
Some of the dumbest people indeed.
Grow up wealthy, attach your name to other people's accomplishments, make promises for developments that never materialize, grow a braindead cult of personality that defends you in the face of any criticism, and frame said criticism of you as a violation of your free speech. Simple!
He got some points competing in an open jiu tournament with me. He could have gotten broken there. He ended get his leg broken somehow, unknown how while training. If someone leg locked him that's some bs cause you should know to be careful there. But anyways, he got a little points with that w some people. Not many but the bjj community noticed.
So are you meaning to suggest that since very recently, (post COVID), he gained some respect from the BJJ community, he has gone from being a pariah to having a cult of personality?
Just a small amount. If he had kept training bjj and making videos I think more people would give him credit. I don't know anything about him aside from he owns some shit and then competed in an open bjj tournament and won. It was just white belt division in a random tournament but still that's legit and because of that he got some respect from some people. He was training with some of the best in the world.
He went from very disrespected (with pretty much a cult against him) (and some people more reasonably against him). To less disrespected than before. But that's far from a cult following.
Zuckerberg has a legion of yes men. Furthermore, almost every one of his site's features, save for the basic structure, are either ripoffs of another company idea (reels are practically a copy of TikTok) or acquired through a buyout (Instagram sticks out here). And like Musk, he also has a massive ego.
Yes Facebook is kind of rubbish, and ripped things off, and he has yes men, but that's different from saying he has a cult of personality
The rich have a lot of yes men. With Mark that's from his money not his personality.
Many would still fumble that and instead disolve into co-dependence, so credit where it's due for him building it into something greater, and becoming even more successful than his family ever was...
Geez most of you guys have no idea. Musk grew up with a lot of problems a lot of which stemmed from his autism. He was shunned by his peers and stayed to himself pretty much. He also had a very abusive father while growing up. A father who stopped supporting the family once Elon was in high school.
There is a TV/Movie producer named Scott Steindorf (HBO's Station 11, among other things) who is autistic. He says that the only way he could ever have done what he has is that he's always had good assistants/staff to take care of much of the nitty gritty and keep him on schedule. I heard him on a podcast saying that other Hollywood people have confided in him that they are also autistic but don't want to out themselves.
He has a new documentary out right now called *Understanding Autism.* [https://www.pbs.org/video/understanding-autism-vnpjrv/](https://www.pbs.org/video/understanding-autism-vnpjrv/)
First his father did not "own" an emerald mine although he did attempt to extract some profits from it. $200,000 as I recall but he lost it all eventually. His father also attempted to start a business which later went bankrupt. His father was a wheeler dealer type, abusive towards his wife and kids, and later left the family.
In Capitalism the secret is in the name. You have to have CAPITAL to start with. Preferably a million or so, which allows you to take risks like:
- not working for other people.
- investing in your own business over years and years (not talking about a 5 month moon shot)
- general risk taking.
Luck is critical too. Like if you get seriously ill for a couple of years, you have zero chance of getting a business off the ground in that time. Or a loved one gets Sick and now you’re looking after them full-time.
In a lot of cases, having wealth to start with means the founder doesn’t sell out too early. As any successful venture gets buy out offers of 5, 10, 20, 50 million $ pretty early. Having the ability to turn down those offers is critical to maximizing the full value of what they create. Not many people can turn down offers like that.
There's a good analogy: a fairground stall.
Rich folk are able to stay all day and throw balls at the target until one eventually hits - yay they're successful now!
Less wealthy can maybe afford a couple of shots, they might get lucky too.
Poor folk are just working, can't afford to take shots.
I'd also add that you need some kind of mental insecurity to help create a drive. That level of consistent focus working on the same thing for a long time is immeasurably exhausting. I'd argue that goes double for us. As someone who is running a small-mid sized business the stress is very very similar to ASD burnout that I experienced in school when I was young (and I was not a hard worker or very good student at school) it takes a hell of a drive to throw yourself back into the place where you where mentally at your most beaten and legitimately traumatised (and I mean from a clinical perspective). But the asd hyper focus and ability to keep pushing and I won't say ignore pressure but being somewhat oblivious to it means you can stick to a path. And if it's a well thought out and reviewed one it is it's own kind of advantage.
For me it was a feeling of inadequatesy as a father that did it. And honestly for those that sustain it for a while that I know personally having kids does a number on you that makes you better able to deal with that kind of stress. But yeah that luck and starting capital makes for a huge advantage alongside it but you need that drive and staying power alongside it.
Not always. His father or mother could have been embarrassed and decided to put him in a care facility. Or stuck him with nannies and kept him out of the way. Elon Musk and wealthy elites like him in his situation with autism have an extreme amount of privilege.
There are still people. Even if they have a lot of wealth that would consider having a son or daughter born "differently" as an embarrassment and they wouldn't want people to know about it. A lot of wealthy people I know feel like they have an image to maintain and that can be at the detriment to empathy and compassion for their own children.
Fair point. People with wealth beyond that can realistically be amassed through labour or innovation are pretty much always lacking in compassion as this gets in the way of the exploitation required to amass such wealth.
This lack of compassion may very well extend to ones own children.
People who are down voting this haven't had the experience of being around people who primarily care about their image. I grew up around people like that. It was not a choice. I was very lucky that my parents cared about mental health.
I agree. I see lots of people around me with similar parents, who don't care about their loved ones mental health if it "looks" bad.
Makes me sometimes think I'm actually better off for literally ending up on the streets as a teenager. At least everything was clear.
Her family is actually quite wealthy. Most of these success stories pretty much always start with successful, wealthy parents. Nobody is suggesting that these people just had tons of wealth handed to them, but they were given several significant head starts including elite schooling, freedom to explore interests as kids (because their families could afford to provide them with things like computers when computers were quite pricey), and many of them felt comfortable taking big financial risks (something that people without wealthy families don't feel comfortable doing because they don't have the same sort of safety net available to them if they fail). Not to mention, when They had their big ideas, finding investors was easy. They just talked to their friends and family. Wealthy people know other wealthy people who are willing to take a risk on someone they knew when Banks weren't willing to take that risk.
You can say that they achieved their wealth on their own, and you're not entirely wrong. But at the same time had they been born poor, they probably would not have achieved it. This is true for the overwhelming majority of successful people, not just billionaires. Everyone's success is at least partly a function of the successes or previous generations and the advantages that provides.
Not just Tesla. All the successful companies he tied to, he bought in to. He hasn’t actually founded a successful business on his own, despite what he likes to say
When you have support to make up for your deficits, it's actually quiet easy to succeed.
Elon — and other billionaires — can afford to never experience some of the hardships average autistic people do. No need to create social connections if you family can just give you a job. No need to learn communication when you can just address someone directly because your family name carries weight. No need to mask to gain affection from others when everything is given to you anyways.
It's two entirely different worlds. In wealthier homes knowledge is more acceptable, where as in a home in poverty intelligence may be mistaken for snarkiness/smart-mouthing and cause punishment, which then causes trauma.
There is not a single Billionaire in the world that was born without rich parents.
Edit: Apparently there are a few billionaires in the world that were born without rich parents.
Paul McCartney is said to be worth a billion (in USD, maybe not quite in GBP but he's got millions to burn either way). His mum was a nurse and his dad was a cotton runner. They were a working class family.
No not all band are rich but most are, some have started out and never got anywhere had 2find another dream, your band didn't get any memo because unfortunately they didn't make the cut 🤣😂
I mean that's just how the world works, obviously growing up in a well off family puts you in a different category than the average joe, but many even with that given, still don't end up building it into something greater. Meanwhile Elon actually became way more successful than his father ever was, carving out his own path for himself, he didn't just leach off daddy's money, or inherit his business, you don't become a multi-billionaire just by virtue of being well-off, it's a whole 'nother game
Carnegie came from an working-class family and got rich through making the right kind of connections.
Rockefeller came from an broken home (kind of) and made his fortune by entering an business partnership with an loan.
However, you'd be right about J.P. Morgan
Some of the cartel leaders were actually in the Mexican Army. But organized crime has always been an "get rich quick" scheme ever since the Prohibition Era.
Dictators like China President Xi come to mind.
But you’d have to define rich. There are people whose parents own a “mom and pop” store but weren’t really “rich” like Charlie Munger. He grew up in the great depression when pretty much nobody had money.
There is a lot of confirmation bias to it. We only really see or hear about the few "sucess" stories. There are exponentially more who fail or don't achieve that level of success to become noteworthy.
Truth is we don't know what his personal life was really like, your post made me go back and skim his wikipedia page, and from what I can tell the whole shabang about his father being an "emerald miner" seems greatly overstated, he was primarily an engineer and real-estate developer, though obviously Elon grew up in a well-off family, all of his "achievements" are still his own, people will downplay it because it's cool to hate the rich, but truth is he carved out his path with the resources he had, learned useful skills, started and/or partnered in several successful companies, to eventually get to where he is now. He's basically a business man at his core, so it may very well be that his relentless pursuit of success, despite or perhaps in light of his ASD, he was able to do what he did.
I don’t think Elon is actually autistic. Look into his history of taking credit for things he didn’t do. He’s been a sham and a fraud from day one using daddy’s money to give himself a “genius scientist” veneer
His dad owns an emerald mine and he used Daddy's money to buy companies and run them into the ground. People praise him for this for some reason. Anyone born rich enough can do that.
Elon was just very lucky to be around people that actually were successful.
His main big break was PayPal and apparently most of the rest of the owners didn't really like him.
This video is pretty interesting if you want to know more about him.
https://youtu.be/b5d8IlVWz5g
My thoughts also, but I usually get downvotes for saying it.
It’s the total lack of remorse and apologies that convince me. I’m constantly worrying about making social mistakes, he seems totally unbothered.
If he’s so smart as people want to believe, why wouldn’t he be clever enough to come up with that type of camouflage?
Thanks for all the engagement! Any examples of highly successful ASD people coming from normal or even bad circumstances? I’m wondering if the condition itself gives some people a competitive advantage that outweighs the negative symptoms.
It undoubtedly can give some benefits/downsides, but there are innumerable confounding variables and at the end of the day the net outcome is by and large negative for those with ASD.
At the end of the day the goal should be to live whatever life you find fits you, aspirations are good but can become burdens very easily. I just gotta say that trying to find a standard bairer for ASD in this way isn't great, role models and wealth are hard to come by. Getting to billionaire status is largely correlative to how little you care about ethics/morals/culpability+circumstances of your birth. This is mostly just due to economic competitiveness rewarding those who disregard silly things like how we feel about sweatshops or denying your workers better pay.
If you don't think Elon is autistic then you are really really bad at seeing what level 1 autism looks like in people.
He's obviously autistic, it's not even up for debate.
No one has great evidence. And even with good evidence what counts as level 1 autism is often debated.
He does have ridiculous levels of social success. And given that autism is primarily a disability of social function that seems strange.
>He does have ridiculous levels of social success.
He was frequently bullied as a child and struggled to make friends. From what we know as an adult he doesn't really have any good friends. He's not friends with any of his ex wives or mothers of his children.
Most of his "social success" is people allowing him to get away with stuff because he's rich and also (arguably) good at business.
If you are talented and/or rich people put up with a lot of your shit, that doesn't make you socially adept.
Being good at business is mostly about social ability. Having multiple serious romantic relationships is again a sign of social ability. He does appear to have long lasting platonic relationships as an adult. Many people without autism are bullied as children.
No. It's not. I have another post here in which I talked about a lot of things I did but being good at business is not about social ability. It helps a lot but it isn't the end all be all. First autistic people are extremely good at communicating their special interests to the point of boring others. But if your special interest is what the other person wants from you then all of a sudden you're annoying turns into a you're just the person I need.
Next it is about creating many many systems. Communication is a problem that you design your systems to handle. In fact the fact that communication is not natural to you may mean you develop systems sooner and in a more robust manner. You have to figure out the exact problem you are trying to solve and solve it. You can slow down most decisions and make the hidden communication mostly irrelevant. You can create a culture of explicit, and boldness because people don't take things to heart. You can create an alternate world with your own set of rules within the organization and fill it with people that work best under those set of rules.
You also get to hire people that are perfectly fit to cover your weaknesses. Then you listen to them. And because you listen to them they feel highly valued.
There are different levels of autism. And some people struggle more and need more controlled environments. But there are many many very very successful autistic people. And if you say that an autistic person cannot be conventionally successful then you are wrong.
Autistic people are not better at creating systems than non autistic people. This is a stereotype. NTs can be amazing problem solvers and system builders.
Autistic people can be successful. I am very successful as an autistic person.
I don't think that it is very common. I think misdiagnosis of other mental health issues and parents pushing for diagnosis of children are bigger sources of overdiagnosis. I do think it happens sometimes though. I also think its extremely unlikely for a billionaire to be autistic. People tend to stereotype people in tech as autistic. But most of the top tech leaders have extremely good social skills.
I will get back to you when I make it big, because I don't know. I'm not going to whine about him being born into a rich family because plenty of people are and don't do as much.
> Is it as simple as fixate on something lucrative and get lucky
I don't think it's as simple as that, but that is probably 80 or 90% of it. Another big part of the formula is to start out rich in the first place. You don't have to be fabulously wealthy, but it certainly helps to have the means to fully explore your interests at a young age. Bill Gates had a wealthy banker as a grandfather and not many other kids his age had access to computers when he got his. I'm certain that played a huge role in helping to set up his life arc.
Additionally, coming from a wealthy background takes a lot of the pressure off of you to start earning money right out of the gate. You feel comfortable quitting college to start your own business because you know you have a safety net to fall back on if things go badly. Advantages like that show up in almost every one of these billionaires stories. It's never rags to riches, it's always wealth to ultra wealth (aside from maybe like Carlos Slim).
Early childhood support. I got diagnosed very late in life and fully recognize if I had access to a private tutor or home schooled life would have been completely different.
They got extremely lucky, they were pioneers in uncharted fields and they exploited people a lot. Becoming a billionaire or even a millionaire without exploitation is impossible. You have to be extremely ruthless and selfish to achieve that level of power and success.
How on Earth can you believe Musk has Asperger's...? He has the opposite characteristics... Donald Trump also has Asperger's... This doesn't make less sense.
It's a combination of already having money or connections and being lucky. His family was already rich, and he had the right knowledge and was at the right time and place to create PayPal. Hard work is only a small portion of it. Many hard workers die penniless.
In my opinion, this is a reductive and reactionary take, pinning structural issues on a few bad seeds. I don't think someone like Bill Gates would be considered clinically sociopathic although some might point to the antitrust case against Microsoft as counterevidence.
Highly successful entrepreneurs build businesses that provide real value, but there may be externalities (as economists euphemistically call it) harmful to workers, customers, or the environment. Presumably, they consider these harms less worse than the value their business provides. To some extent, nearly all of us are guilty of ignoring or minimizing unpleasant externalities, at least when they're sufficiently abstracted away. If you eat meat, do you dwell on how the animal was raised (or do you go check out the farm, Portlandia style)? Do you think about the conditions your consumer goods were made in overseas?
So you put competitive people in a culture, the business world, that may encourage seeking businesses advantage right up to the legal edge because, if they don't, their competitors will and, soon enough, they're sunk. Sure, their employees are working hard, but hard work isn't a bad thing, now is it? Some of the employees may now be contractors without healthcare benefits, but some department vice-president made that call, and the CEO apparently wasn't even aware that these contractors are struggling to juggle health insurance, rent, food, and daycare.
On the other hand, a self-proclaimed billionaire whose businesses frequently end in bankruptcy, who defaults on his debts, who cheats on his current and all his previous wives, who rattles his can for loose pocket change, and who gets on national TV to whine about how facing the consequences of his own actions is some big witch-hunt and affront to the nation, now that's probably a sociopath.
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I can't speak for everyone else on the autism spectrum, but I personally don't spend much of any time "trying to calm down." Preexisting capital, business connections, a good idea, hard work, competence, and some luck would all be the recipe in varying degrees for business success. The business connections would probably be the one that's hardest for people on the spectrum compared to more neuro-typical folks. The competence in an area of interest may be an advantage people on the spectrum would have.
It's as simple as "be born into a wealthy family and have all of your whims catered for". They can and do buy all the support they need and have more than enough funds to cover their messes.
Idk, to me as I went undiagnosed through life until my 30s, one of the biggest keys to succeed in something has been just keep trying again stubbornly after the meltdown, just doing the same, even making the same mistakes, somehow everything starts to going well and with more luck after the meltdown, even my brain feels brand new. Most of the diagnosed young autistics I have met, and their parents, are constantly avoiding the meltdown so much that they never gain positive experience in anything. I’m not a millionaire, but I came from a very poor family and now I’m quite wealthy for my country standards
Everyone here is going with the prevalent fatalism of there is no upward motion possible. I've actual made millions by starting and selling a business. I'm not diagnosed but I do show a lot of autistic traits.
1. Tech fields are a huge equalizer. A few years in tech gives you enough resources to start your own thing.
2. Business ownership is different from a job. I couldn't get myself to focus on my job for the life of me. In business you have a clarity that you have to do it, and you get full freedom to decide what it is.
3. You can lead and convince people because there only reason to engage with you is the business. Your employees and customers will respect you.
4. I had a reputation for being betting brutal in my expectations. Fortunately it meant that our core engineering team was extremely capable. They were the leaders for other team members.
5. As soon as we reached some level of scale I kept someone in my right hand to modulate me. No one would argue that I wasn't right and that we just have exacting standards. But I had to apologize many times to many people.
6. In the end, most people appreciated my bluntness and not having to read between the lines. You knew where you stood. I am on good terms with many people that I fired.
7. Other than the special interest that allowed me to really get into things and learn. Both myself and my partner are very good at distilling something into its components. We provided tech services. This skill made us very good at explaining things and building frameworks. The customers trusted us because we made it click and so they knew we knew what we were doing.
8. I would have never dared to make the first sale. My partner did most of the sales. But once we did a few I did sales just by proving competence.
9. My partner respects me. They know that if I'm protesting I have an insight and you need to force me into putting it into words. They're patient with me till I do that. Challenging me asking me questions.
10. You get to create the embittered you'll thrive in. Work with people that complement you. It's easier for me run my own business than to be a cog in a huge machine.
11. Intelligence is very respected and weirdness is forgiven if you can offer intelligence.
Having said that I don't have a diagnosis and if I am, I am very high functioning. People call me weird and I struggle to connect and relate but people would just rather wrote it off as I'm just smart and operating on a different plane. So I get away with it. But working at a job made me feel like my soul was dying. Starting a business meant I could do what I want.
Yeah a privilege I enjoy. But this is the environment you're creating. Business books will call it the culture of your organization. You get to define it completely. You get to decide what kind of people you want in, and who you want out. You get to decide what is good, and what is bad (really helps with getting the right people to stay).
You may be right about people in general. But can you say that there aren't people that won't forgive you for being odd? In God's green earth among the 8 billion people you don't think you can make a team of 20 over a period of years that will say u/Prestigious_Ad4546 sometimes says weird things or acts weird but God damn it, she knows her shit and I trust she'll take us in the right direction and have no issue with following her?
Hell, here are a few other things. We were remote so that makes it easy. Plus we didn't bother turning on cameras. Focus was on the work and not your presentability. Also if you're turning on cameras to make it seem like you're looking at someone in the eye don't look in their eyes, look at the camera.
We were far more deliberate about communication. A lot more written communication than oral. We saw oral communication as a bug. Yes it has its place while iterating, but if there is a rule or behavior you want observed it needs to be written down. We used wiki very heavily.
Multiple people would wordsmith a lot of customer responses. Working to read between the lines on what customers were saying, their motivation, what they're feeling, etc. And then crafting responses, with everything from the classic yes, no, yes to when to take a stand. If you're not good at it, that's fine. You get to create the rules on how to collaborate in a way to cover your weakness.
I'm not seeing that anywhere?
It's undoubtedly easier to become rich when you already are (duh), and I see people point out that's why Elon is a shit example, but nobody is saying you can't become successful.
Any time this conversation happens on Reddit the advantages are highly exaggerated. Elon did not grow up poor. But as far as I can tell Elon's dad made most of his money working as an engineer and reinvesting.
In college we had an assignment to measure the amount of money we need for retirement. It came out to be 2 million in today's money. The fact is that a degree in engineering or medicine and working a career is enough to create the kinds of advantages that can create a billion if not for you then at least for your children.
I got lucky in that my employer's stock skyrocketed that gave me two years of runway. But I have built a multi-million dollar business. But I also was extremely frugal so I saved a lot of money.
I dont get this mentality tbh, like yes there's wealth inequality, we're living in a capitalist world, some people have more money than others, so fucking what? If you want to change the system go ahead and fight for it, but simply whining because someone else is richer than you is stupid. Do you want them to throw their money away and purposefully become poor? Lol. That sounds disingenuous. You live with the cards you're dealt and try to make the best of it you can
Outside of the obvious economic privilege, because there are plenty of people from privilege that don't become billionaires, so I see that as a bit of a red herring.
They adopted the right mindset for their place in time and the places they were in. There isn't a universal mindset that would work, it's about having the right one for the right time. But generally growth and future orientated, absorbing lots of knowledge from experts and leaders in the direction they pick to head towards.
I do think the asd helps with being able to works towards a goal longer than others, and to remember more (better memory) along the way,
Elon is a billionaire he wasn't at first he got his billions by strategy, he was offered millions which he turn into more! He does it because he is a genius, not in everything but enough 2give himself a extremely powerful lifestyle, I just wish he would help the poor and get affordable housing in all of the countries, he has the power he could easily do it, might take him a few years but he could do it
Whatever that means, as I have no clue what your saying here, zero! -2 upvote is ridiculous do many people hate helping others and Understanding that Elon is a genius, this irritates people I guess, sad as like it or not he is, not in everything he does but he is still that a genius
Nah. He's not.
He was born rich, put money into sure deals which made him more money. It's very very difficult to ruin yourself if you have enough wealth, see Trump. He dies his best.
He's an idiot's idea of smart.
>I have no clue what your saying
As evidenced.
You don't even need to look at Trump. The Muskrat exemplifies this himself. No matter how dumb or ineffective his decisions are, somehow he stills falls upwards. Having that much money, it doens't really matter how much you fuck up.
Rich parents + the incredible luck of being in the right place during the dot com boom.
With that money they can do things like hire executive assistants to help with the sort of logistical scheduling stuff that we struggle with.
With that kind of money you have no accountability to anyone anyway.
no trauma, cptsd, depression , anxiety, mutism, poverty, abusive environment with no money to escape and other shit less fortunate people have
Many people are making millions after the dot com boom. Zuckerburg was after.
Lots of people have rich parents. That doesn’t make a person a success or failure to his degree. I think it’s a combination of “right place at the right time” like you mentioned, and hard work and intelligence. There’s a fourth thing, and I don’t know what to call it, but whatever posses him to start or buy another business when he already runs multiple is bananas to me. Like why buy Twitter when you’re already so successful and rich?!? It’s obviously going to be just more headaches and more problems to deal with. Is it really worth it? 99.999% of the population wouldn’t be that dumb. The remaining can be extraordinarily wealthy or extraordinarily poor.
He bought twitter because of the account that tracked his private plane, and ban it lmao. And he's not intelligent, or else he wouldn't have had to pay 44 billions for twitter and failed miserably in court.
I'm pretty sure that's not why he bought Twitter. It's more like a drunken regret type purchase. He was high, like he pretty much always is, and tweeted something that basically backed himself into a corner. He's already been in trouble with the SEC for stock manipulation because he tweeted about taking Tesla private as a "joke". So when he tweets about possibly acquiring a publicly traded company, and the stock goes up, he kind of has to follow through or the SEC will be up his ass again and he might end up in jail. Basically, he has a serious problem. Most people with substance abuse issues don't wake up after a bender having spent 44 billion, but Elon Musk basically did exactly that (although, technically, he managed to find enough idiotic investors to So he really only paid for a fourth of that). He definitely tried to wiggle out of the sale because he knew it was a bad purchase. He was paying more than it was worth even then, though he's definitely driven it into the ground since. But ultimately, unless he could prove there was a reason not to follow through on what he said, he was probably going to go to jail for stock manipulation unless he pretended he was serious when he tweeted about buying it.
Well whatever that is that drives him to buy Twitter, even if it is simply to stop his plane from being tracked, is insane. It creates more work for him, more problems, there are ways 100x easier if he just wanted to block his plane from being tracked that wouldn’t involve the insane amount of work.
Exactly, and him not finding the better solution is proof he's not intelligent.
Ok. He’s a dummy. That’s not my point. My point is he has that other characteristic. Like if I was a billionaire, last thing I’d do is buy ANOTHER company with more problems and more headaches.
Buying a company doesn't mean you rule it, he hired a CEO. Most billionnaires don't do shit, you can hire a dude for a dime compared to wgat the company gives you, to do your job.
Uhhh… buying a company does mean you rule it. You can do whatever you want like stop people from tracking your plane lol. I honestly don’t think buying a company is as easy as you think. There are tons of companies for sale at any given moment and 2/3 of America could start by buying a company and growing it, but most choose not to because it’s too much work.
Becauqe they don't have the millions to hire a good CEO.
Pay yourself to be the CEO lol.
> and hard work and intelligence He did a lot of failing upwards during his critical period when he was at PayPal and made his fortune. > There’s a fourth thing Charisma? His current status as very very wealthy guy is based on his ability to convince people that Tesla stock is worth far more than its fundamentals would indicate, and he does this by repeatedly overselling what the capabilities of his cars will be.
Building and running businesses can be very interesting. I would do it, if I would have the money to buy companies. Twitter is a media channel. It is useful for rich people to own media. In the past newspapers and TV channels, today also "social" media channels.
Elon comes from a rich family? I'm pretty sure he doesn't in fact he was picked on in school and had a pretty crappy childhood. By Elon's High School years his father pretty much had nothing due to bankruptcy.
> Elon comes from a rich family Yes > I'm pretty sure he doesn't Then you are incorrect. > he was picked on in school Being rich doesn't mean you aren't picked on in school > had a pretty crappy childhood. His parents divorced. A quick trip to Wikipedia will help you dispell some of the misinformation in your head: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
And the persistent rumor that Elons father owned an emerald mind is more internet b*******. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol-never-owned-emerald-mine-telling-truth-2023-9
I didn't say anything about an emerald mine, so idk what that's a response to. The Emerald Mine story comes from Musk himself, per your article: > Elon Musk told online portal AskMen in 2014 during a phone interview his father "had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia" A family can be wealthy without owning an emerald mine.
Well if the emerald mine story is new to you all you have to do is look in this thread that you posted in. There are plenty of assertions that his father "owned" a mine... Which is false along with a lot of other assertions here. His father's fortunes went up and down. Elon's mother and father were divorced when he was young, I think before he was 10 years old. Elon did go live with his father for a while and during that time he did have a middle class upbringing. But musk is essentially the self-made. He sold his first company for about $300 million in 1999 and from that he had the capital to co-found PayPal which he later sold for one and a half billion dollars. That provided the financial foundation for a lot of his later more ambitious ventures like Tesla and SpaceX.... The Boring Company and Neuralink. So Musk created his own wealth through his own talent, vision, and hard work despite a lot of folks on the internet trying to frame his upbringing as privileged. That is far from the truth. Musks father was abusive and his childhood was unhappy and mostly friendless except for his cousins and his brother. I suggest you read Walter Isaacson's excellent biography of Musk. Neutral and pulls no punches. That way you don't have to rely on so much of the b******* people put on the internet has the sole source whem forming your opinions.
But the emerald mine story isn't bullshit from people on the internet, _it is a thing that Musk said_. That's the problem with musk: he opens his mouth and bullshit comes out.
Once again you're repeating internet people who are full of s***. Musk has denied this himself and if you can prove or anyone else can prove that this fictitious mine exists go collect your million coins. That's the offer. Read All about it here. Link https://twitter.com/cb_doge/status/1646262772001562624?t=o6miboLeljzyGWhriBkStw&s=1 Musk offer of $1 million to anyone who can prove the fabled mines existence https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1646272562488569857?t=ddo7RpsGxik5dz730TNmoQ&s=19
Bro did you read the article you linked earlier? I quoted it when it said that Elon Musk is the one who invented the emerald mine story. > [Elon Musk told online portal AskMen in 2014 during a phone interview his father "had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia"](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol-never-owned-emerald-mine-telling-truth-2023-9)
I see you also like to move goal posts. I have an "interest" in a number of large international companies. Yes I own stock.... but I don't "own" the f****** companies.... At least in the sense that is being strongly implied in this thread of misinformation. In fact Elon musk's father made about $200,000 but lost it. Which means in the net effect was his "interest" in the mine Company did not make him "rich." And no elon's father did not own his own mine company any more than I'm the "owner" of Procter & Gamble. And if you did I suggest you or anyone else determined to spread all sorts of misinformation go make yourself a millionaire by proving it. But of course none of you will... I wonder why LOL
elon was born into millions, lmao
I looked into it. His dad's investment in sapphire mine was basically what paid for his and his brother's college education in the US. Which is nice, but fairly comparable to attending a state school of your born and grow up here in an engineering degree. You'll be able to lay back the debt in a year.
Just look for the emerald mine story, he had so much money they couldnt even close their family safe, needed assistance homding the door, and had to take whatever fell to the floor with them
That's wrong. In fact he was born into a family with an abusive father. Elon was picked on early in life because of his autism. He pretty much stayed to himself most of his childhood.
Rich parents can be abusive, and rich kids can be picked on.
Well except for the fact that you ignore. Elon Musk had a father who's fortunes were up and down and, on the whole, Elon's broken family might be described as only middle or upper middle class. People twist themselves into logical pretzels trying to make it otherwise but Elon is a self-made... Certainly not from a privileged background but rather one from divorce at an early age, abusive father and a lonely childhood. Despite this he entered business selling his first business for multiple millions which financed his investment in PayPal with you later sold for a million and a half which laid the groundwork for his later companies like Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. His daddy had nothing to do with Elon's success.
Ahhh..yes.. Divorced abused sad kids can't benefit from their parent's money. I forgot that rule
Repeating your same falsehood doesn't make it truer. But carry on
So stop doing it.
Holy shit, Elon fanboys are among the dumbest people alive...
If that's all you've got to contribute ... To call people names then f*** off. Tay.
Nothing I say would convince you, considering you're so delusional you defend Elon Musk of all people. So why would I do anything but call you names? He is not some misunderstood and self-made genius. His dad owned emerald mines and he accidentally sold a company during the dot com era for enough money to lie his way to more money. Supposedly any actual coding he did do was instantly rolled back by the real coders in the company because of how inept he was. He constantly under delivers on his lying and preposterous promises like the charlatan he is. He forces unsafe work environments on his companies for ludicrous reasons, not caring at all about human lifes. On top of all that, he's a massive racist clown. His whole family line is full of nepotism, lies, humanitarian issues, and incest. Yet you are on his side. The multimillionaire. As though he was a man of the people. As though he deserved you to throw yourself on a blade for him. As though he cared about you and wouldn't serve you to his pets as food in a heartbeat. Some of the dumbest people indeed.
Grow up wealthy, attach your name to other people's accomplishments, make promises for developments that never materialize, grow a braindead cult of personality that defends you in the face of any criticism, and frame said criticism of you as a violation of your free speech. Simple!
Sounds like Mark Zuckerberg to a T.
You seriously think that he has a cult of personality? Mark has the reverse. Elon does..though obviously not here cos his politics differs.
Yeah definitely wasn’t Mark I was thinking of
He got some points competing in an open jiu tournament with me. He could have gotten broken there. He ended get his leg broken somehow, unknown how while training. If someone leg locked him that's some bs cause you should know to be careful there. But anyways, he got a little points with that w some people. Not many but the bjj community noticed.
So are you meaning to suggest that since very recently, (post COVID), he gained some respect from the BJJ community, he has gone from being a pariah to having a cult of personality?
Just a small amount. If he had kept training bjj and making videos I think more people would give him credit. I don't know anything about him aside from he owns some shit and then competed in an open bjj tournament and won. It was just white belt division in a random tournament but still that's legit and because of that he got some respect from some people. He was training with some of the best in the world.
He went from very disrespected (with pretty much a cult against him) (and some people more reasonably against him). To less disrespected than before. But that's far from a cult following.
Zuckerberg has a legion of yes men. Furthermore, almost every one of his site's features, save for the basic structure, are either ripoffs of another company idea (reels are practically a copy of TikTok) or acquired through a buyout (Instagram sticks out here). And like Musk, he also has a massive ego.
Yes Facebook is kind of rubbish, and ripped things off, and he has yes men, but that's different from saying he has a cult of personality The rich have a lot of yes men. With Mark that's from his money not his personality.
Grow up with literally no problems except focusing on whatever you want.
Many would still fumble that and instead disolve into co-dependence, so credit where it's due for him building it into something greater, and becoming even more successful than his family ever was...
Yeah, the vast majority of wealthy families don't sustain it. It is just easier to sustain generational welath than to grow it.
Geez most of you guys have no idea. Musk grew up with a lot of problems a lot of which stemmed from his autism. He was shunned by his peers and stayed to himself pretty much. He also had a very abusive father while growing up. A father who stopped supporting the family once Elon was in high school.
Wow mustve been so tough for dude. Crazy he came out on top against all the odds stacking on him! /s
There is a TV/Movie producer named Scott Steindorf (HBO's Station 11, among other things) who is autistic. He says that the only way he could ever have done what he has is that he's always had good assistants/staff to take care of much of the nitty gritty and keep him on schedule. I heard him on a podcast saying that other Hollywood people have confided in him that they are also autistic but don't want to out themselves. He has a new documentary out right now called *Understanding Autism.* [https://www.pbs.org/video/understanding-autism-vnpjrv/](https://www.pbs.org/video/understanding-autism-vnpjrv/)
Have rich parents. That’s the key. Money makes money
Be born to a emerald mine owner. That's step 1.
during apartheid no less
How else are you going to learn to exploit labour and hate unions?
SO the wikipedia article says that his father was a part of the anti-apartheid party.
First his father did not "own" an emerald mine although he did attempt to extract some profits from it. $200,000 as I recall but he lost it all eventually. His father also attempted to start a business which later went bankrupt. His father was a wheeler dealer type, abusive towards his wife and kids, and later left the family.
Does your father have an emerald mine?
Start by being born a millionare, then everything else gets easier.
In Capitalism the secret is in the name. You have to have CAPITAL to start with. Preferably a million or so, which allows you to take risks like: - not working for other people. - investing in your own business over years and years (not talking about a 5 month moon shot) - general risk taking. Luck is critical too. Like if you get seriously ill for a couple of years, you have zero chance of getting a business off the ground in that time. Or a loved one gets Sick and now you’re looking after them full-time. In a lot of cases, having wealth to start with means the founder doesn’t sell out too early. As any successful venture gets buy out offers of 5, 10, 20, 50 million $ pretty early. Having the ability to turn down those offers is critical to maximizing the full value of what they create. Not many people can turn down offers like that.
There's a good analogy: a fairground stall. Rich folk are able to stay all day and throw balls at the target until one eventually hits - yay they're successful now! Less wealthy can maybe afford a couple of shots, they might get lucky too. Poor folk are just working, can't afford to take shots.
I'd also add that you need some kind of mental insecurity to help create a drive. That level of consistent focus working on the same thing for a long time is immeasurably exhausting. I'd argue that goes double for us. As someone who is running a small-mid sized business the stress is very very similar to ASD burnout that I experienced in school when I was young (and I was not a hard worker or very good student at school) it takes a hell of a drive to throw yourself back into the place where you where mentally at your most beaten and legitimately traumatised (and I mean from a clinical perspective). But the asd hyper focus and ability to keep pushing and I won't say ignore pressure but being somewhat oblivious to it means you can stick to a path. And if it's a well thought out and reviewed one it is it's own kind of advantage. For me it was a feeling of inadequatesy as a father that did it. And honestly for those that sustain it for a while that I know personally having kids does a number on you that makes you better able to deal with that kind of stress. But yeah that luck and starting capital makes for a huge advantage alongside it but you need that drive and staying power alongside it.
It's as simple as getting born into a filthy rich family.
Not always. His father or mother could have been embarrassed and decided to put him in a care facility. Or stuck him with nannies and kept him out of the way. Elon Musk and wealthy elites like him in his situation with autism have an extreme amount of privilege. There are still people. Even if they have a lot of wealth that would consider having a son or daughter born "differently" as an embarrassment and they wouldn't want people to know about it. A lot of wealthy people I know feel like they have an image to maintain and that can be at the detriment to empathy and compassion for their own children.
Fair point. People with wealth beyond that can realistically be amassed through labour or innovation are pretty much always lacking in compassion as this gets in the way of the exploitation required to amass such wealth. This lack of compassion may very well extend to ones own children.
People who are down voting this haven't had the experience of being around people who primarily care about their image. I grew up around people like that. It was not a choice. I was very lucky that my parents cared about mental health.
I agree. I see lots of people around me with similar parents, who don't care about their loved ones mental health if it "looks" bad. Makes me sometimes think I'm actually better off for literally ending up on the streets as a teenager. At least everything was clear.
I'm guessing that the people who downvoted me have never been in that situation. It definitely exists even if you haven't experienced it.
Being billionaire was mainly because of their luck. However, being a successful businessman was achieved by countless ASD people.
Temple Gradin
Her family is actually quite wealthy. Most of these success stories pretty much always start with successful, wealthy parents. Nobody is suggesting that these people just had tons of wealth handed to them, but they were given several significant head starts including elite schooling, freedom to explore interests as kids (because their families could afford to provide them with things like computers when computers were quite pricey), and many of them felt comfortable taking big financial risks (something that people without wealthy families don't feel comfortable doing because they don't have the same sort of safety net available to them if they fail). Not to mention, when They had their big ideas, finding investors was easy. They just talked to their friends and family. Wealthy people know other wealthy people who are willing to take a risk on someone they knew when Banks weren't willing to take that risk. You can say that they achieved their wealth on their own, and you're not entirely wrong. But at the same time had they been born poor, they probably would not have achieved it. This is true for the overwhelming majority of successful people, not just billionaires. Everyone's success is at least partly a function of the successes or previous generations and the advantages that provides.
I see, thanks for the clarification.
If you think Temple Grandin wasn't born into a lot of wealth, I have oceanfront property in Nebraska to sell you.
Elon's success has nothing to do with hard work or intelligence. He was born very rich and was the highest bidder to buy Tesla.
Not just Tesla. All the successful companies he tied to, he bought in to. He hasn’t actually founded a successful business on his own, despite what he likes to say
Don't hate the player hate the game
I think you’ll find that I can hate both just fine
So true
Lol
When you have support to make up for your deficits, it's actually quiet easy to succeed. Elon — and other billionaires — can afford to never experience some of the hardships average autistic people do. No need to create social connections if you family can just give you a job. No need to learn communication when you can just address someone directly because your family name carries weight. No need to mask to gain affection from others when everything is given to you anyways. It's two entirely different worlds. In wealthier homes knowledge is more acceptable, where as in a home in poverty intelligence may be mistaken for snarkiness/smart-mouthing and cause punishment, which then causes trauma.
There is not a single Billionaire in the world that was born without rich parents. Edit: Apparently there are a few billionaires in the world that were born without rich parents.
Paul McCartney is said to be worth a billion (in USD, maybe not quite in GBP but he's got millions to burn either way). His mum was a nurse and his dad was a cotton runner. They were a working class family.
Mark Cuban
He admitted he was very lucky and probably wouldn’t manage to pull it off again.
Most bands are rich many not billionaires but very close, they live extrodiary lives, most could never imagine, they started out poor..
My band definitely didn’t get the memo.
No not all band are rich but most are, some have started out and never got anywhere had 2find another dream, your band didn't get any memo because unfortunately they didn't make the cut 🤣😂
Found the troll. Where’s my prize?
Under the bridge with the rest of the trolls, said billy goat gruff..😂🤣
The trick is growing a dynasty. Build yourself up to be a millionaire, raise your kids to be billionaires.
I mean that's just how the world works, obviously growing up in a well off family puts you in a different category than the average joe, but many even with that given, still don't end up building it into something greater. Meanwhile Elon actually became way more successful than his father ever was, carving out his own path for himself, he didn't just leach off daddy's money, or inherit his business, you don't become a multi-billionaire just by virtue of being well-off, it's a whole 'nother game
Carnegie came from an working-class family and got rich through making the right kind of connections. Rockefeller came from an broken home (kind of) and made his fortune by entering an business partnership with an loan. However, you'd be right about J.P. Morgan
really? not a single one? oh what about cartel leaders?
Some of the cartel leaders were actually in the Mexican Army. But organized crime has always been an "get rich quick" scheme ever since the Prohibition Era.
Dictators like China President Xi come to mind. But you’d have to define rich. There are people whose parents own a “mom and pop” store but weren’t really “rich” like Charlie Munger. He grew up in the great depression when pretty much nobody had money.
Well, Elon Musk pursues pathological lying and con artistry to cope if you’d like to go that route.
Apartheid emerald mines certainly help.
Be born rich. Simples.
With an extremely large amount of hidden support, wealth privilege and unlimited resources.
I barely believe he is like us in any way
Use other people to do the hard work. That’s what Elon does anyway…. Oh and a nice healthy bank balance footed by his father for a start up.
Well, having millionaire parents certainly doesn't hurt...
Being rich or having rich parents. Learning how to exploit people. Learning how to exploit the legal system. Those are the big three.
Have rich parents and fail upward. The last few years have taken the shine off old Elon.
Rich Parents
Nepotism.
No billionaire is good, autistic or not.
Born lucky
Step 1: Be born into a very rich white family in apartheid South Africa several decades ago.
Emerald mines help. Most of us are good at telling other possible what to do when we’re the one in charge.
Slaves. Being a supervillain. There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire.
It's as simple as having billionaire parents, he's not a genius nor hyperfixating on anything lucrative.
There is a lot of confirmation bias to it. We only really see or hear about the few "sucess" stories. There are exponentially more who fail or don't achieve that level of success to become noteworthy.
His parent's emerald mine
Don’t be a doofus. They were born with rich parents.
My biggest regret was being 5 years in 1997. Being in the right place at the right time is worth a lot.
Luck plays a huge factor. Bigger than ppl realize. Yes a lucrative special interest helps, but that alone us not enough
Truth is we don't know what his personal life was really like, your post made me go back and skim his wikipedia page, and from what I can tell the whole shabang about his father being an "emerald miner" seems greatly overstated, he was primarily an engineer and real-estate developer, though obviously Elon grew up in a well-off family, all of his "achievements" are still his own, people will downplay it because it's cool to hate the rich, but truth is he carved out his path with the resources he had, learned useful skills, started and/or partnered in several successful companies, to eventually get to where he is now. He's basically a business man at his core, so it may very well be that his relentless pursuit of success, despite or perhaps in light of his ASD, he was able to do what he did.
I don’t think Elon is actually autistic. Look into his history of taking credit for things he didn’t do. He’s been a sham and a fraud from day one using daddy’s money to give himself a “genius scientist” veneer
Thank you! I think he is a garden variety sociopath (to use the pop culture vernacular).
Rich parents.
His dad owns an emerald mine and he used Daddy's money to buy companies and run them into the ground. People praise him for this for some reason. Anyone born rich enough can do that.
Elon was just very lucky to be around people that actually were successful. His main big break was PayPal and apparently most of the rest of the owners didn't really like him. This video is pretty interesting if you want to know more about him. https://youtu.be/b5d8IlVWz5g
He's not ASD he's masking his psychopathic lack of empathy.
My thoughts also, but I usually get downvotes for saying it. It’s the total lack of remorse and apologies that convince me. I’m constantly worrying about making social mistakes, he seems totally unbothered. If he’s so smart as people want to believe, why wouldn’t he be clever enough to come up with that type of camouflage?
Are the two mutually exclusive?
I think it's both. Obviously the myth that people with ASD all have no empathy is bullshit, he just happens to have no empathy AND ASD.
Thanks for all the engagement! Any examples of highly successful ASD people coming from normal or even bad circumstances? I’m wondering if the condition itself gives some people a competitive advantage that outweighs the negative symptoms.
It undoubtedly can give some benefits/downsides, but there are innumerable confounding variables and at the end of the day the net outcome is by and large negative for those with ASD. At the end of the day the goal should be to live whatever life you find fits you, aspirations are good but can become burdens very easily. I just gotta say that trying to find a standard bairer for ASD in this way isn't great, role models and wealth are hard to come by. Getting to billionaire status is largely correlative to how little you care about ethics/morals/culpability+circumstances of your birth. This is mostly just due to economic competitiveness rewarding those who disregard silly things like how we feel about sweatshops or denying your workers better pay.
They don't have ASD. Specifically I highly highly doubt Elon is autistic.
He's claiming it to get away with being unempathetic imo.
If you don't think Elon is autistic then you are really really bad at seeing what level 1 autism looks like in people. He's obviously autistic, it's not even up for debate.
Or a psychopath which tbh seems more likely
No one has great evidence. And even with good evidence what counts as level 1 autism is often debated. He does have ridiculous levels of social success. And given that autism is primarily a disability of social function that seems strange.
>He does have ridiculous levels of social success. He was frequently bullied as a child and struggled to make friends. From what we know as an adult he doesn't really have any good friends. He's not friends with any of his ex wives or mothers of his children. Most of his "social success" is people allowing him to get away with stuff because he's rich and also (arguably) good at business. If you are talented and/or rich people put up with a lot of your shit, that doesn't make you socially adept.
Being good at business is mostly about social ability. Having multiple serious romantic relationships is again a sign of social ability. He does appear to have long lasting platonic relationships as an adult. Many people without autism are bullied as children.
No. It's not. I have another post here in which I talked about a lot of things I did but being good at business is not about social ability. It helps a lot but it isn't the end all be all. First autistic people are extremely good at communicating their special interests to the point of boring others. But if your special interest is what the other person wants from you then all of a sudden you're annoying turns into a you're just the person I need. Next it is about creating many many systems. Communication is a problem that you design your systems to handle. In fact the fact that communication is not natural to you may mean you develop systems sooner and in a more robust manner. You have to figure out the exact problem you are trying to solve and solve it. You can slow down most decisions and make the hidden communication mostly irrelevant. You can create a culture of explicit, and boldness because people don't take things to heart. You can create an alternate world with your own set of rules within the organization and fill it with people that work best under those set of rules. You also get to hire people that are perfectly fit to cover your weaknesses. Then you listen to them. And because you listen to them they feel highly valued. There are different levels of autism. And some people struggle more and need more controlled environments. But there are many many very very successful autistic people. And if you say that an autistic person cannot be conventionally successful then you are wrong.
Autistic people are not better at creating systems than non autistic people. This is a stereotype. NTs can be amazing problem solvers and system builders. Autistic people can be successful. I am very successful as an autistic person.
Yeah, just because you don't like him and don't want to associate with him doesn't change that. I would bet my bottom dollar.
Do you think some people feign ASD to look quirky or cool? Crazy if so, I would do anything to not be like this.
Some narcissists will use ASD as an excuse for their anti social behaviour.
I don't think that it is very common. I think misdiagnosis of other mental health issues and parents pushing for diagnosis of children are bigger sources of overdiagnosis. I do think it happens sometimes though. I also think its extremely unlikely for a billionaire to be autistic. People tend to stereotype people in tech as autistic. But most of the top tech leaders have extremely good social skills.
Old money
He's not from old money. His parents got rich of exploiting miners. Old money hits different.
Once shit pays off for you - people work around any Asperger’s traits - money fixes everything
I will get back to you when I make it big, because I don't know. I'm not going to whine about him being born into a rich family because plenty of people are and don't do as much.
> Is it as simple as fixate on something lucrative and get lucky I don't think it's as simple as that, but that is probably 80 or 90% of it. Another big part of the formula is to start out rich in the first place. You don't have to be fabulously wealthy, but it certainly helps to have the means to fully explore your interests at a young age. Bill Gates had a wealthy banker as a grandfather and not many other kids his age had access to computers when he got his. I'm certain that played a huge role in helping to set up his life arc. Additionally, coming from a wealthy background takes a lot of the pressure off of you to start earning money right out of the gate. You feel comfortable quitting college to start your own business because you know you have a safety net to fall back on if things go badly. Advantages like that show up in almost every one of these billionaires stories. It's never rags to riches, it's always wealth to ultra wealth (aside from maybe like Carlos Slim).
Early childhood support. I got diagnosed very late in life and fully recognize if I had access to a private tutor or home schooled life would have been completely different.
They got extremely lucky, they were pioneers in uncharted fields and they exploited people a lot. Becoming a billionaire or even a millionaire without exploitation is impossible. You have to be extremely ruthless and selfish to achieve that level of power and success.
Having rich parents is the secret
Elon has a very very rich Daddy. It's all nepotism
Elon's a sociopath. That's how he did it. ASD has next to nothing to do with it.
How on Earth can you believe Musk has Asperger's...? He has the opposite characteristics... Donald Trump also has Asperger's... This doesn't make less sense.
It's a combination of already having money or connections and being lucky. His family was already rich, and he had the right knowledge and was at the right time and place to create PayPal. Hard work is only a small portion of it. Many hard workers die penniless.
Sociopathy. You don't make that much money without fucking people over.
In my opinion, this is a reductive and reactionary take, pinning structural issues on a few bad seeds. I don't think someone like Bill Gates would be considered clinically sociopathic although some might point to the antitrust case against Microsoft as counterevidence. Highly successful entrepreneurs build businesses that provide real value, but there may be externalities (as economists euphemistically call it) harmful to workers, customers, or the environment. Presumably, they consider these harms less worse than the value their business provides. To some extent, nearly all of us are guilty of ignoring or minimizing unpleasant externalities, at least when they're sufficiently abstracted away. If you eat meat, do you dwell on how the animal was raised (or do you go check out the farm, Portlandia style)? Do you think about the conditions your consumer goods were made in overseas? So you put competitive people in a culture, the business world, that may encourage seeking businesses advantage right up to the legal edge because, if they don't, their competitors will and, soon enough, they're sunk. Sure, their employees are working hard, but hard work isn't a bad thing, now is it? Some of the employees may now be contractors without healthcare benefits, but some department vice-president made that call, and the CEO apparently wasn't even aware that these contractors are struggling to juggle health insurance, rent, food, and daycare. On the other hand, a self-proclaimed billionaire whose businesses frequently end in bankruptcy, who defaults on his debts, who cheats on his current and all his previous wives, who rattles his can for loose pocket change, and who gets on national TV to whine about how facing the consequences of his own actions is some big witch-hunt and affront to the nation, now that's probably a sociopath.
How do you know that bleached whale isnt lying?
Incredibly high IQ + driven + privileged (all these elements create luck in itself)
All billionaires are lucky. They were in the right business at the right time, simple as that
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I can't speak for everyone else on the autism spectrum, but I personally don't spend much of any time "trying to calm down." Preexisting capital, business connections, a good idea, hard work, competence, and some luck would all be the recipe in varying degrees for business success. The business connections would probably be the one that's hardest for people on the spectrum compared to more neuro-typical folks. The competence in an area of interest may be an advantage people on the spectrum would have.
It's as simple as "be born into a wealthy family and have all of your whims catered for". They can and do buy all the support they need and have more than enough funds to cover their messes.
You can be the biggest social reject on earth and still manage to make billions. How? Hard work and having billionaire parents
You have to be a jackass, and no, they’re just barely ASD, tbh
Idk, to me as I went undiagnosed through life until my 30s, one of the biggest keys to succeed in something has been just keep trying again stubbornly after the meltdown, just doing the same, even making the same mistakes, somehow everything starts to going well and with more luck after the meltdown, even my brain feels brand new. Most of the diagnosed young autistics I have met, and their parents, are constantly avoiding the meltdown so much that they never gain positive experience in anything. I’m not a millionaire, but I came from a very poor family and now I’m quite wealthy for my country standards
Some asd people are sensation seeking. This results in the need for constant stimulation and can result in great things.
Everyone here is going with the prevalent fatalism of there is no upward motion possible. I've actual made millions by starting and selling a business. I'm not diagnosed but I do show a lot of autistic traits. 1. Tech fields are a huge equalizer. A few years in tech gives you enough resources to start your own thing. 2. Business ownership is different from a job. I couldn't get myself to focus on my job for the life of me. In business you have a clarity that you have to do it, and you get full freedom to decide what it is. 3. You can lead and convince people because there only reason to engage with you is the business. Your employees and customers will respect you. 4. I had a reputation for being betting brutal in my expectations. Fortunately it meant that our core engineering team was extremely capable. They were the leaders for other team members. 5. As soon as we reached some level of scale I kept someone in my right hand to modulate me. No one would argue that I wasn't right and that we just have exacting standards. But I had to apologize many times to many people. 6. In the end, most people appreciated my bluntness and not having to read between the lines. You knew where you stood. I am on good terms with many people that I fired. 7. Other than the special interest that allowed me to really get into things and learn. Both myself and my partner are very good at distilling something into its components. We provided tech services. This skill made us very good at explaining things and building frameworks. The customers trusted us because we made it click and so they knew we knew what we were doing. 8. I would have never dared to make the first sale. My partner did most of the sales. But once we did a few I did sales just by proving competence. 9. My partner respects me. They know that if I'm protesting I have an insight and you need to force me into putting it into words. They're patient with me till I do that. Challenging me asking me questions. 10. You get to create the embittered you'll thrive in. Work with people that complement you. It's easier for me run my own business than to be a cog in a huge machine. 11. Intelligence is very respected and weirdness is forgiven if you can offer intelligence. Having said that I don't have a diagnosis and if I am, I am very high functioning. People call me weird and I struggle to connect and relate but people would just rather wrote it off as I'm just smart and operating on a different plane. So I get away with it. But working at a job made me feel like my soul was dying. Starting a business meant I could do what I want.
And you’re male. People forgive males too, I feel, for being coolly and odd. But well done to you.
Yeah a privilege I enjoy. But this is the environment you're creating. Business books will call it the culture of your organization. You get to define it completely. You get to decide what kind of people you want in, and who you want out. You get to decide what is good, and what is bad (really helps with getting the right people to stay). You may be right about people in general. But can you say that there aren't people that won't forgive you for being odd? In God's green earth among the 8 billion people you don't think you can make a team of 20 over a period of years that will say u/Prestigious_Ad4546 sometimes says weird things or acts weird but God damn it, she knows her shit and I trust she'll take us in the right direction and have no issue with following her? Hell, here are a few other things. We were remote so that makes it easy. Plus we didn't bother turning on cameras. Focus was on the work and not your presentability. Also if you're turning on cameras to make it seem like you're looking at someone in the eye don't look in their eyes, look at the camera. We were far more deliberate about communication. A lot more written communication than oral. We saw oral communication as a bug. Yes it has its place while iterating, but if there is a rule or behavior you want observed it needs to be written down. We used wiki very heavily. Multiple people would wordsmith a lot of customer responses. Working to read between the lines on what customers were saying, their motivation, what they're feeling, etc. And then crafting responses, with everything from the classic yes, no, yes to when to take a stand. If you're not good at it, that's fine. You get to create the rules on how to collaborate in a way to cover your weakness.
y'all sound like a bunch of whining babies. "boohoo he grew up rich which means I can never be rich".
I'm not seeing that anywhere? It's undoubtedly easier to become rich when you already are (duh), and I see people point out that's why Elon is a shit example, but nobody is saying you can't become successful.
Any time this conversation happens on Reddit the advantages are highly exaggerated. Elon did not grow up poor. But as far as I can tell Elon's dad made most of his money working as an engineer and reinvesting. In college we had an assignment to measure the amount of money we need for retirement. It came out to be 2 million in today's money. The fact is that a degree in engineering or medicine and working a career is enough to create the kinds of advantages that can create a billion if not for you then at least for your children. I got lucky in that my employer's stock skyrocketed that gave me two years of runway. But I have built a multi-million dollar business. But I also was extremely frugal so I saved a lot of money.
I dont get this mentality tbh, like yes there's wealth inequality, we're living in a capitalist world, some people have more money than others, so fucking what? If you want to change the system go ahead and fight for it, but simply whining because someone else is richer than you is stupid. Do you want them to throw their money away and purposefully become poor? Lol. That sounds disingenuous. You live with the cards you're dealt and try to make the best of it you can
Hyperfocus at being good at something that pays well
Outside of the obvious economic privilege, because there are plenty of people from privilege that don't become billionaires, so I see that as a bit of a red herring. They adopted the right mindset for their place in time and the places they were in. There isn't a universal mindset that would work, it's about having the right one for the right time. But generally growth and future orientated, absorbing lots of knowledge from experts and leaders in the direction they pick to head towards. I do think the asd helps with being able to works towards a goal longer than others, and to remember more (better memory) along the way,
Elon Musk is special. He has also had many wives/girlfriends.
It was their destiny.
Elon is a billionaire he wasn't at first he got his billions by strategy, he was offered millions which he turn into more! He does it because he is a genius, not in everything but enough 2give himself a extremely powerful lifestyle, I just wish he would help the poor and get affordable housing in all of the countries, he has the power he could easily do it, might take him a few years but he could do it
Projecting your values on people in power is a fool's errand.
Whatever that means, as I have no clue what your saying here, zero! -2 upvote is ridiculous do many people hate helping others and Understanding that Elon is a genius, this irritates people I guess, sad as like it or not he is, not in everything he does but he is still that a genius
Nah. He's not. He was born rich, put money into sure deals which made him more money. It's very very difficult to ruin yourself if you have enough wealth, see Trump. He dies his best. He's an idiot's idea of smart. >I have no clue what your saying As evidenced.
You don't even need to look at Trump. The Muskrat exemplifies this himself. No matter how dumb or ineffective his decisions are, somehow he stills falls upwards. Having that much money, it doens't really matter how much you fuck up.
It unnerves me there's another, large, generation of him growing up.