Five points someone, with Elon Musk

Elon Musk is the founder of PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors. Here are the five things that I have learnt from him, and hope to implement in my own start-up:

1)     Wishful thinking is one of the most profound human failings.

2)     If I were to give one piece of advice to entrepreneurs it would be to stay very close to the product and be hell-bent on making it as good as it can be.

3)     Don’t allow jerks to infect your team. If one of your managers persists in being a jerk, fire him. It helps morale, and it’s a great way to minimise people’s tendency towards being jerks.

4)     Avoid MBAs. MBA programmes don’t teach how to create companies. At my companies, we hire someone in spite of an MBA not because of one.

5)     Measure an employee’s net impact on the team. You can’t only look at what an individual employee gets done. You also have to look at how they have helped people around them get things done.