
Ask HN: Who are the other Elon Musk's? - juiced
He is not the only one, right? There must be other people who are doing extraordinary things on a same level. Or does he occupy all the space on this stage?
======
sixQuarks
I've studied Elon Musk pretty closely, and have tried to find others that are
similar, but I'm not aware of anyone, at least English-speaking.

The thing that really sets him apart, in my opinion, and something that a lot
of people don't fully appreciate - is that he is the lead engineer / chief
designer at Tesla and SpaceX.

So, you basically have in one person, someone who is both able to grow a
multi-billion dollar company, while also leading the design and engineering of
the products. It's very rare to find an individual with this type of skill
running such a large company. For example, the CEOs of SpaceX and Tesla's
competitors cannot really delve too deep into the engineering details.

If that were it, Elon would still be impressive, but he goes way further than
this.

He is not only running one multi-billion dollar company, but two
simultaneously. (You can almost say he is running 4 multi-billion dollar
companies simultaneously if you include Solar City, and if you see the
Gigafactory as a separate entity, not to mention he also oversees Open AI,
which is very impressive by itself (he says he spends one day a week on it).

If that were it, Elon would be in a league of his own already, but what makes
it even more impressive is that the companies he runs are both in very complex
industries, and he is revolutionizing both industries.

~~~
babyrainbow
>he is revolutionizing both industries...

I would wait until that is achieved. I mean, with what he did with the
hyperloop thing, I will take what ever thing he says with a huge grain of
salt....

One thing is certain. Elon Musk knows his audience and knows them well and
knows very well how to milk them. That way, I would say he is the Christopher
Nolan of entrepreneurs...

~~~
fuqted
Last I checked there are all electric vehicles on the road and space rockets
that can land. Wait no further.

~~~
babyrainbow
So where is the revolution?

------
fuqted
Alphabet (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) is doing a lot of things. From what I
understand they're the most advanced when it comes to ML and self driving
technology. They tend not to ship so they don't get much credit.

Jeff Bezos is in many markets as well though he seems more focused on making
money than directing the course of humanity.

All in all I'd say Google has had a much bigger impact on our lives than
either Amazon or Tesla / SpaceX has had thus far.

------
DrNuke
He has hard earned the resources to make it happen big time, there may be many
others along the way having less or much less or using a comparable / even
bigger pot for different goals.

~~~
fuqted
He earned more from 'changing the world' itself than he ever did from PayPal
or Zip2.

It's also important to note that his goals with x.com - the company he merged
with PayPal - were to create online banking. The impact the company had
might've been much greater had things gone differently.

------
dbs
Bill Gates.

------
ccvannorman
Richard Branson

------
oldbuzzard
Craig Venter

------
neom
jeff bezos

~~~
crystalPalace
Bezos definitely makes sense since he is also a pioneer in the private space
industry, a major philanthropist, and Amazon is a very large and non-
traditional company pursuing a wide variety of goals in hardware and software.

~~~
hxnjxn
This. I'd say Amazon has had an insane impact on e-commerce as a whole and
that Bezos doesnt get the 'genius/visionary' tag enough.

------
catenthusiast
Kanye West

~~~
max_
Exactly! :D

------
dilemma
Jack Ma and Wang Jianlin.

~~~
ricardobeat
Care to explain why?

~~~
dilemma
Jack Ma is Jeff Bezos and Wang Jianlin is Bill Gates.

~~~
mac01021
That explains why I've never seen Wang and Gates in the same place at the same
time.

------
aaron695
Warren Buffett

