Mike Andes and others debate whether Elon Musk's companies, valued near $3 trillion combined, rest on unsustainable hype. They question SpaceX's claimed $28 trillion market opportunity and whether Musk's charisma can justify the valuations or if they collapse without him.
I heard there's a trillionaire on the rise.
Oh man. Um, few thoughts. Number one, he's basically built a $2 trillion, almost $3 trillion company between the two, that and Tesla. And he's basically an influencer. If he got hit by a bus tomorrow, the valuations of those companies would tank. And so as much as I believe in reducing key man risk, I also realize that founders are always going to outperform some private equity or venture capital or random CEO gets— that gets thrown in. And so as much as you want to mitigate against key man risk, you also have to lean into it to be able to grow to his size. Like he didn't like try to get like 10 people to replace him at Tesla and 10 people to replace him at Neuralink. Like he just stayed all in and all the businesses. And so I think there is no one size fits all for how to run a business, how a founder should lead a company. It's just do what feels right for you. And you own— the only reason key man risk starts to become an issue is if you actually want to exit the business.
I think the valuation is silly. The $28 trillion that you see as a total addressable market for SpaceX is absolute fantasy.
We're still putting big numbers into this. We still think the growth rates could be massive, but it's just we can't get anywhere near that number that they're looking for.
You're going to buy it? No.
