The Founders by Jimmy Soni

Author:Jimmy Soni
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

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Musk did see the X.com team as family—if only because he often spent more time with them at the office than he did with his actual family at home. But it wasn’t his “having given this a lot of thought” that had led to his exit—that was simply a bit of standard-issue face-saving.

Still, the message was surprisingly gracious, as even his critics would admit. His public praise of Thiel—just hours after Thiel had pushed Musk aside—showed self-restraint.

Indeed, Musk didn’t seek retribution. Jeremy Stoppelman—an early Musk X.com recruit—reached out to Musk in the immediate aftermath to ask if he and others should show their support by threatening to resign en masse. Musk instructed him to stand down. Even Musk’s longest-serving allies within the company were thrown off by his moderation. “It was very odd to me how graciously he was taking it,” Branden Spikes said. “If it were me, I’d be pissed.”

Musk’s position was born of realism. “While I didn’t agree with their conclusion,” Musk explained years later, “I understood why they took the action they did.” The board had made its decision, and, from his remarkably pragmatic perspective, a fight would have been unproductive. “I could have fought it hard, but I said at this critical time, best to concede,” Musk remembered. He added, “Peter and Max and David and the other guys are smart people, with generally good motivations, and they did what they thought was right for the right reasons. Except that the reasons weren’t valid, in my opinion.

“It’s easy to be bitter and hate them forever,” he went on. “But the best course of action is to turn the other cheek and make the relationship good. And I put a lot of effort into making things good.” Others saw this effort and, in spite of their misgivings about Musk as CEO, praised him for his restraint. “He behaved for the better of the company,” Malloy recalled. “He does not hold grudges,” Levchin observed. “He’s been remarkably gracious with a bunch of people who basically ousted him as CEO while he was on his honeymoon.”

When pressed about his concession, Musk referenced the biblical story of the Judgment of Solomon. In it, King Solomon must adjudicate two womens’ claims for maternity of a baby boy. The king proposes to split the baby in half—which leads the first woman to immediately relinquish her claim for the sake of the child’s life. “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him,” King Solomon decrees, “she is his mother.”

“I did view the company as at least partly my baby,” Musk said, his voice tinged with emotion. “If I attack the company and the people there, it’s like… it would be attacking my baby. I don’t want to do that.”

This was Musk’s second experience of being pushed aside at a company he founded, and it pained him. Jawed Karim recalled a moment in the cafeteria late one evening during the period in which Musk’s fate was being decided.

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