How to manage a company

He obviously needs to delegate, and delegate damn well. But he knows he’s not going to get an Elon to delegate to, so he’s got to be involved, and as he only has a percentage of time on each business he needs to understand enough to make pivotal decisions.

Many of Elon’s reportees would know more about their area of expertise than him, but they’re not him - he’s got that track record and his own money on the line.

Elon’s multiple ventures benefit his companies big time through cross learning. Being deeply involved in multiple companies means he is continuously fuelling cross learnings between ventures at the highest level. I feel this almost on a daily basis with the ventures I have co-founded.

But there are other benefits. He’s undoubtedly more connected by running several ventures. So when it comes to fund-raising, for example, he might have just completed a funding round for Tesla, and then, 3 months later, he calls up the same investment bankers for SpaceX who will be dealing with investors already comfortable with Elon. And his own brand, which comes about from having several ventures, brings a lot to the table.

Elon has not rewritten any rules by running several ventures simultaneously. In fact what he’s doing is tried and tested. Google is no longer just a search company - Android, GV, Google Capital, Google DeepMind, Google X and a whole host of other diametrically tangential businesses all have Sergey and Larry ultimately in charge. Go to Korea and you’ll see that Samsung and other chaebols have been doing the same things for donkey years. And Richard Branson has done this with Virgin Group.

It works.