My Big Takeaway From The Elon Musk Book By Walter Isaacson

There’s one thing that seems to drive Elon Musk.

You might think it would be taking a trip to Mars, or possibly saving the planet once we all start driving electric cars. After reading a new biography about him, I’m convinced the most famous entrepreneur of our generation has one main goal.

He wants to make money.

The book Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson makes this abundantly clear. Musk is absolutely driven, but it becomes obvious that he is driven primarily by success and profit. That’s why he sleeps on the floor at the Tesla factories, that’s why he has partnered with NASA, that’s why he is sending satellites into space. When Musk decided to buy Twitter, many of the reports indicated that he wanted to create an open forum for free and unfiltered discussion.

I doubt that was the only motivation.

What seems to be more likely is that Musk is intent on building the X everything app, a place where we store our money and conduct our personal business online.

I’ve often wondered why Musk has made so many big changes at Twitter, including renaming the company. He always seems so random and impulsive. Isaacson does attempt some explanation about why Musk wanted to buy Twitter in the first place, especially one long section in the book that suggests the richest person in the world just likes to stir the pot. I have my own theories. The master plan seems to be related to gaining access to our credit cards. What has started with 330 million people using Twitter might decline rapidly when he starts charging us for the X app, but at least he’ll have our credit card info.

It’s not really about bots (which cannot be monetized) or even subscriptions (which might be coming soon), it’s about building the X “everything” app. There’s a reason 1.3 billion people use WeChat — it makes life easier. Musk knows everyone is impulsive when we use these multi-purpose apps, and once we can post in public, buy products, send money, and message our friends using the X app, he has us right where he wants us.

At least — he has me. I tend to like only a handful of apps, and if everything was all bundled into one — social media, banking, messaging — I’d likely start using it. After using smartphones for so many years now, it gets tiring having to manage so many apps. I’d say 90% of the apps on my phone sit idle most of the time; I haven’t used some of them in years.

I wrote recently about how Musk tends to break things down to their basic elements, and then he rebuilds them the way he wants. The new biography paints a picture of someone who does that with electric cars, rockets, and everything else he touches. What we might be witnessing is a major rebuilding of a popular app into what he wants it to be.

And what is that exactly?

It starts with our credit cards. Once we start paying for the app, we might start using it more. We’ll become vested in the app because we know if we pay a subscription fee we should try to garner as much usage as possible.

Musk might actually be onto something there: If we start paying for the app, we might use it more, thinking that we should derive some benefit out of the expense.

We will see if the X app is appealing enough to make us want to start paying for it.