Maruko Is George 🇰🇪

[Lewis 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @WaldronLewis]

Elon Musk literally sat down for a 45-minute talk with Y Combinator that explains how to build world-changing companies better than any business school on earth. This is the advice he gave a room full of young founders:

1. Don't try to build something great. Try to build something useful.

Everyone obsesses over greatness. Musk says that's the wrong target. "I didn't originally think I would build something great. I wanted to try to build something useful. I didn't think I would build anything particularly great. Seemed unlikely, but I wanted to at least try." Aim for useful first. Greatness, if it comes, is a byproduct.

2. When you can't get in the front door, build your own door.

Before Musk started his first company, he tried to get a job at Netscape. "I sent my resume into Netscape and nobody responded. I tried hanging out in the lobby to see if I could bump into someone, but I was too shy to talk to anyone. So I'm like, this is ridiculous, I'll just write software myself." He didn't set out to be a founder. He became one because no one would hire him.

3. He slept in the office and showered at the YMCA.

The origin of his first company was not glamorous. "We couldn't even afford a place to stay. The office was 500 bucks a month, so we just slept in the office and showered at the YMCA." He couldn't afford proper internet either, so he drilled a hole through the office floor and ran a cable to the internet provider downstairs. That was the founder of the future richest man on earth.

4. Keep the chips on the table.

When Musk sold his first company, he received a $20 million cheque. His bank balance went from $10,000 to $20 million overnight. Most people would have stopped. He put almost all of it straight back into his next company. "I kept the chips on the table." He did the same thing decades later, over and over. He hates money sitting idle. Money is fuel for the next mission.

5. Start with the mission, then work backwards to make it a business.

Musk didn't start SpaceX to make money. He went on the NASA website to find out when humans were going to Mars, and there was no plan. So he decided to build one. "There had been no prior example of a rocket startup succeeding. A small chance of success is better than no chance of success." The mission came first. The business model came later.

6. He started SpaceX expecting to fail.

He is brutally honest about the odds. "SpaceX started in mid-2002 expecting to fail. Probably 90% chance of failing. When recruiting people, I said, we're probably going to die, but small chance we might not die." The first three launches failed. The fourth one worked with no money left. "If the fourth launch hadn't worked, it would have been curtains. We made it by the skin of our teeth."

7. Break every problem down to physics.

This is the core of how Musk thinks. "First principles means break things down to the fundamental elements that are most likely to be true, then reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy." His example is rockets. Everyone priced them based on what old rockets cost. Musk asked what a rocket is actually made of, priced the raw metals, and found the materials were only 1-2% of the historical price. The rest was inefficiency he could attack.

8. When told something takes 24 months, break it down and do it in six.

Last year xAI needed a giant computer to train its AI. Suppliers said it would take 18 to 24 months. "It's like, well, we need to get that done in six months or we won't be competitive." So he broke it into parts. Needed a building, so he found an old factory. Needed power, so he rented generators. Needed cooling, so he rented a quarter of America's mobile cooling capacity. He slept in the data centre and ran cabling himself. It got done.

9. Watch your ego-to-ability ratio.

Musk's single sharpest piece of advice for young founders is about staying honest with yourself. "A major failure mode is when your ego-to-ability ratio gets too high. Then you break the feedback loop to reality." Keep the ego small, internalise responsibility for everything, and stay ruthlessly connected to what's actually true. "You want to close the loop on reality hard. That's a super big deal."

10. Chase work, not glory.

His closing philosophy ties it all together. "It's so hard to be useful. The area under the curve of total utility is how useful you've been to your fellow human beings times how many people. If you aspire to do true work, your probability of success is much higher. Don't aspire to glory, aspire to work."

He was ridiculed for years. The press called him "internet guy attempting to build a rocket company." He agreed it sounded absurd. He did it anyway, because a small chance of doing something useful beat no chance at all.

Here's the thing though....

Musk became the most followed founder alive because everything he does happens in public. The launches, the failures, the talks like this one. The companies made him powerful. The personal brand made his every word travel around the world before he finishes saying it.

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[ؘjuandi @poxelse]

imagínate que te pidan MATRIMONIO después de trepar ilegalmente el empire state ni las películas de acción van a poder superar esto

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

Two Russian climbers scaled New York’s Empire State Building on Wednesday as part of a death-defying marriage proposal.

Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau, stars of Netflix’s “Skywalkers” documentary, were arrested after dangling from the iconic 1,500-foot building’s spire.

[ABC News @ABC]

HAPPENING NOW: Two people have climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and unfurled a flag on top of its spire.

The unidentified people appear to be wearing masks.

ABC News' Aaron Katersky reports. https://t.co/UXGzh22MoB

[Fox News @FoxNews]

BREAKING: Two people have climbed to the top of the Empire State Building in New York City, holding a banner from the skyscraper's antenna reading, "When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace."

As of now it's unclear how the pair reached the top of the building as police work to get them down from the spire, 1,454 feet above the ground.

[ABC News @ABC]

JUST IN: After two people climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and unfurled a banner on top of its spire Wednesday afternoon, one of the climbers appeared to propose to the other. https://t.co/ngG3jOeTBU

[SuperSport Football ⚽️ @SSFootball]

How good is this ball by Gabriel Martinelli? 🤌

Gyökeres makes it three for the Gunners 💥

📺 Stream #LEEARS on DStv: https://t.co/B0jLrQW5cc

[afcstuff @afcstuff]

Viktor Gyökeres ⚽️
Martin Zubimendi 🅰️

WHAT. A. CROSS.

[Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano]

🚨❤️🤍 BREAKING: Viktor Gyökeres to Arsenal, here we go! Verbal agreement in place between all parties involved.

Sporting accept last bid from Arsenal for €63.5m plus €10m, agent will reduce his commission.

Gyökeres will sign five year deal at #AFC. He ONLY wanted Arsenal. 🇸🇪

[Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano]

🚨🔴⚪️ BREAKING: Christian Mosquera to Arsenal, here we go! Verbal agreement in place with formal steps to follow.

€15m fee plus add-ons, total package under €20m. Long term deal in place, Mosquera who only wanted Arsenal.

Medical ready later this week if all goes to plan. 🇪🇸

[Fabrizio Romano @FabrizioRomano]

🚨🔴⚪️ Understand Gyökeres’ agents have landed in London to seal details of the deal with Arsenal!

All set also for Viktor to travel for medical as soon as details will be sorted.

€63.5m plus €10m deal almost agreed, commission reduced as it has to be fixed today.

🏁🇸🇪

[Citizen TV Kenya @citizentvkenya]

Raila Odinga: In 1982, when some of us wanted to form a political party, the regime then went to Parliament and introduced a law to make the country a single party state by introducing Section 2A that made it illegal to form any other political party #SabaSaba

[Kalonzo Musyoka @skmusyoka]

Speaker @HonWetangula's state-sponsored goons throwing stones and firing bullets under the protection of Riot Police did not deter our March to Kitale.

The message from Butula to Bungoma to Kimilili to Kiminini to Kitale is the same as Vihiga and Bungoma yesterday: #WanTam!

The United Opposition Western Tour has affirmed the sentiments loudly and openly stated by the rest of the country: #RutoMustGo!

#KomboaKenya
#OnePeopleOneNation

[Ole Teya @TeyaKevin]

#SiriNiNumbers

[Yoko @Kibet_bull]

Kiambu is massive.

#SiriNiNumbers

[Cornelius K. Ronoh @itskipronoh]

Nameless, Wahu and the daughter ndani ya Nairobi CBD! #SiriNiNumbers

[Juja_finnest💥 @JUJA_KOT]

Don't say anything Just retweet this ❤️😪

#OccupyStatehouse2025
#SiriNiNumbers