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Survey Says: Elon Musk Is Most Admired Tech Leader, Topping Bezos and Zuckerberg (teslarati.com)
First Round Capital conducted a poll of 700 tech company founders and found Elon Musk to be the most admired leader in the technology industry. Elon Musk received 23 percent of the votes; 10 percent said Amazon's Jeff Bezos, 6 percent said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and 5 percent wrote in Steve Jobs. First Round writes: "We launched State of Startups to capture what it means to be an entrepreneur. We asked the leaders of venture-backed companies about everything from the fundraising environment to their working relationships with their co-founders to their office's price per square foot. [...] Once again, we asked founders to write in which current tech leader they admire the most and we tallied 125 names. The Tesla and SpaceX leader held firm at the top spot (23%)..." Teslarati reports: While the survey did not ask respondents to explain their choice, it is safe to assume that Elon's propensity for setting lofty and visionary goals, and then being able to execute on them, is one trait admired most by tech founders. Most recently, Musk moved the scheduled start of production for the upcoming Model 3 midsize sedan forward by a full two years. Tesla also recently celebrated a record-setting third quarter and has been moving aggressively to close the second half of this year with 50,000 cars delivered. The company has announced a series of sweeteners to motivate people to order and take delivery of new vehicles before the end of the year. Unlimited Supercharger access for long distance travel and a, then, upcoming price hike on its entry level Model S 60, announced by the Palo Alto-based electric car maker and energy company, were incentives to stimulate sales. With plans to increase annual vehicle production by a factor of ten to twenty-fold by the end of the decade, send humans to mars and transform the energy sector, Musk's innovative solutions to rewrite humanity as we know it joins an elite rank held by few genius inventors and industrialists who have gone on to change the world.
Musk is popular because rather than making intangible items such as software he's advancing hard technologies like Rocketry and Cars. Physical engineering accomplishments are always going to outdo software for its ability to inspire. An example: K&R vs Steve Jobs, one made the software foundation for everything we use, the other made shiny physical products. Now when we look back 100 years from now Musk is going to be a visionary of the like of Henry Ford. The same is true of the person who invents working fusion, whether it's Polywell based, ITER, or something else. Once working fusion has been built it'll be hailed as a true landmark in science/technological progression. Warp drive is another advancement of this scale. These are the big advances which matter to the species and which are readily visible. It takes visionaries and money cold hard cash to make these projects happen and these guys might not be the only people smart enough to build these advances, but at the time they're the only ones putting their balls/livelihoods on the line to push us forward.