Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk agreed with Apple Inc. cofounder Steve Jobs' views on hiring the best talent available and building a team of 'A' players to become successful.
What Happened: Jobs has spoken a lot about how to truly build a successful team. His philosophy was that a small team of "A" players could run circles around a large team of "B" and "C" players.
Now, Musk, who is currently the third richest person in the world with a net worth of $189 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, thinks this is "true."
Jobs explains that he built a lot of his success by "finding these truly gifted people and not settling for 'B' and 'C' players, but going for the 'A' players."
True
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 30, 2024
Jobs put his faith in the people he hired and worked with, not in technology.
Former Apple CEO John Sculley underscored the fact that even during the early days of Cupertino, Jobs' team was made of "people who had clearly never built a commercial product before but they believed in Steve and they believed in his vision."
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Why It Matters: Following Jobs' vision has paid off quite well for Apple – from the Mac to the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, Cupertino's biggest hits in its history were driven by Jobs' ideas and vision.
"I found that when you get enough 'A' players, when you go through the incredible work to find, you know, five of these 'A' players, they really like working with each other because they've never had a chance to do that before."
To his credit, Musk has built Tesla, SpaceX, and now xAI, and before that, PayPal. He is also one of the co-founders of OpenAI, which is currently one of the leaders in the AI industry.
Jobs believed that once you build a team of "A" players, it takes care of itself.
"They don't wanna work with 'B' and 'C' players, and so it becomes self-policing, and they only wanna hire more 'A' players."
"You build up these pockets of 'A' players and it propagates."
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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