“Manoeuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Note: None of the material or content contained herein constitutes investment advice. It is solely for educational and informational purposes. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.
The IPO of SpaceX set off a global avalanche of commentary, much of it in writing.
Newspaper articles, social media posts, reports, magazines, texts, emails, maybe even some handwritten letters. Of the thousands, maybe millions of articles and of the millions, billions, maybe, dare I say it, trillions of words written about this company and it’s unique IPO, I have not seen 3 particular words written anywhere. Nothing written, nothing on video, no discussion across the panels yet they are arguably the 3 most important words in the whole discussion:
Key. Person. Risk.
It seems to have flown under the radar. It is normally a dedicated piece of analysis in professional investment assessments but the focus seems to be on the valuation and the business rather than the key person here.
Elon Musk is the general at the head of the army of SpaceX, Tesla, Starlink, xAI, X, The Boring Company, Nueralink etc. He manouevre’s the army and he is the person people follow. He delivers the grand visions that people get behind. People dedicate their lives and their money to him and his ideas and that has paid off handsomely for many.
If something should happen to him and he can no longer lead in the same way, what does it mean for his multitude or for these stratospheric valuations? I don’t think many people have asked themselves that. Without Musk’s once in a generation vision and ability to deliver, I believe we would be left with, not quite an undisciplined multitude but a multitude with an inability to affect the valuations even a fraction of how Musk can affect them. In such an instance, I would expect those valuations to collapse.
There are no signs that this will happen anytime soon, he is fit and still operates at his unrivalled level of productivity without issue it seems. But as I learned on my 14th birthday when I went to the glorious space opera, The Fifth Element, life is vulnerable to king and pauper alike.
Make sure you are considering this in any assessment of SpaceX because it will drastically affect the valuation should it ever come to pass.