Elon Musk Just Made An Excellent Point On Twitter About His Own Wikipedia Page

Elon Musk is not one to shy away from posting unfiltered comments on Twitter. If you want to know the real person, you don’t have to read third-party books or watch YouTube interviews. 

Recently, the famous founder posted on Twitter about his own Wikipedia page. This is not common at all — most famous entrepreneurs and celebrities don’t seem to give their page a second thought.

They are not Elon Musk.

Here’s the post:

Stating that he has not looked at the page in years, he noted how it looks insane, which is possibly his way of exclaiming what is obvious to us all: This is someone who has worked tremendously hard and gained an incredible amount of notoriety. 

That said: The biographical page is curiously dry and a bit heavy on company background information, while leaving out some of his more colorful antics and highlights of his personal life. (Really, just one small comment about dating the amazing musician Grimes? That’s worth at least a full paragraph.)

Musk called out one part of his story, though. 

Since the entire first section is all about his business dealings (e.g., which companies he started), he took issue with how he is labeled as an investor.

Since we’re basically living in the age of real-time data, someone deleted the identifier within a few minutes. Good for them! It takes a village.

The reason for the change to his Wikipedia page? Musk is not really an investor in the classic sense of someone who sits back in a comfy Herman Miller chair in Silicon Valley and pulls the puppet strings. He likes to come up with ideas and then find people who will help him realize those dreams.

In a follow-up comment to his own post, he mentioned how his “investments” are with his own money and he doesn’t like asking others to help if he is not willing to do that himself. That’s an excellent point and one worth considering.

Musk partly became famous not because he funds other ideas but because he funds his own ideas. He is not willing to be a distant, remote partner who lets other people do the hard work while he rakes in the cash. He’s known as someone who will pull out a cot in his office to camp out all night and work 12-hours days.

My view is that this is the type of investing that really matters. It involves your own skin and bone. It means, when you put up the funds for a new venture, you’re also investing your time and energy, your brainpower, and your mental anguish.

For many of us, Musk is the ideal of what investing should be and not what it often is — at least for some. You might say he is someone who a actually invests.