Maye Musk says she once told her son Elon to pick just one company, and he did not listen. She said so in a Fox Business interview with Stuart Varney that was published on September 18, as she promoted her new memoir, Timeless. The clip is about three weeks old but keeps circulating, so here is what she actually said.
The advice he ignored
Maye said Elon came to her after the PayPal sale and asked whether he should do electric cars, rockets or solar energy. She told him he had “just worked so hard” and should “just do one.” Then she added: “So you see, he doesn’t listen to me.” By her count he went on to start six companies, and, she recalled, “they were all going to fail.” Now, she said, “I’m so proud of him.”
What happened next
Elon did not take the advice. Fortune recalls that investor Ray Dalio has said he told Musk not to put his roughly $180 million in PayPal proceeds into a quest for life on Mars, the idea that became SpaceX. Musk now leads Tesla and SpaceX, and Forbes puts his fortune at about $997 billion.
Our take: it is a good line, but it is one memory from a mother promoting a book, and the outcome is easier to check than the conversation. Elon did not pick one company, and his fortune is close to $1 trillion by Forbes’s count, and past it by some other trackers, as we covered in Elon Musk Is a Trillionaire Again. That does not prove the advice was wrong. It does show how differently a mother and a founder can read the same decision. Because the interview dates from mid-September, read this as background, not breaking news.
More from Maye: Maye Musk Says Her Kids Never Chased Money and Maye Musk’s Parenting Advice vs. the $303,418 Cost of a Child.
