Elon Musk follows a five-step decision-making process when simplifying technology

Elon Musk is known to sleep under his desk during intense periods of work

The tech company founder and CEO has a wide variety of leadership principles he has kept consistent while building multiple different companies, including eschewing middle management and using the "idiot index," a formula he uses to identify manufacturing inefficiencies.

Elon Musk's will to launch: the early days of SpaceX

Radically reducing the cost of rockets and innovating totally new space vehicles originated in the singular force of Elon Musk's vision. In this podcast, Founders creator David Senra shares what he learned reading a book about SpaceX's beginnings, highlighting Musk's audacious refusal to follow industry conventions and promotion of a culture of action and speed. Learn more insights from the founder here.

Lessons learned from Steve Jobs

From predicting our screen-filled future in 1983 to slashing Apple's product line in 1997, Steve Jobs believed in focus, simplicity, and the fusion of technology and art. His philosophies still influence how products are built and marketed today.

Jeff Bezos uses a ‘regret minimization framework’ for making decisions

When Bezos is making a decision, he asks himself a simple question to minimize regret: “When I’m 80, will I regret not doing this?” The decision-making framework has become popular since Bezos began speaking publicly about it.

See a timeline of all of Elon Musk's business ventures

From the software company Zip2 in the 1990s to Musk's Twitter acquisition (which he later renamed X), Elon Musk has run, founded, and invested in many different businesses over the past three decades.

SpaceX was built to achieve Elon Musk's vision of making humans an interplanetary species

Learning quickly from early Falcon rocket failures and clashes with vendors and safety regulators, the company has focused on reusability as a first step to reaching Mars and is backed by NASA funding to do so.

Elon Musk once tried to make himself CEO of OpenAI

After three years of funding the company since its 2015 launch, Musk believed OpenAI had fallen too far behind Google and proposed taking the helm. Rejected by OpenAI's other founders, Musk walked away and reneged on a $1B donation. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Elon Musk claims cutting costs fast was the only way to stop X from dying

Laying off 80% of X's workforce, says Musk, was required to avoid a financial collapse within months of him purchasing the platform. In 2023, he claimed X would be cash-flow positive within the year as advertisers returned to the platform.

How to visualize the enormous wealth of Elon Musk

The disruptive innovator and founder of SpaceX and Tesla is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, an unimaginable sum. This simple interactive visual uses pixels (representing $1K each) on a scrolling screen to demonstrate the billionaire's wealth compared to other known financial values, like the cost of building a Boeing 777 or the net worth of Tiger Woods.

Startups follow a 'minimum viable product' strategy to determine demand

Michael Seibel, group partner for startup incubator Y Combinator, explains how to build a minimum viable product (also known as an MVP) for any startup idea. Using real companies that experienced the Y Combinator program as examples, he walks through how to determine an MVP feature set, how to present an MVP to potential investors, and more.

Tesla plans to eliminate the use of rare earth elements in future vehicles

At a 2023 Investor Day event, Elon Musk outlined steps to focus Tesla's efforts on climate action rather than new vehicle models. Musk estimates the transition to carbon-free, sustainable energy will cost $10T.

Listen to a podcast that explains why Elon Musk is creating a 'company town' in Texas

Elon Musk is recreating an old tradition of large corporations creating "company towns" where their workers can live. In his case, the town, which he is calling "Snailbrook," is being created for SpaceX and some of his other companies in Bastrop, Texas, a small community roughly 45 minutes outside of Austin.

Treating X like a product instead of a public space obscures deeper issues

Public outrage over Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition misses the point that the social platform has long failed to address hate speech, not just under Musk's ownership. Over 150,000 mentions of "leaving Twitter" were recorded over the weekend following Musk's takeover.

How to make a billion dollars, with Brad Jacobs

Brad Jacobs is a serial entrepreneur who has launched eight billion-dollar enterprises during his storied financial career. With companies focused in energy, waste, and more, Jacobs has stuck to a roll-up playbook of consolidating small players into one conglomerate within an industry, a common tactic of similar private equity firms. This podcast from Founders summarizes Jacobs' book detailing his approach.

'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.'

-Inventor and businessman Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

'Move fast and break things' was one of Mark Zuckerberg's early leadership principles

The phrase was plastered across Facebook's office as a representation of the company's hacker mindset that fueled its early growth. However, Zuckerberg said he has since moved away from that motto and has focused more on sustainability as opposed to breakneck growth.

A guide to emotionally preparing to found a company

Founding a company comes with more than just logistical challenges—it's a daunting emotional task, too. In this article, a psychologist breaks down how first-time founders can prepare for the mental pressure of starting a company.

Legendary venture capitalist Peter Thiel once wrote that 'competition is for losers'

With Peter Thiel's "Monopoly Theory," the Founders Fund partner argued that investing in companies that create new categories, rather than those that compete with other businesses in existing ones, is a best practice in venture capital.

YouTuber Marques Brownlee reviews the Cybertruck

Influential technology reviewer Marques Brownlee—known online by his alias MKBHD—made a name for himself by offering in-depth reviews of gadgets like smartphones and laptops for his YouTube channel. Occasionally, he tackles bigger products. For instance, this nearly 30-minute deep dive into Tesla's Cybertruck, an all-electric pickup truck with a bulletproof exterior and futuristic design, which goes from zero to 60 mph—faster than a Corvette.

Tesla's first successful AC prototype used a metal shoe polish tin for a rotor

After leaving his position working with Thomas Edison, Tesla partnered with George Westinghouse to promote alternating current systems as a more viable, scalable solution to electricity transmission.

How the inventor of Mario designs games

Shigeru Miyamoto has created some of the most iconic video games in history, from Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong to The Legend of Zelda. The game producer boils down his creative philosophy to three basic principles: story, simplicity, and...

Walt Disney's 1957 corporate strategy document

From TV to music to amusement parks, Disney is widely regarded as one of the most successful American companies of all time. That's partly because Walt Disney was carefully building a corporate strategy from day one that accounted for the company's publications, merchandise licensing, comic strips, and more. See his 1957 corporate strategy document for yourself (spoiler alert, it's covered in Mickey Mouse illustrations).

The first lithium-ion battery was invented at ExxonMobil

Initially a side project that became a priority due to the 1973 oil crisis, the battery's flammability risks and manufacturing challenges, along with the waning crisis, led the company to shut down its battery program. Other researchers would gradually improve upon published prototype designs in the next decade.

Neural implants blur the line between personal intention and machine execution

A key ethical dilemma—the contemplation conundrum—explores whether implants might misinterpret mere imagination as intent to act. Neuroscientists have found no brain signal that clearly marks when someone decides to act, making intent hard to detect in neurotechnological systems.

Jensen Huang doesn't think Nvidia was a great company on day one

"Nvidia wasn't a great company on day one. We made it great over 31 years," explained businessman Jensen Huang on a recent podcast episode. He covered other principals and lessons he learned while building Nvidia in the epsiode too.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

How fusion—which releases energy when two lighter atoms combine to form a heavier atom—differs from fission

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.