A founder must always aim to achieve a monopoly. It may not be achieved but is undoubtedly a goal that fine-tunes business strategy.
The best way to do it is to talk about lofty goals that competitors will think is unachievable or distract them with terms like space tourism. This is how google hides its monopoly in search by showing they are actually in the technology business of cars, phones, etc.
The airline industry may not realize that all their fist class and business class seats will completely disappear and go to “30 mins to get to any city in the world” transportation now branded as space tourism or mars mission.
Internet bandwidth and telecommunications providers do not realize satellite constellation being constructed by SpaceX using the money they give them to put communication satellites in orbit will drive them out of business.
Uber’s business model based on drivers owning the cars; They will see the carpet pulled out under their feet with level 5 autonomy and fractional ownership model of tesla. You can see some laws asking uber and Lyft to recognize drivers as employees now coming into force to accelerate this move to autonomy further.
The logistics companies do not realize that hyperloop will be the fastest and most preferred mode of transport, starting with items with high package density. Hyperloops will be tested with cargo and perfected before being used by humans, just like air travel.
If Elon musk was left to run PayPal, I am almost sure that he planned to eventually drain all the banks of all the money into PayPal.
He belongs to a group of people who do not believe in competing. As Peter Thiel puts it – competition is for losers!
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