The case for building a holding company for Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company

The business model piece is we’re always talking about competing more effectively. If you’re starting a company or career you don’t want to compete. You want to create a monopoly. We want to invest in a company that has a good plan to create a monopoly.
— Peter Thiel

As of early 2021, Tesla, Inc. has two branches of its business:

Automotive branch

Develops automobiles and the supercharger network, which are both expanding to different continents in 2021.

Energy branch

Develops solar panels and storage systems using batteries for…

By studying military strategies and their connections to business strategies, businesses can capture markets, compete with rivals, and lead teams toward objectives.

United States Army Field Manual

In the United States, the essential military strategy concepts are distributed with the United States Army Field Manual. Within it, 9 concepts are outlines:

1. Objective
   (Direct every military operation towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective)
2. Offensive
   (Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative)
3. Mass
   (Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time)
4. Economy of Force
   (Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts)
5. Maneuver (Place the enemy in a disadvantageous position through the flexible application of…

“The strange thing about television is that it doesn’t tell you everything.”
― Walter Tevis, “The Man Who Fell to Earth”

In a year of quarantines for the better part of the year, chessboard sales have grown 1,048% in 2020, according to Mary Higbe, the director of marketing at Goliath Games.

Chess, a game that was once declared obsolete due to the conquering force of AlphaZero has not only gained traction but is picking up speed as a popular game in the United States:

Experts have a deep understanding; not only a competency to do something well. If there is not a deep understanding, solving complex problems will be difficult but if we focus too much on deep understanding, nothing will ever get done. Understanding expertise is essential.

1. Principles

To begin, develop a wide and thorough vocabulary. This enables a person to understand the core elements in a field, but more importantly: communicate with people about the field. This vocabulary in our memory helps us recognize elements at a fundamental level and later conceptually map how these elements relate to one another. …

Whenever I enjoy a song, artwork, movie, or conversation with a friend, I consider how we communicate, so I decided to learn more and create infographics of different theories as part of my studying process.

I was surprised to find most of the theories out there originate from the United States, which makes me wonder how other theories may fall short due to nonverbal or visual forms of communication, differences between cultures, emerging technologies, and stages of globalization which change how we communicate.

Without an understanding of causality there can be no theory of communication. What passes as information theory…

For $250, a business can pay a graphic designer to create a logo for their business. Or, for $10,000 a business can hire a graphic designer to form a design strategy that contextually places the business’s branding in a stronghold against the market it’s competing in. Businesses aren’t just paying more for the same thing, but for a designer to use specific skills, abilities, and knowledge in a strategic problem-solving way.

To have a seat at the table, strategic graphic designers of the future need much more than refined craftsmanship in a technical process to be so valuable in the…

“Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night.”
— André Breton

Last week I toured “A Home for Surrealism: Fantastic Painting in Midcentury Chicago”, the latest exhibition curated by Dr. Janine Mileaf at The Arts Club of Chicago. Paintings and prints by Chicago-based artists who were working in the surrealism genre fill the gallery, works largely borrowed from collectors in the Club and local museums.

Dr. Mileaf shared stories of how the paintings were discovered by their collectors along with how the paintings can be analyzed as a historical snapshot into the surrealist movement…

Every day we use designed products and services from companies around the world.

Throughout a design’s lifetime, it’s encountered by people outside the person who purchases it. The manufacturer, truck driver, cashier, garbage collector all encounter the design at various stages of the design’s lifetime. This ecosystem contextualizing the design over time inevitably impacts how it makes people feel about the design’s brand and reputation.

Brands who address experiences outside the desired or purchased experience can be readily found in our culture’s most successful businesses:

Amazon

The smile on Amazon’s boxes are seen by truck drivers, postal office workers, and your…