David Senra

If your managers tell you a certain chassis design or an engine material is too difficult and you don't have the technical depth to interrogate them, you have to defer.

The decision to use steel for Starship over carbon fiber is a prime example.

It was highly against conventional wisdom and controversial even within the company.

Ultimately, Elon had to understand all the trade-offs himself and make a call.

When there's a blocker, such as a Raptor production, GPU supply, a regulatory delay, Elon intervenes personally.

Personal phone calls to other CEOs.

I've heard hilarious stories about that, by the way.

Daily updates on the specific constraint until it's resolved.

This is the large hammer approach, as Karpathy puts it.

The hammer only works because the signal is clear.

If you don't know exactly where the bottleneck is, you're just swinging in the dark.

But Elon alone doesn't explain SpaceX.

Plenty of ambitious, technically engaged founders have failed spectacularly in aerospace.

Founders set direction, but it takes more than that to sustain a company.

Start with Gwynne Shotwell, currently the president of SpaceX and part of the core founding team.

She's the one, quote, holding it all together, as many believe.

But it's a mistake to view her as merely the steady hand who keeps the lights on while the engineers dream.

She is the strategic co-architect of the entire system.

I wonder if Shabba does any podcasts.

If anybody listening to this happens to know her, I'd love to have a conversation with her on my other show, on my new show.