This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage companies execute faster and cheaper. Check out his linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenleaver/
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
Elon is the talk of the town these days.
After his latest victory…. helping create a US President. lol
I gotta hand it to the guy… he is not afraid to color outside the lines.
He bought Twitter (now X.com), which has become America’s #1 news outlet.
He then changed the algorithm to artificially boost his own posts and used it to help Trump win the election.
Hate him or love him… the guy knows how to win.
Not long ago I was watching Marc Andreesen talk about him on an interview. Particularly about how Elon manages and it held a lot of parallels to the Beast Method.
But there are also some important differences.
So today I’ll explain more what I mean.
The achievements of Elon Musk
Let’s start by acknowledging that what Elon has achieved is pretty incredible.
He built Tesla into the world’s most valuable auto company by far – worth more than the next 10 auto companies combined at its peak. And that’s just one of his companies.
Look at SpaceX – they’re launching rockets at a fraction of what NASA spent. They’ve made reusable rockets a reality when everyone said it couldn’t be done.
There’s Neuralink pushing the boundaries of brain-computer interfaces, and let’s not forget how he went into Twitter and slashed costs while maintaining (or even improving) performance.
Then there’s also Starlink, SolarCity, The Boring Company and his co-founder roles in OpenAI and Paypal.
Love him or hate him, the dude gets shit done at a scale that’s pretty much unprecedented.
How does Elon manage?
Elon’s management style is pretty different from your typical corporate approach.
First off, he hires mainly engineers – people who actually build stuff – rather than loading up on MBAs and business types.
He’s famous for minimizing management layers. He’ll often just walk up to an engineer working on a problem and talk to them directly. No need to go through three layers of management to get an answer.
Unlike Brian Chesky he doesn’t even consider this ‘skip level meetings’. Rather his approach is more like… “i’m gonna talk with whoever is doing the actual work.”
And when he talks to people, he questions everything.
- Why are we doing it this way?
- What assumptions are we making?
- Why didn’t you think of this other approach?
It forces people to really think through their decisions and hold themselves to a higher bar. Because they need to make sure that their decisions can hold up to the Elon cross examination.
Another thing that really sets him apart is his focus on weekly progress. He’s known for asking “What did you achieve this week?” None of this corporate quarterly planning bullshit. He wants to see real progress every single week.
And iteration speed?
The guy was cool with SpaceX rockets blowing up regularly because each failure helped them learn and iterate faster.
Most corporate leaders would’ve been fired for that approach because of the negative PR it typically brings. But not Elon.. he was proud of that shit.
How is the Beast method similar?
When I look at how I run teams with the Beast Method, there are actually quite a few similarities:
- I’m also big on minimizing management layers. In the past I’ve managed up to 30-50 people direct because my system allows for it.
- Like Elon, I believe in communicating directly to the people doing the work. No playing telephone through layers of management. But I do so mainly via the Clickup task messages.
- I encourage people to openly challenge decisions without worrying about politics. The best logic should win, not the most senior person in the room.
- And just like Elon, I’m focused on frequent progress. Though in my case, it’s even more frequent – I want to see progress daily through task updates. Often multiple times a day.
So generally I think both hold the same core principles of being lean and iterating fast.
How is the Beast method different?
But here’s where things diverge.
Elon can attract top talent just by being Elon. Most founders don’t have that luxury. They can’t just snap their fingers and have the world’s best engineers lining up to work for them.
With the Beast Method, our focus is more on using freelancers to be extremely flexible. This allows us to iterate on people faster and keep costs much lower.
It also allows us to stand up a team much faster. Often within 24 hours as opposed to several months.
His approach also assumes nearly unlimited resources. When you’re the world’s richest person and can raise billions whenever you want, you can afford to blow up a few rockets. Most founders need to be a bit more careful with their cash.
Also, the Beast Method actually iterates even faster than Elon’s approach in my opinion. We’re getting updates and feedback multiple times per day through task comments. You don’t have to wait for a meeting with Elon (probably the busiest man on the planet) to get input.
And honestly, my method is probably a bit less aggressive. We don’t need to rely on superstar talent constantly pushing the boundaries. We just need solid ‘B’ level people following a tight process.
Probably because we’re not building rocketships and putting chips into people’s brains. We’re just doing the typical, relatively mundane work that is necessary to make a business successful. Things like building apps, creating content, doing sales, etc.
Closing thoughts
While there are definitely similarities between how Elon manages and the Beast Method, I think my approach is actually better suited for most founders out there.
If you’re not Elon – which, let’s face it, you’re probably not – you need a system that works without requiring his star power or deep pockets.
The Beast Method gives you that. It’s designed for founders who need to bootstrap their way to success, who can’t afford to hire only Stanford PhDs, and who need to make every dollar count.
Because at the end of the day, not everyone can be Elon. But anyone can implement a systematic approach that gets shit done transparently & efficiently.
