Musk: Messiah of this Millenium
Elon Musk: The Occidental Tanmay Bhatt
Elon Musk can be best seen as a David turning himself into a Goliath. He was once seen as a lonely man who was on a mission to change the world pitting himself against the established industry giants. But things have changed a lot in the last decade and Elon is the newly established giant now- with Tesla as the most valuable automobile company and SpaceX being valued at mighty $74 billion.
But that's not it, Elon has a less talked about resource at his disposal which is his crazy fanbase. His fanbase can be termed as crazy as his ideas. His one tweet is enough to rally the bitcoin chart. Bitcoin crashed more than 30% in valuation after his single tweet. His one appearance was enough to crash barely the 10-month-old Clubhouse app’s servers. His single tweet nearly doubled Gamestop’s price in a single day. It is crazy! It is genuinely crazy! He should be compared not to Iron Man but probably Tanmay Bhatt or Carryminati whose fans raid in unimaginable numbers at one action of their messiah.
Classification of Popular CEOs
The four-box matrix below ranks CEOs on the success of their businesses versus the craziness of their fanbases. And Elon Musk has every reason to be there at the top and probably he is going to enjoy a nice time there for quite a while.
But having a crazy fanbase comes with its own risk as popular culture keeps shifting which is accompanied by the emergence of new messiahs. Sometimes they get bored of you, sometimes they find someone else more appealing and sometimes all they want is a change in taste.
Jack Ma: The Oriental Musk
Take the example of Jack Ma in China where his shrines are erected on Singles day, i.e. 11th of November when there is a heavily discounted sale on Alibaba. This level of devotion from the fanbase indicates the increased impact of the leader on society. Jack Ma overestimated his impact and resulting political clout, therefore ended up criticizing the Chinese government. This led to his eventual arrest and a delay in his plans to take Ant Inc public.
