Elon Musk: Anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect. Elon’s advice for entrepreneurs

Elon is asked for his advice for entrepreneurs, to which he responds: “I’m a big fan of anyone who wants to build. Anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect. That’s the main thing you should aim for: to make more than you take and be a net contributor to society.” He compares it to the pursuit of happiness: “If you want to create something valuable financially, you don’t pursue that. It’s best to pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, money will come as a natural consequence of that rather than pursuing money directly. You can’t pursue happiness directly. You pursue things that lead to happiness — fulfilling work, study, friends, loved ones.” Elon continues: “It sounds very obvious, but generally if somebody is trying to make a company work, they should expect to grind super hard and accept that there’s a meaningful chance of failure. Then just focus on having the output be worth more than the input. Are you a value creator? That’s what really matters: making more than you take.”

Elon Musk: “Anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect”

Elon is asked for his advice for entrepreneurs, to which he responds:

“I’m a big fan of anyone who wants to build. Anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect. That’s the main thing you… pic.twitter.com/Nb7iuk4nIB

— Startup Archive (@StartupArchive_) December 1, 2025

• People overcomplicate entrepreneurship. Elon just put the whole game into one sentence: be a net generator, not a extractor. The world’s divided into two types of people right now: • those who drain the system • and those who build new systems The internet rewards noise. Markets reward hype. But reality—actual skin-in-the-game reality—rewards output. You can’t cheat that math. Every breakthrough I’ve been part of, whether it’s AI, crypto, or the digital-legacy space, came from one thing: creating more value than I consumed. More ideas than excuses. More solutions than complaints. More signal than noise. And Elon’s right. Money follows usefulness. Happiness follows alignment. Legacy follows consistency. Once you stop chasing outcomes and start producing value, the universe recalibrates around you. You become a force multiplier. You become someone who leaves more behind than you take. That’s the real flex. – Tommy T