[mipapage]

"I know everything there is to know."

I kind of took that to be like how Musk talks about needing to know first principles. In the article you can see that he was humble about what he thought he knew, took jobs here and there and eventually confirmed that he was at the cutting edge, that he knew 'everything there is to know' about this special area.

That's when he realized that he was qualified to try this. IMO, anyway ;)

[drumdance]

On a smaller scale, I remember one day realizing that I, a self-taught programmer, knew more than my boss. Within six months I left to start my own company.

[mipapage]

Nice. I'm still struggling to feel I know enough to do my own thing other than lead gen and optimization for others.

[SonicSoul]

How smart was your boss and how did it go with your company ?

[drumdance]

The boss was pretty smart in the sense of knowing how to work with big corporations to build large decision support systems. But his technical knowledge was fairly shallow.

I sold my first company and the investors did very well, but I made tons of stupid mistakes in the process. Not least of which was holding on to dotcom stock that I thought would go to the moon but which mostly went down the drain.