[Fnoord]

The shareholders won't care about that, but a private owned company can care about it. Even successors. Startups generally attempt to become publicly owned, so they use bait and switch. And most fail anyway (to become a unicorn). However, even a CEO can care about it, its just that they ultimately fall under authority of the shareholders / board.

[jesuscript]

Right. Well I think that’s one of the reasons Musk doesn’t take Spacex public. The why he operates under is very much not palatable for any reasonable shareholder. Shareholders would want to scale out space deployments of practical things (satellites) and focus on that. If they knew Musk’s why, which is to get to Mars, well … well I mean that’s just crazy. What board is going to go for that?

He carefully keeps that one out of sight.

[HWR_14]

Out of sight? He talks about it publicly and constantly (at lease he used to. Before Tesla and then Twitter started occupying more of his attention).

Shareholders can be told that they are aiming at Mars, full stop. As long as they don't control the voting and were told that before they bought the shares, it's fine.

[zopa]

I don’t disagree with what you’re trying to say, but keep in mind that SpaceX still has shareholders, and a board. It’s a much more limited and vetted set of investors, but very much not a closely-held corporation or anything like it.

[kerpotgh]

And I hope he continues to keep it private. Much as he has gone off the deep end lately, I have idolized him for so long I can’t help rooting for him.

[pclmulqdq]

Elon musk is a minority owner in SpaceX. He has profit-motivated shareholders too.

[lylejantzi3rd]

> a private owned company can care about it. Even successors.

In theory, but rarely in practice. I've seen a lot of private, family-owned businesses go out of business or get sold after the son/successor takes over because of exactly the phenomenon jesuscript mentions. Even if the successor cares, they don't care about the same things as the founder.