What Recruiting for Elon Musk Taught Me About Spotting Builders

In 2010, Elon asked me to find him the best intellectual property lawyer in the country. Not a good one. The best one.

That request tells you most of what you need to know about recruiting for him. I did it for close to a decade, at Tesla and later at Neuralink, and every person I brought him had to clear the same bar.

Mental athletes

Elon wanted mental athletes. People who treat their brain the way an athlete treats their body, something to push against harder and harder problems. People who can't leave the status quo alone.

I found that exciting. I also found it nerve-racking, because qualified didn't count for much. I could bring him ten candidates who checked every box, and if none of them was head and shoulders above the rest, he'd turn down all ten. Getting an approval felt like earning a degree.

That bar changed how I screened. A résumé told me who was qualified. It didn't tell me who could build.

The question I asked everyone

So I started asking the same question in almost every interview:

"Tell me about something you built or significantly improved when there wasn't a clear playbook. How did you decide where to start, what did you personally do, and what changed because of it?"

Then I'd follow up: "What did the first version get wrong, and what did you do next?"

The follow-up is where builders separate themselves. People who interview well have a polished story with a clean ending. People who build remember the messy parts: the wrong first guess, the feedback that stung, what they changed after. They can tell you exactly what they did, who they did it with, and what got better.

I wasn't looking for a heroic solo effort. Those stories usually leave out the team. I was listening for concrete decisions, personal ownership, resourcefulness, and proof that they learned from what went wrong.

The hire that didn't make sense on paper

Back to the lawyer.

After a lot of digging, I found Richard Soderberg, who ran his own firm in Minnesota. He was doing very well there, and nothing we could offer came close to what he was earning. Once you factored in the cost of living in the Bay Area, our offer looked even worse.

But he wanted to be part of Tesla, badly. He met Elon, and Elon loved him. He went through the whole process and got the offer. I pushed hard for him because he was exactly what Elon had asked for, and I knew what Elon was trying to accomplish.

The hard part of the negotiation wasn't with Tesla. It was with Richard. At one point he asked me how he was supposed to explain this to his family. How do you tell them you're moving them out of a comfortable life in Minnesota to one of the most expensive places in the country, for a fraction of the pay?

I told him he could tell them their dad did something that was worth more than money.

He paused for a second. Then he said, "I can tell them that now."

He took the job. It worked out well for him, and he delivered everything Elon brought him in to do.

What most people get wrong about recruiting

Too many people treat recruiting as a transaction. Fill the seat, close the offer, move on.

What they don't take seriously is that every candidate brings a life with them. Richard wasn't just weighing a salary. He was weighing whether to uproot his family, and how he'd explain it to them. Every serious candidate is doing some version of that math, and they're putting real time into your process while they do it. You have to respect that investment, and you have to show it.

If people label you as just another recruiter, you're done.

So qualified isn't the bar. It's the starting line. If you're hiring someone to build something that doesn't exist yet, ask about the time there was no playbook, and spend most of the interview on what went wrong the first time. And when the best person costs more than you can pay, don't lead with the money. Lead with the work, and with respect for what you're asking them to give up.