Elon Musk says there’s a key distinction between him and the investor—he truly makes stuff

“I’m not Warren Buffett.”

So declared Tesla CEO Elon Musk in the course of the EV firm’s third-quarter earnings name on Wednesday. “I’m not an investor,” he stated. “I’m an engineer and manufacturing particular person and a technologist.”

Musk was responding to an analyst’s query about whether or not he would incorporate all his ventures—from SpaceX to (quickly) Twitter—underneath a guardian company. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has constructed a big funding portfolio that owns every thing from Dairy Queen and Duracell to GEICO and Fruit of the Loom.

However, very similar to a choosy eater with a divided plate, Musk needs to maintain his corporations separate. “It’s not clear to me what the overlap is. It’s not zero, however I feel we’re reaching.”

In Musk’s eyes, he’s a maker, not a shareholder: “I truly work and design and develop merchandise,” he stated. “We’re not going to have a portfolio of investments or no matter.”

In different phrases, Musk thinks he’s a very completely different kind of entrepreneur than Buffett. It remembers the makers versus takers debate of the 2010s, which facilities round the concept that financiers are primarily shifting cash round (like Buffett) whereas others are literally constructing one thing that creates new companies (like Musk).

Within the 2012 presidential marketing campaign, the financial critiques of Republican Mitt Romney, from a personal fairness background, have been met with Barack Obama’s rejoinder, “You didn’t construct that.” Obama was talking concerning the significance of presidency assist for entrepreneurship, an implicit rejection of the financialization of the financial system that made Buffett and Romney so rich, though his remarks on the time have been seen as a swipe at Romney.

Musk appears to be saying he’ll at all times be a builder and never an investor (even when he’s about to develop into Twitter’s biggest-ever investor).

However Musk and Buffett might have extra in frequent than Musk may assume (or need). Each are billionaires, among the many 10 richest folks on this planet, per Bloomberg. Because the precise richest particular person on this planet, Musk is price an estimated $209 billion, up by greater than $163 billion pre-lockdown in February 2020. Buffett is valued at $97.8 billion.

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Through the pandemic, the world’s 10 richest males doubled their wealth, based on an Oxfam report. “The highest 1% have captured almost 20 instances extra world wealth than the underside 50% of humanity,” defined the authors of the report, noting that “if the ten richest males misplaced 99.999% of their mixed wealth, every of them would nonetheless be richer than 99% of the world.”

It appears that evidently being a “taker” or a “maker,” if executed proper, can set you on a path to achievement. Musk might not be trying to create an umbrella firm construction and has but to make the sweet that rivals See’s he as soon as promised to, however the two males aren’t as completely different as Musk would really like you to imagine.

At the very least, their financial institution accounts aren’t.

This story was initially featured on Fortune.com

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