🚀 3.2.1. First-Principles Thinking ::: Atomic Scaling

First principles thinking is Elon's core operating system. Here's how he uses it:

3 IDEAS:

I. Strip away assumptions to find foundational truths.

"Battery packs are expensive and that's the way they'll always be."

Most people stop there. First principles asks one more question: What are batteries made of? Cobalt, nickel, aluminum, polymers. What do those cost on commodity markets? Around 2% of the battery pack price.

The "expensive battery" problem is false. The real problem is expensive manufacturing. One sounds unsolvable. The other is an engineering challenge you can fix.

Different solutions appear at different layers. Most people accept surface-level constraints. Just dig one or two layers deeper than consensus thinking.

II. Deconstruct before you reconstruct.

When rockets cost $65M and the industry threw them away after one flight, everyone accepted it as normal. First principles asks: why?

You don't throw away a plane after flying to London. SpaceX exists because it questioned the single-use assumption.

The breakthrough wasn't just cheaper manufacturing. It was asking why we discard rockets at all. Reusability changed everything. 15M$ vs 65M$ as of today.

Break problems down to physics, materials, and constraints. Then rebuild from scratch instead of copying what exists.

III. Expect failure, optimize for speed.

SpaceX's first three rockets failed. The fourth worked. Most companies would've quit after one failure because their process demanded "getting it right."

SpaceX expected to be wrong and built for speed instead. When you reason from first principles, you're not copying proven solutions, you're testing new ones. That means higher failure rates initially.

The key is reducing error faster than competitors. Ship, break, fix, repeat. Don't optimize for being right early. Optimize for learning fast.

First-principles thinkers don't seek perfection. They seek maximum signal with minimal assumption, then let reality be the judge.

2 QUOTES:

I.

“Boil things down to fundamental truths, then reason up from there.” - Elon Musk

II.

“All designs are wrong. It's just a matter of how wrong.” - Elon Musk

1 ACTION:

Pick one problem you're solving this week. What's it actually made of? What are the real constraints? What are you copying from others without thinking?

Start over from physics.

Think like a scientist,

Ludovic Bodin

3x Entrepreneur, 2x Unicorn Investor, 1x IPO Founder of BOBIC Generational Wealth Author of Atomic Scaling

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING:

“We applied Atomic Scaling to build & scale Gigaverse to over $10M in annualised revenue in our first 6 months, with a team of less than 10 people.

When you eliminate coordination overhead and move lightning fast, building without unnecessary bureaucracy, a small team becomes a massive competitive advantage."

- ​Dith​, Co-Founder of ​Gigaverse​ 

 

P.S. Want in? Like Dith, I'm working 1:1 with entrepreneurs to scale their businesses the Atomic Scaling way. Reach out if you know someone who's ready to level up.