Musk claims he won't take SpaceX public because public investors have short attention spans and would require profit/return too soon. Because he wants goals set out further than the next quarter, he has kept the company in the hands of like minded investors.

That may just be bloviating on his part, but it does seem at least sensible on the surface.

Dell voiced something similar when he took his namesake company private after years of being publicly traded.

And it appears the quality of their consumer products rose dramatically afterwards.

Branson said the same thing about the Virgin Group when he turned it from a public to a private company.

My understanding is that Musk wont take it public until the strategy of getting to Mars is protected.

Musk is not wrong about this. Space exploration is not a moneymaking venture. It's very risky. The odds are probably worse than gambling.

>That may just be bloviating on his part, but it does seem at least sensible on the surface.

His biography definitely seemed to emphasize keeping SpaceX private until Mars starts to unfold

It what sense does Bezos lack control?

Being public means that the company is transparent, not that it is out of control.

It means the shareholders decide who is control. This is not about having control now, it's about retaining control.

Musk doesn't want to be beholden to shareholders because their interests (profit) might not align with his objectives (Mars). Presumably Bezos does not fear any such misalignment of interests between himself and his shareholders.

that is completely not actual reality.

it depends on who the investors/share holders are and the balance between lots of small investors and a few large investors.

as long as investors see a way to make money out of the ceo (dividends or rock-star growth pushing share price up) they are happy.

and all of that pushes thinking towards making targets for the quarter or year.

and if it get's bad enough -> not enough money being made -> people being put on the board to mind things -> eventual ousting.

do you want a visionary to spend their time thinking of the next great idea or how to keep the money people happy?

You need both. A visionary alone needs the discipline that comes from having to choose which vision of many and finish it. A financial focused manager will never bet on any but the most obvious ideas and thus lose when someone else makes something work.

Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. The least creative person has enough ideas to bankrupt even the biggest company if you start a team to implement them all as the idea occurs (a car obviously takes more people than a paper notepad, but you should expect to have all those ideas)

A visionary who never thinks about money will eventually run out, or worse bounce between ideas and never finish one. The person who only thinks about money will not invest in the things required to continue making money.

I've heard it stated that you need a visionary CEO and a close second who is a financial realist. The visionary has lots of great ideas, the financial realist reigns them in and forces the visionary to choose which vision(s) to focus on and finish; and let the others go. This works great until the visionary CEO steps down (dies, retires...), when you put the realist second in charge all the visionary projects are stopped, for a couple quarters the company makes more money, but there are no visionary things in the pipe so the company dies a slow death.

This is what happened to LucasFilm/Arts... when Lucas left, the CFO got control...

Yes, and that sounds rather like Apple now