At Tesla's shareholder meeting, Elon Musk made a startling revelation about the success

Like almost everything else about the company, Tesla's annual shareholder meetings are, well, different. On the one hand, people actually attend.

Yes, I know, there are people who attend shareholder meetings of other public companies, but these people are usually there because they are paid to be there. They are not loud and generally do not cheer when the CEO of the company takes the stage. Oh, and these meetings don't usually take place in a gigantic factory.

Tesla's annual meeting, on the other hand, is. And, the room is usually full of Tesla owners who also own Tesla stock, because it gives them the privilege to shout questions at Elon Musk. That is, after all, the reason they came.

Yes, they can vote on proposals, but if you've ever watched the live stream of any of these meetings, you don't get the impression that the people who were there came to exercise a bit of shareholder democracy. They're here because they're superfans.

The highlight, of course, is when Musk takes the stage. Whenever he opens his mouth, the remarks are usually a stream of consciousness - meaning he can say just about anything. For example, Musk hinted that the company's upcoming Full Self Driving beta software might be upgraded from 10.12 to 10.69, for no reason other than a crude joke.

Musk also detailed highlights from the past year, but before all that, he wanted to say something interesting. In fact, it was the first thing he said when he got on stage:

"It's been an incredible year, the Tesla team has done an incredible job," Musk said. "Being able to work with a group of super talented people and create great products, make those products, deliver them to people, and make people happy with those products is one of the best things. of life."

By all accounts, Tesla is a remarkable company. There are now more than 3 million Tesla electric vehicles on the road. That's saying a lot considering most of its competitors - at least those currently delivering real cars - are counting three or four figure deliveries.

Lucid, for example, just announced that it will miss its target of delivering 20,000 vehicles this year. He now expects to deliver 7,000, at most. Tesla delivered over 200,000 in the last quarter alone.

I think it's worth noting that before talking about the company's accomplishments, the first thing he did was give credit to the people who work at Tesla. There's no doubt that the company wouldn't be as successful without the hard work of these employees, and they deserve to hear their leader publicly recognize that.

To be fair, Tesla has received a lot of criticism over allegations of employee discrimination and mistreatment. Musk himself has had to deal with employees for his leadership as well as his public fight with Twitter, which he said he would buy out before stepping down.

If you look past all the distractions, though, there's a pretty powerful leadership lesson here. Every startup starts with an idealistic vision to do something meaningful. It's the fuel that helps start-ups gain momentum.

Somehow...